loy·al·ty mar·ket·ing
n.phrase. The business process of identifying, maintaining and increasing the yield from best customers through interactive, value-added relationships.

Loyalty programs are everywhere. In virtually every vertical market and in every region of the globe, loyalty marketers have adopted the tactics of recognition and reward to identify, maintain and increase the yield from their best customers. As a result, the loyalty-mar-keting industry has begun to encounter the telltale characteristics of a mature market. After decades of double-digit growth, the loyalty market has shown signs of fatigue from both consumers and practitioners.

Some of this fatigue is self-inflicted; loyalty programs based on flawed designs with weak value propositions, and those operated as marketing afterthoughts, have gone by the wayside. Some pundits have blamed these failures on the concept of loyalty marketing itself. Is loyalty marketing overrated and ineffective? Is it merely an expensive boondoggle?

We would argue that those pundits who ask these questions don't have a solid understanding of loyalty strategies to begin with. Born in the consolidation and expansion of the travel industry in the 1980's and raised to maturity in the technology boom of the 1990's, loyalty marketing is now a mature discipline that has been suffering through a period of mid - life crisis. Indeed, loyalty marketing has come full circle, and is now poised to enter a period of renewed creativity and growth.

The challenge for loyalty marketers in 2003 and beyond, therefore, is to reinvigorate the market with new strategies, tactics, and technologies backed by imagination, innovation and sound program design. To this end, COLLOQUY has identified five key loyalty - marketing trends for the 21st century that can serve as guideposts as you create, expand and revamp your loyalty and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies in the new century.

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