Page 146 - Marketing Management

Creating Long-term

Loyalty Relationships

Today, companies face their toughest competition ever. Moving from a
product-and-sales philosophy to a holistic marketing philosophy, however, gives them a
better chance of outperforming the competition. The cornerstone of a well-conceived holistic
marketing orientation is strong customer relationships. Marketers must connect with
customers—informing, engaging, and maybe even energizing them in the process. Customer-
centered companies are adept at building customer relationships, not just products; they are
skilled in market engineering, not just product engineering. A pioneer in customer relationship
management techniques is Harrah’s Entertainment.

In 1997, Harrah’s Entertainment, in Las Vegas, launched a pioneering loyalty program that
pulled all customer data into a centralized warehouse and provided sophisticated analysis
to better understand the value of the investments the casino made in its customers.
Harrah’s has over 10 million active members in its Total Rewards loyalty program, a sys-
tem it has fine-tuned to achieve near-real-time analysis: As customers interact with slot
machines, check into casinos, or buy meals, they receive reward offers—food vouchers or gambling
credits, for example—based on the predictive analyses. The company has now identified hundreds of
highly specific customer segments, and by targeting offers to each of them, it can almost double its
share of customers’ gaming budgets and generate $6.4 billion annually (80 percent of its gaming
revenue). Harrah’s dramatically cut back its traditional ad spending, largely replacing it with direct mail
and e-mail—a good customer may receive as many as 150 pieces in a year. Data from the Total
Rewards program even influenced Harrah’s decision to buy Caesars
Entertainment, when company research revealed that most of Harrah’s
As Harrah’s experience shows, successful marketers
customers who visited Las Vegas without staying at a Harrah’s-owned are those who carefully manage their customer base. In this
hotel were going to Caesars Palace. Harrah’s latest loyalty innovation is a chapter, we spell out in detail the ways they can go about winning
mobile marketing program that sends time-based and location-based customers and beating competitors. The answer lies largely in
offers to customers’ mobile devices in real time. 1 doing a better job of meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

Building Customer Value,

Satisfaction, and Loyalty

2
Creating loyal customers is at the heart of every business. As marketing experts Don Peppers and
Martha Rogers say: 3
The only value your company will ever create is the value that comes from customers—
the ones you have now and the ones you will have in the future. Businesses succeed by get-
ting, keeping, and growing customers. Customers are the only reason you build factories,
hire employees, schedule meetings, lay fiber-optic lines, or engage in any business activity.
Without customers, you don’t have a business.
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