If the numbers have anything to say about it, yes.

Colloquy reports that U.S. companies that use social media primarily to deepen customer loyalty spend almost twice as much as competitors who use it for brand awareness, customer acquisition and other core marketing purposes. Specifically, their survey results show the average social media spend for marketers whose primary objective is to obtain customer loyalty was $88,000 last year, compared to $53,000 for brand awareness and $30,000 for customer acquisition, the objectives that attracted the next highest spending levels…and the spend is increasing…by nearly 300% over the last year.

So companies must be seeing some strong return from these dollars and initiatives. What are some social media loyalty programs that you’ve seen?

The campaign involved using this inconspicuous and familiar little bit of branding turf for a visual experiment: instead of the familiar logo, the stickers carried bold and whimsical iconish face imagery — a monkey, a happy Cyclops, a vaguely anime-style girl, a luchador and so on. Using the same colors as the familiar Chiquita logo, the designs were genuine eye-catchers.

And they may have caught even more eyes online than they did in the store: Chiquita set up a Web tool for people to whip up their own sticker drag-and-drop mixes, and an obliging public created more than 25,000 of them in less than five months, according to the company. This enthusiasm has led to a competition — 1,355 entries were submitted over several months, and online voting starts tomorrow at eatachiquita.com to pick 18 designs that will be stuck onto actual bananas.

By actually contributing to the defamiliarizing of something familiar, the contestants layer new “intrigue” onto one company’s supply of what is, after all, a pure commodity.

It’s an amazing campaign of community and letting go of the control of your brand to bring emotion to it. Or as Chiquita reps put it, the campaign is “designed to re-engage that emotional connection with consumers.” So many brands try to this, but with little success. The attempts are usually fairly meaningless, because adding your words to a coffee cup isn’t nearly as interesting as genuinely engaging, re-working and re-imagining an iconic brand to include your ideas, not your ideas of what you think the brand will like. Way to go, Chiquita.

BrandWeek reports, “Sixty-four percent of Americans wash their sheets at least once per week and they usually celebrate with some small (and quirky) act of happiness. As some new TV spots from Grey and this longer Web video, via Digitas, show, that can range anywhere from making a “snow angel” on the bed to parachuting with the (freshly cleaned) sheets. The ads promote a new formula upgrade available on Ultra Downy April Fresh and Sun Blossom, which purport to deliver a week’s worth of clean sheet freshness, all in one wash. (The technology lies in new scent pearls, per P&G.)”

It’s great to see brands making their creative available online, especially with such a compelling theme. Who doesn’t like clean sheets?! The online video, however, points Downy fans to the brands Facebook page, which at time of writing had 242 fans, most of whom were not happy. Instead, they are complaining about how Downy has changed the smell of their favorite products. Apparently, the upgrade on Ultra Downy April Fresh and Sun Blossom also changes the smell – and users would prefer to have a smell they love for a few days than I smell they hate for one week. One customer writes:

How on earth could they change the original smell of Downy? We pay extra (even when something else is on sale) for that smell! What is the point of doing that now? BRING BACK OUR ORIGINAL APRIL FRESH SMELL! It is what Downy is all about! Yikes!

Some comments are close to outrage:

It’s rather distressing to have to LIKE this page when I don’t like the new scent… I HATE IT!!! I’ve used it for more than 20 years and this new stuff is disgusting! Yes, I’ve griped on the Downy website and will continue to sound off until you change it back… until then I am not purchasing any Downy products… …I don’t need the copy and paste reply w/ the 800# – just communicate the frustration all the way to the top, please? Thank you!

This commenter is referring to the fact that the Downy Facebook manager is using a mostly form reply that suggests customers call the customer service line to find a new scent that better meets their needs. But as one commenter points out, “Um, why would a loyal Downy user want to try a new scent? Isn’t that why they call consumers loyal, because they are loyal to a specific brand / scent?”

Hopefully, brands will realize that Facebook and other social media outlets are a common place to build and extend consumer relationships – not a funnel to the customer service line. Social media is the platform for customer service, product innovation and more.  Social media should be a place where brands and customers meet and have a cup of coffee together. The more brands stop making customers travel all the way to their house (toll free number, contact forms) and instead meet at a mutual location (Twitter, Facebook, live chat, etc), the more return they will get from their efforts. It’s not enough to show up and monitor anymore. You must engage.

Many social networkers already actively engage:
• 40% use social sites to connect with brands and products
• 50% of Facebook users click on Facebook ads to “like” a brand
• 37% learned about a new product or service from a social networking site
• 32% have recommended a product/service/brand to friends via a social networking site
• 32% of Twitter users re-tweet content provided by a company or product

This widespread participation between social networkers and brands is attributable to companies “getting it right” when it comes to social engagement and giving users what they want. For example, a whopping 90% said that at least some of the companies and/or products they are a fan of are doing a good job providing relevant content. More than a third said most or all of them were doing a good job. So it only makes sense that social networkers reported a desire for more of the same from the companies they follow:
• 49% want more printable coupons
• 46% want more notifications of sales and special deals
• 35% want more information about new products

Companies have a lot to give, and consumers are ready with open arms.

