Comments on: The Modernization Of Lord & Taylor: Its First Loyalty, Mobile Moves

By: RedRoseLoyaltist

RedRoseLoyaltist — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:29 +0000

Well, indeed, who care? Not only does GE really want out of the credit business (esp. retail credit which is dying a very slow death over the next 30 years), but at the end of the day, it’s about topline sales.
Credit sales roll up into topline, but with a historical 46% use (if even close to this now) of credit, nearly every retailer that can figure out how to is going to tender-neutral, or is there now.
You could say at least L&T is trying something, but now that they don’t have MAY behind them, and Federated (Macy’s Inc) sold them off, they’re on their own.
And obviously – many store associates don’t care about the credit card because if they can get you to buy something, you’ve bought it, regardless of how you pay for it…and you’ve added to the bottom line.

By: Matt S.

Matt S. — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:50:11 +0000

Lord & Taylor ought to teach their management staff how to treat and keep their current customers…didn’t we all learn in retailing 101 that it’s cheaper to keep a customer than develop a new one? The last time my wife visited L&T (last weekend, as a matter of fact) she was treated so badly by the management staff over a simple coupon issue that she cut up her L&T charge card in front of them…their response? “WHO CARES?” (a direct quote from their “manager on duty”).

By: Lhkent

Lhkent — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:10:29 +0000

Back to the ‘based on visits’ part.Customers are not stupid and they certainly know that you are just trying to get them into the store. Though the data shows that the customer is indeed coming into the store more than once a month, they likely don’t realize it. And they likely don’t like that L&T knows it and is using it in a self serving way. I’ll bet some are going to be a bit miffed by this. In my opinion is not NOT customer focused, it’s all about L&T.

By: Georgie

Georgie — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:14:41 +0000

Hey, garbageman (and others),

What would be an example of a well-executed retail loyalty program not tied to credit cards? I’d like to know more.

By: Margie

Margie — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:29:24 +0000

Garbagemen is so right. GE Money pushes the same old tired Private Label loyalty program, and LT signed to it on because it costs nothing – GE does all the loyalty heavy lifting. They tell their retail clients that a non-Private label program will hurt the private label card (not true, if structured properly). And yet the LT Private Label card generates about a third of business – what about the other customers? Sounds LT is ignoring them. Taking the easy way out with this program.

By: Phil Rubin

Phil Rubin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:18:09 +0000

Interesting of L&T (and GE presumably) to telegraph not only their launch date and pilot but also the stated objective being solely focused around retention.

Loyalty marketing, done right, should be about much more than retention, particularly for a department store like L&T. At $75 per transaction, they should be focused on ways to drive incremental store visits and build the basket. Part of achieving this is through integrating loyalty into the broader CRM efforts, especially those mentioned above.

By: Evan Schuman

Evan Schuman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:11:23 +0000

Editor’s Note: I have no idea who Garbageman is, but it’s clear he knows a bit about this. We hadn’t mentioned GE in the story for space reasons, but they are indeed involved in this Lord & Taylor program.

By: garbageman

garbageman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:05:43 +0000

This program is not innovative. Its tied to a credit card and younger buyers don’t want (or need) credit cards–they want multi-tender program. GE keeps pushing the same old story and every year the L&T customer gets a year older.

By: Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:00:10 +0000

The PCIKnowledgeBase’s research suggests the same thing: card data’s kept in a lot of places that it shouldn’t be. That’s the sort of thing that can make both E2E Encryption and Tokenization ineffective as enterprise-wide solutions if their implementation is only focused on the payment stream, not ancillary uses of the card data. We’ve found that encryption, for example, is differentially employed when the data are used for CRM and other apps.

I’m also interested in the role of “Data Mining” as a driver of card data retention. I think it would be really interesting to see how much of the “other uses” of card data is being driven by data mining and “new” CRM and other applications vs legacy apps that are, as Avivah said, just too expensive to re-engineer.
thx, Dave T