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Did you ever wonder if some of those age old sayings about marketing are
true? For instance, we’ve all heard “It co
sts five times more to
acquire a new customer than to retain a current customer.” But does
anyone have any proof of that? That is exactly what a group of authors
set out to do in Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out
of Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work. The authors, Timothy
L. Keiningham, Terry G. Varva, Lerzan Aksoy, and Henri Wallard are all
experts in consumer loyalty and use their wealth of knowledge to dispel
common myths and offer insight into what really works.
The book chooses and interesting format – the first six chapters are
devoted to dismiss over fifty common ‘loyalty myths’ and the final two
chapters are used to learning about why customers are loyal and how a
loyalty program should be managed. Each of the ‘loyalty myths’ chapters
contains several ‘myths’ grouped together by common themes, such as
Loyalty Myths That Subvert Company Goals and Loyalty Myths Regarding
Employees. The chapters both begin and end with an example pulled from
industry that encompasses all of the myths mentioned in the chapter,
with the actual myths discussed in the middle.
The authors spend a couple of pages banishing each of the fifty three
myths. Some of the myths are things that we tend to take for granted,
such as “Companies tend to know their customers,” while others like
“share-of-wallet increases as customer lifetimes increase” would seem
intuitively true. For each and every one, the authors use solid
historical data to dispel the myth and show the negative business
effects of believing it.
The final two chapters focus on seven ‘loyalty truths’ such as “Don’t
manage for customer retention before you manage for customer selection”
and “Customer loyalty and brand imagery are far from independent; you
must manage them hand-in-hand.” The authors do a good job of going
through how to build and measure a loyalty program around these
‘truths.’
The book is an extremely fast paced, entertaining read. Anyone reading
the book with an open mind will agree with the authors’ solid reasoning.
In particular, business owners, CEO’s, and anyone in marketing or
consumer affairs will directly benefit by eliminating these ‘myths’ from
their business and implementing the ‘truths.’ This book can have a very
real impact on your company’s bottom line. Many businesses mindlessly
pour money into customer loyalty programs without taking the steps
outlined in this book. For some companies, a loyalty program doesn’t
even make sense. For others, their program needs a significant overhaul.
This book will help you identify where your business is and give you
the tools to make improvements.
The only downside with the book is the shear number of myths. Many of
the ‘myths’ blend together and readers would probably be more likely to
retain the ‘myths’ if there were ten as opposed to fifty-three (similar
to the seven ‘truths’). The amount of myths also doesn’t allow for the
authors to go into quite as much detail as one would like for each
‘myth.’ There are several myths that aren’t so much dispelled in the
paragraph or two devoted to it, but within the context of the entire
chapter. It just seems like it would have made more sense to combine
many of the myths.
Overall, Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of
Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work is a tremendously
entertaining and enlightening read. Anyone that has an interest in
consumer loyalty will learn a great deal of directly applicable
information that can save their company money and help differentiate
them from the competition.
