The AI opportunity in ‘go-to-market strategy’ is moving so fast that ‘keeping up’ is currently a daily focus.
Some of the smartest bosses and businesses around however, still pay attention to marketing channels seemingly long forgotten by the gossip around the LinkedIn watercooler.
Watch any Rory Sutherland interview clips and note how quickly he finds a moment to advocate for direct mail.
Similarly, UK industry body for commercial TV, Thinkbox now talks about ‘Total TV’ to include the proliferation of advertising opportunities for marketers across a host of new video channels. And while you’d expect Thinkbox to present evidence whenever possible to prove TV remains consumers’ most trusted marketing channel, independent and credible voices like Professor Mark Ritson follow suit whenever asked.
Still - some revelations still have it in them to surprise me. In marketing channel terms, ‘loyalty programmes’ feel like old news.
Until recently, I assumed loyalty was a marketing channel every brand across every sector had already explored, tested, and deployed in their own way. Like email, paid media, or events, it felt fully established and maybe even taken for granted.
Then I met a really cool business called White Label Loyalty. They’re doing amazing things for whole swathes of the B2B marketing community that are yet to properly investigate or even understand loyalty as a viable marketing channel.
This isn’t a case of B2B marketing teams having lacked ambition or neglecting to value their customers. Rather, in sectors like B2B manufacturing, the traditional model makes loyalty feel an unlikely marketing play.
When your products are sold through retailers and distributors, you rarely own your customer data. And if you don’t see the end buyer, it’s a tough job to truly understand how to excite them.
Without customers’ first-party data, you’ve got zero information on what influences their buying decisions. You can guess that price rules every customer choice, but beyond that rather base assumption and the damaging discounts it encourages, a decent loyalty scheme feels like a non-starter.
This leaves marketing directors under the cosh - being asked to deliver growth while effectively flying blind. They run campaigns without any customer insight, behavioural data, and therefore without a direct relationship with the people who drive their revenue.
Enter White Label Loyalty founder Achille Traore, a soft-spoken, humble yet ridiculously smart visionary. As an ex-professional footballer playing in the Swedish first division and later signed to Barnsley FC - Achille has an amazing story.
After his football career was cut short by injury, he turned his head to business. Achille’s now a celebrated innovator in the tech industry, acknowledged as one of the top 100 Retail Technology Entrepreneurs in UK in Fresh Business Thinking's Shift100 list, associated with KPMG.
As well as the B2B manufacturing sector, White Label Loyalty powers huge loyalty programmes for the likes of Burger King and PepsiCo.
I met Achille late last year and he’s fast become one of my favourite B2B marketing leaders. He’s since worked with OrbitalX on a piece of research, revealing that while many B2B manufacturers believe they actually do have access to customer data, most struggle to activate, understand, or use it to drive repeat business.
So when presented with a loyalty solution that’s dead easy to implement and capable of delivering first-party data and a first real connection with the end customer, his clients jump at the chance. With no disrespect intended, it’s their first opportunity to behave like ‘real’ marketers - generating growth based on real insight rather than price promotions and guesswork.
AI-powered insights, predictive analytics, scaled personalisation and speedy routes to demonstrable ROI take loyalty from a tactic or campaign to a key strategic pillar for growth.
In other words, Achille is bringing loyalty into industries where it’s long been considered out of reach; a marketing channel that seemed to be just for others.
To have found whole sectors - B2B manufacturing and beyond - where old school marketing channels feel like a wide-open frontier and then watching the outlandish success that follows; it’s been a heartwarming experience.
For this 50-year-old, it’s a joyous moment whenever something perceived as old-fashioned makes itself cool again by bringing its phenomenal power and expertise to bear.
