Product Description

"If Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton were alive and heavily involved in the Internet, this is the kind of book he might write."­­Los Angeles Times

Packed with case studies and real-world examples, Loyalty.com reveals what the latest technology shifts mean to marketers in every field­­and outlines the fundamentals needed to build customer loyalty that will last.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1450829 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 325 pages

Amazon.com Review
A few years ago, everybody with a product to sell got a dose of the same religion. In marketing circles, it's called customer relationship management, or CRM. In your house, it's probably called "How the hell did I end up with all these plastic cards in my wallet?" Your grocery store offers you special discounts if you bring one of those cards to wave over the scanner. If you travel, you probably have "loyalty cards" from airlines, hotel chains, and car-rental companies. All these discount and loyalty programs allow the companies to built substantial databases about you--your preferences and patterns--but they also depend on you to do the work, to lug those plastic cards around, keep track of your points and miles, and so on.

There are better ways to build customer relationships, argues Newell. He caused a stir in 1997 with The New Rules of Marketing, and now with Loyalty.com, he wants to cause another one by declaring that most companies attempting to create customer loyalty are going about it all wrong. In fact, he shows that areas with the most aggressive loyalty programs tend to have the least loyal customers--and vice versa. Today, writes Newell, the Internet has made market research cheaper and faster than ever. Software can be designed to predict what a customer will want before she knows she wants it, and the company can go straight to that particular customer to suggest she buy that particular product, rather than showering millions of potential customers with hundreds of product solicitations. It's not easy, and pitfalls abound, as Loyalty.com shows (the issue of customer privacy alone will be the subject of endless legislation in coming years). But the company that masters customer relations will be rewarded with both loyalty and profits. --Lou Schuler

Review
"Fred Newell brings CRM to life. Not just what but who and how and with what results. More 'real world' information packed into 300 pages than you could get in a year's woth of seminars, conferences and consultant meetings." -- Don Schultz, Professor, Northwestern University, endorsement

"The Internet is the quintessential platform on which true Customer Relationship Marketing can come to life. It is the epitome of effective one-to-one marketing, or at least it sshould be if correctly implemented. Frederick Newell,s latest book, loyalty.com, shows you the roadmap to success in a simple, straightforward way. Must reading for CRM practitioners and those who would aspire to be." -- Dan Davidson, Director Strategic Target Marketing, CheckMark Communications, Ralston Purina Company, endorsement

"We can't keep targeting our customers and blasting them with junk anymore. And we can't keep building loyalty with ever-deeper loss-making discounts. Now we are going to have to bite the bullet and start listening to our individual customers'needs, and find cost effective ways of meeting and influencing them. That's Customer Relationship Management and nobody tells it better than Fred. Newell. This is an important book for your career and your company." -- Tony Coad, Development Director, London Daily Telegraph, endorsement

"We wake up every morning thinking about how we can do even more to strengthen each and every customer relationship. This kind of thinking keeps us growing. loyalty.com gets you thinking a lot." -- Dick Hammill, EVP Marketing and Communications, The Home Depot, endorsement

"Well written...takes everything you wanted to know about customer relationships and places it in one resource." -- Ken Robb, Sr VP Marketing, Dick's Supermarkets, endorsement

From the Back Cover
New Rules of CRM--for Reaching and Retaining Customers in Today's Ever-Changing E-Commerce Marketplace!

From the day it hit the bookshelves, loyalty.com has been universally acclaimed as the hands-on, common sense rulebook for making intimate, long-lasting customer connections using the power of the Internet. Now let it show you how to use today's interactive Web to discover the values that are important to your customers, use that knowledge to deliver the benefits they want, and build profitable, mutually beneficial relationships that will pay you back today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Praise for the groundbreaking loyalty.com...

"If Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton were alive and heavily involved in the Internet, this is the kind of book he might write."--Dallas Morning News

"Readers tired of buzzword-laden texts that explore the latest business fad will find a lucid and thorough discussion of creating and managing customer relationships in loyalty.com."--Choice

"We wake up every morning thinking about how we can do even more to strengthen each and every customer relationship... loyalty.com gets you thinking a lot."--Dick Hammill. Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, The Home Depot

"This is prerequisite reading for everyone in the organization: operations, merchandising, finance, distribution, human resources and, of course, marketing if you expect your company to win the battle for share of wallet."--Terry E. Maloy, Vice President, Marketing, SAM'S Club

"Packs in a lot of advice ... and instructive examples ... For a crash course on the new face of marketing, it's a good read."--Executive Edge

Customer Reviews

More about loyalty than .com
I had not read any marketing books for a while and I was curious to discover loyalty.com. A study of the impact of the Internet on Customer Relationship Management looked promising. All in all, this book is quite interesting but I expected more. The focus is more on the benefits of CRM than on the impact of the Internet on the field. If you are already convinced that successful companies treat their clients personally and adapt their marketing campaigns to their profiles, you already know the main message of the book. The numerous examples mentioned in the book will confirm what you thought and believed in. What about the Internet? Well, it appears that CRM still relies on old recipes like loyalty cards, call centers and personalized mail. Of course, gathering information about customers visiting a web-site helps and e-mails are a new and cheap way of communication. Finally, CRM seems more appropriate to B2C than B2B. Most examples in the book are companies selling to individuals. The only chapter dealing with B2B is not very detailed. I cannot say that I did not enjoy reading this book even though I did not learn much. Marketing books are often refreshing readings for people not actively involved in sales and marketing. loyalty.com is well written and properly documented. It is a good introduction to CRM.

Super!
This superb work clearly shows why customer loyalty cannot be bought but can be earned. The book ties together concepts of customer permission, loyalty programs, and database marketing. The main premise is simple: if a marketer can understand what a customer values and then delights her by giving it to her, when she wants it, in a way she desires it, the results will be amazing. Not only will the customer pay full price, but the marketer can win the customer's loyalty to a depth that cannot be achieved with points programs alone. The relationship will be enriched by the marketer's attention to and action on what the customer thinks is important. Newell gives plenty of anecdotal examples taking into account electronic marketing in both the B2C and B2B spaces, as well as brick and mortar cases.

Repackaged Database Marketing
The book is chock full of examples and anecdotes but really has no new worthwhile conceptualizations or insights to make it worth reading. If you don't know anything about database marketing, then you will get something out of this book. If you are familiar with the basic concepts of customer database analysis, loyalty programs and relationship marketing, there is nothing new here. In fact a much better introduction to all those concepts is The Loyalty Effect by Reichenheld or Customer Connections by Wayland and Cole. The subtitle mentions the dot com world, but the book has little to say about the Internet. The book really does not cover CRMs (as oppsed to database marketing) in that it fails describe how CRM systems work and what database, modeling and communications platforms are required to implement them.