Let me start by telling you why loyalty programs can help your business grow: Loyalty and rewards solutions are direct marketing tools, aimed at increasing customer engagement with the brand’s products or services offered, by increasing customer retention, attracting new customers, and bringing valuable data. When built and communicated right, loyalty programs can lead to increased revenues, happier customers, a bigger market share, and stronger brand equity.

Enough about loyalty, let’s talk fishing!

Fun fact about me, I love fishing. My best me-time now is to go with my friends on a boat trip for a few days into the deep red sea in Hurghada. No phone, no distractions, no noise, just the sea, fish, and me.

Being obsessed with my loyalty career and fishing as a sport, I can see the significant similarities between them.

Like loyalty, fishing is a very personalized process, it all starts with the fish you are trying to catch (targeted customer behavior), so if you are targeting a Yellowfin Tuna for example, then you will need a large hook and a strong rod (loyalty mechanism), and before you throw the line into the water and start fishing you will have to hook the right bait that is yummy for the tuna fish appetite (the reward). With patience and perseverance, a tuna fish takes the bait (moment of truth), you hook, pull, and you have the perfect catch (A Loyal Customer). With the right planning and tactics, you can hook customers to your brand; fishing style!

Also like fishing, when building a loyalty program you start with the targeted customer base and the segments that will be enrolled in the program (The Fish), and given you have different components, there needs to be a tailored loyalty solution that caters to the different segments types (hook) and to capture the different customer appetites with a wide variety of rewards merchants for customers to redeem at (bait).

A loyalty program that does not personalize the experience–Fish, hook, bait–won’t catch the fish!

This brings us to one of the biggest problems any loyalty program can have: a lack of a personalized experience and limited customer engagement.

In this current era of loyalty, loyalty solutions are becoming more personalized than ever. No more legacy loyalty programs and punch cards, customers are looking for personalization, a seamless gamified experience, on digital communication channels, giving the right reward for every action done.

So, when building the right solution for your target customer base, you will need to put effort into studying the customer personas, their most used communication channels, and their preferred variety of merchant outlets they like to shop at. Think of it this way, for your customers, a loyalty program is a game, the more you know your customer, the more you get them to play with you, and the less you know the less they play.

Here is my advice as a loyalty, and fishing, expert: Study your customers well, know what they want, and give them a personalized experience. As a result, you will have very loyal repeat customers and potential ambassadors for your brand.

And remember how it’s played, Fish - Hook - Bait! Happy fishing!