Three special ingredients for a great cross-channel loyalty brew

In this heated battle for the consumer dollar, retail marketers are looking to establish a personal and consistent relationship with shoppers through integrated customer loyalty programs that leverage traditional offline and emerging communications channels. Not surprisingly, it can be overwhelming for retailers to figure out where to start.

The success of any effective customer loyalty program can typically be enhanced with marketing automation technology. Marketers tasked with gathering customer data must have an automated, centralized marketing platform from which to work - one built upon a central datamart where customer data and preferences can be stored, tracked and analyzed.

There are a number of prepackaged solutions available. However, the ideal platform should be equipped to work across channels - allowing marketers to easily coordinate with each other and subsequently tailor personalized campaigns that correspond to a customer's preferred method of contact, be it e-mail, mobile phone or direct mail.