Loyalty Builders and Loyalty Spoilers

If you can have a Loyalty Spoiler, you can have a Loyalty Builder.


Loyalty Builders are the opposite of Loyalty Spoilers.  Loyalty Builders cause a customer to continue to buy merchandise in the future.


Think about your inkjet printer.  When you buy the item from HP for $125, there's an inherent "Loyalty Builder" aspect built into the item ... you're supposed to come back, over and over and over again, and buy ink cartridges.  The inkjet printer is a Loyalty Builder.


Your iPhone is a Loyalty Builder, a tool that allows Verizon to keep making money on a monthly basis, a tool that allows Apple to sell apps.


Your Lexus Rx400h is a Loyalty Builder, a car that requires oil changes, transmission oil changes, differential trans axle oil changes, new tires, tune ups, wiper blades, you name it.


Conversely, some items are Loyalty Spoilers.  You'll routinely see how a new couch, purchased at Ikea, stymies subsequent purchases, and for good reason!  That couch completes a purchase cycle, the customer is done!


The secret, then, is to identify your Loyalty Builders and your Loyalty Spoilers.  In your email marketing campaigns, in your search marketing campaigns, on key landing pages, you give Loyalty Builders more priority than you give Loyalty Spoilers.


Oh, I know, merchants are going to howl over this one.  "If we don't tell the customer about an item, then the customer won't buy the item, blah blah blah."


But if you're reading this, you're most likely a marketer or an analyst.  This means you have a responsibility to increase loyalty, correct?


So, when all things are equal, advertise the Loyalty Builder.  Make the Loyalty Spoiler available and easy to find, but there's no need to feature an item that kills subsequent performance.