4 Minutes With Marc Schüling: Designing A Leading Loyalty Program

McDonald’s made history when it launched MyMcDonald’s in Germany, the first market outside of the U.S. to implement a McDonald’s loyalty program. Within 17 months, it became Germany’s leading loyalty program. How did they do it? Marc Schüling, Executive Director of Strategy & Consulting at TRACK, a brand management agency specialising in digitally connected experiences, spells it out in the latest “4 Minutes With…” episode and reveals what brands can do to replicate the fast-food restaurant’s success.

Watch the complete interview below.

How To Build A Valuable Loyalty Program

According to Schüling, a loyalty program must check three boxes. First and foremost, it must match the consumer’s transactional needs. Customers expect companies to understand their behaviour on an individual level. As such, if you are not delivering on individual needs, “you will soon become irrelevant,” Schüling says.

In Schüling’s opinion, McDonald’s stays up to date by “really owning” its entire digital experience. From product to restaurant, the fast-food giant includes the customer in the journey, making them feel like “true companions” of the brand.

In doing so, McDonald’s checks the second box: to deliver on emotional needs. MyMcDonald’s is primarily a highly-individualised “offers and behaviours-based program,” says Schüling. “But we also deliver emotional aspects like raffles and merchandising products.”

Finally, a successful loyalty program hones a “value-based connection” between brands and consumers, delivering on several levels for both parties. McDonald’s gathers action-informing data at every MyMcDonald’s touchpoint, allowing the company and TRACK to derive insights into customer desires and actions and, in turn, offer individualised benefits to loyalty members.

Without meeting all three criteria, a program will never “really reach a point which you can call loyalty,” Schüling states.

Inspiring Creativity When Designing The Customer Journey

The fundamentals of a good loyalty program are clear, but the pathway isn’t always so straightforward. How can marketers design the best customer journey for their consumers? Schüling offers his rule of thumb. Marketers should always ask themselves: ”Does this make people act?” An affirmative answer is the first step to a compelling proposition.

“Energizing people, motivating them, and activating them to do something is the driving force of communication and marketing,” he says. “It always has been and always will be.”

In practice, this means spelling out the process to ensure customers know where to go, how to act and what to feel after interacting with a specific touchpoint. Any other approach can confuse customers and cost brands an important conversion.