Canadians Give Loyalty Communications Mediocre Grades for Relevance

A customer loyalty agency Direct Antidote finds that more than three quarters of Canadian consumers don’t think much of the relevance of messages they get from loyalty programs.

Asked to rate how well communications from the loyalty programs they belong to related to their personal needs and interests, 76% of the more than 2,700 respondents polled gave those messages a rating of 7 out of 10 or less.

That’s an even less effective showing than the one revealed by a similar poll taken among U.S. loyalty program members and published in August. That American poll found that 68% of respondents gave their loyalty programs’ messaging efforts a score of 7 of 10 or less.

In each case the Direct Antidote survey, run with Colloquy, focused on loyalty rewards communications such as annual points balance reports, special offers, and general program information. Consumers were asked to rate the relevance of the messages they received on these topics, with 1 meaning ‘not at all relevant” and 10 standing for “extremely relevant.”

Broken out by demographics, the Canadian seniors group gave loyalty messages the lowest average score among the age cuts in that survey: 5.1 out of 10. Seniors also handed out the lowest average marks in the U.S. survey, rating the relevance of such messages at 5.7.

The Canadian version of the poll found that loyalty program communications earned their highest mean ratings among French speakers living in Quebec, who on average reported a 6.3 out of 10.

In the U.S., loyalty messages got their best average grade from young adults 18-25 and Hispanics, both of whom rated their relevance at 6.9 out of 10.

“Not all consumers are created equal, but many marketers continue to treat them as if they are,” Direct antidote president Di Cullen said in a release announcing the Canadian results. “Loyalty programs are more popular than ever and are proven to deliver value to consumers. But in an era of enhanced customer expectations, the data suggests the loyalty industry is falling short on delivering the highly personalized, relevant communications that consumers want.”

Toronto-based Direct Antidote provides customized marketing communications in a number of marketing channels. The agency recently optimized communications from the popular Canadian Air Miles rewards program, tailoring both messaging and content to produce personalizing 778,000 unique versions of account statements that were mailed to some three million members. Early results suggest a response rate boost of more than 1005, according to the agency.

Another part of the new survey asked Canadians about their receptiveness to loyalty communications in new media. Among young adults 38.4% said they would favor loyalty messaging via text message or mobile phone, while 43.4% said they would like to receive those communications on a social networking site. Those rates were more than double the favorability among the general response to the Canadian survey (17.3% and 21.25 respectively.)

Adding new media into the marketing mix is a must for companies hoping to reach younger consumers,” Cullen said. “The rate at which young adults respond to new media cannot be ignored.”

The general population poled in the American version of the survey were generally more receptive to loyalty messages on new media than their northern counterparts. In the U.S. version, 38% of the overall response group said they would strongly appreciate loyalty communications via cell phone, while 39% said the same about social network-based messages.