Tim Young

Have you ever heard the phrase “true one-to-one marketing?” I always want to know what separates plain old one-to-one marketing from true one-to-one marketing. And better yet, is it worth it? My first decade of work experience was in finance. As great as marketing ideas sound I am always doing the math in my head as to whether or not the proposed solution is worth t…

By Tim Young One of the trickiest parts of my job is convincing retailers that they should shift some of their mass promotional investment to personal incentives. Instead of having 50-100 deals that everyone can take advantage of, they should reduce the number of mass offers and then give each customer an additional mix of offers that are personalized and highly rele…

By Tim Young The retail marketer’s dilemma is very similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, well known in game theory, except instead of only two participants there are numerous participants. The dilemma centers around discounting. There would be more profit to go around if discounting was held in check, but not knowing if your competition will make a move on p…

By Tim Young Do you love your customers? I’m being serious. Ok, then how about this question? Why are you in business and how are you making money? Is it because you are smarter than the next gal, work harder than the other guy, and you just have “it?” Or is it because, whether by accident or purposeful calculation, you identified what your customers want or need a…

By Tim Young Marketers everywhere are being pushed to come up with ways to help drive incremental business for their organization. And with the development of sophisticated tools and software products, marketers can not only track their customer’s behavior but predict what is most likely to happen next. With this information they can create highly targeted incentiv…

By Tim Young Yes, I am a consultant. A consultant focused on helping companies achieve greater loyalty with their customers. And so I have to admit, as much as I love trying to solve the challenge of generating loyalty, I strongly hate – maybe hate is a little too harsh – dislike many of the “loyalty” programs that are out there today. Maybe they should be called pr…

By Tim Young Anyone who has small children is probably familiar with the book, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” The story goes that the mouse will probably ask for a glass of milk, and it snowballs into the mouse engaging in many activities and never leaving. So, I will ask the same question, what if you give a loyal customer a discount? A data scientist at a confere…

By Tim Young Loyalty programs have existed for decades. They have taken on many forms and range from simple (stamp cards) to complex (earn points and redeem). Today there are 2.65 billion loyalty program members in the U.S. alone. But even though the average number of loyalty programs per U.S. household has grown to 21.9 (up from 18.4 in 2010), only 9.5 of those memb…