As part of the launch of Axe’s new Axe Twist, the brand is kicking off a new mobile marketing campaign, marking the largest multichannel ad program in the U.S. market using a mobile 2-D barcode, reports Drugstore News:

Jagtag mobile barcodes appear in Axe Twist marketing efforts promoting exclusive content from the Axe Twist Humor Tour, presented by Funny or Die and at college campuses. To reach the Axe target demographic – guys ages 18 to 24 years old – Jagtag mobile barcodes will be featured across multiple media channels, including print inserts within nine national men’s magazines – including GQ, Maxim and Men’s Fitness – in sample packs distributed at college campuses and hand-outs, as well as signage within movie theaters and at Six Flags theme parks nationwide.

This far-reaching campaign has a lot of implications for the future, particularly for loyalty marketers who can use mobile in myriad of ways. It would be awesome,  for instance, if Axe included the mobile barcode on their own packaging so consumers buying the product can be rewarded with exclusive content and other rewards for being a customer.

Photo via New York Times.

Big-box stores have finally joined the loyalty game. Sam’s Club is offering personalized discounts for buyers through it’s eValues program that tailors bargains based on a member’s buying history. The New York Times reports:

Linda Vytlacil, vice president for member insights and innovation at Sam’s Club, said coupons normally had a response rate of 1 percent or 2 percent. With eValues, she said, as many as 20 percent to 30 percent of eligible customers collect the discount they are offered.

The program is available only to Sam’s Club’s “Plus” members, who pay a higher yearly membership fee than do regular members. They can view the deals by e-mail, on the Sam’s Club Web site or at store kiosks.

“There’s no clipping coupons,” Ms. Vytlacil said, adding that eValues offered “highly individual relevant offers specific to each Plus member. All they have to do is purchase the product, and the savings are automatically applied at checkout.” Like other membership clubs, shoppers must present a card at checkout.

While consumers and retailers benefit from such long-awaited programs, manufacturers continue to watch from afar. Watch for CPG manufacturers to create their own loyalty programs to buid brand loyalty and acquire customer data. This is just the beginning for an exciting chapter on loyalty in CPG.

In a survey by eMarketer, 25% of consumers say they become Facebook fans of a brand to receive deals and discounts. The report details that the brands that have enjoyed the most success using social media to drive consumers toward purchases follow one of two paths: Either they offer coupons or discounts, or they position themselves in front of consumers during sales or other special events.

One-quarter of respondents to a survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey said that coupons and discounts were the primary reason they became fans of a brand on Facebook, reported AdWeek..

While coupons are great, companies will have to do more to keep their new fans engaged as loyal customers beyond deals. Publishing user-generated content is a useful strategy to create such affinities. What ways and strategies have you seen companies use to keep fans engaged?

With marketers of all stripes (including a great CPG example here) ramping up their loyalty marketing, I’d like to focus on a key ingredient marketers need to design and implement effective loyalty marketing: data, data and more data.

Why is data needed?  Here’s what consumers told the CMO that they hated about existing loyalty programs:

• Too much non-personalized spam or junk mail
• Difficulties in redeeming rewards
• Too many restrictions
• Lack of personalization

In other words, the quickest way to turn off your loyal consumer is to send communications and rewards that aren’t personalized to their specific needs.

Despite the key need to “know thy customer’ the CMO study indicated that only one-third of the marketers’ companies collect the data necessary for personalization such as participants’ product/personal preferences, satisfaction levels and brand loyalty.

Liz Miller, the VP of programs and operations for the CMO Council, succinctly highlighted the challenge marketers face: “The top concern customers have with the programs is that they’re inundated with irrelevant messages and spam e-mails,” Miller said, “but the number-one thing marketers want to increase is the volume of e-mails they send. So there’s a big disconnect.”

What’s the way out of this “big disconnect?”  As one commenter suggested, “to get loyal, you must get personal.”

Marketers need programs that seamlessly collect as much consumer data as possible and they need to leverage the data to design communications and rewards that speak to the individual customer.

The devil, of course, is in the details, but I think the obvious place to start is with a web-based platform (like Alice.com) that makes it easy (for marketer and consumer) to establish a direct, ongoing relationship.

Need further proof that web-based loyalty is the ticket?  Take a look at how leading CPG manufacturers—from P&G to General Mills—are beginning to turn their attention to the promise of web-based commerce and marketing to deliver a one-on-one relationship with each consumer.  Here are a few recent quotes, by way of example:

“The eventuality is a one-on-one relationship with every consumer, and obviously e-commerce needs to be a big part of that.” P&G CEO Bob McDonald (article here)

“The beauty of digital is it’s very effective–great ROI and very efficient–to talk directly to consumers and to give them customized and more relevant information about what the brand can do for them.” General Mills CMO Mark Addicks (article here)

Clearly CPG marketers are awakening to the power of the web to deliver engagement, and I suspect loyalty marketing will be a very big part of that investment in the months and years to come.