Loyalty Blueprint Step 4. Always start with your members

Your Members Are Your Competitive Advantage (Stop Chasing Everyone Else)

The attention economy is rigged against you. Here's how to win anyway.

We're living through the greatest attention crisis in human history. People consume more content than ever, but paradoxically, reaching them has never been harder.

The numbers are staggering: the average person sees 5,000+ marketing messages daily. Our collective attention span has reportedly dropped to 8 seconds, shorter than that of a goldfish. And yet, billions of dollars flow into platforms designed to capture and monetize that fleeting attention.

But here's what most marketers miss: while everyone else fights for strangers' attention, you already have something infinitely more valuable: your existing customers.

The Impossible Game

Modern marketing can feel like an impossible game because, frankly, it often is. You're not just competing with brands that sell similar products. When it comes to human attention, you're competing against billion-dollar "walled garden" platforms with sophisticated AI algorithms designed to maximize "time spent" and "share of attention."

These platforms want you to believe there's no alternative. Pay to play, follow their rules, and hope their algorithms favor your content. They've built higher walls by killing third-party cookies and restricting email capabilities, forcing you to think about channels you can rent, not audiences you actually own.
This channel-first mindset is precisely the trap they want you to fall into.

The Hidden Cost of Scattered Attention

When you plan communication separately across channels, something predictable happens:

• Your customers receive the wrong message, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, often multiple times. You might be:
  • Retargeting someone on Facebook who already bought in-store
  • Sending acquisition emails to loyal customers
  • Running expensive search ads for people who have already subscribed to your newsletter

One retail client discovered they were spending 34% of their media budget targeting their own existing customers with acquisition campaigns. That's not marketing efficiency, that's friendly fire.

The Member-First Advantage

Here's the strategic shift that changes everything: instead of chasing reach through external platforms, maximize the areas where you're already present.
Your existing customers, your members, represent your highest-value audience. They've already chosen you once. They've given you their attention willingly. Most importantly, you can reach them directly without paying algorithmic gatekeepers.

This isn't about ignoring acquisition. It's about recognizing that your members are often your best source of growth through:

• Higher lifetime value when properly engaged
• Organic word-of-mouth that no paid campaign can replicate
• Rich behavioral data that improves all your marketing
• Direct communication channels you control completely
  

My €2 Million Email Wake-Up Call

In November 2015, standing before the Global Commercial Leadership team, I made a bold prediction: "Email marketing is a dinosaur. It will go extinct soon. We should move all direct communication to social media platforms."
The room erupted in enthusiastic applause. We all felt so forward-thinking, so digital-first.

We couldn't have been more wrong.

From that day forward, organic reach on social platforms plummeted. Algorithm changes became monthly occurrences. Transparent communication rules disappeared. What actually went extinct was predictable, cost-effective access to our customers on third-party platforms.

Meanwhile, email, that "dinosaur", proved its staying power. Recent studies show email generates $42 for every $1 spent, while organic social reach continues declining. Companies with strong owned communication channels consistently outperform those dependent on algorithmic platforms.
The lesson? Owned data and direct customer access aren't just valuable, they're essential.

The Integration Opportunity

With a unified customer view, you can transform scattered, inefficient communication into strategic, integrated engagement:

Instead of channel-first planning, where each team runs separate campaigns, you can:

• Identify your highest-value customers across all touchpoints
• Deliver coordinated messages that build on each other
• Avoid duplicate spend and conflicting communications
• Optimize budget allocation based on customer value, not channel availability
  

For example, rather than running generic Facebook ads hoping to find customers, you can:

• • Identify which of your members are active on Facebook
  • Create lookalike audiences based on your best customers
  • Suppress existing customers from acquisition campaigns
  • Use member insights to craft messages that resonate

The Data Goldmine in Your CRM

Your customer database isn't just a list. It's a strategic asset that most companies dramatically underutilize:

• Behavioral Intelligence: You know what your best customers actually buy, when they buy, and how they prefer to shop.
• Segmentation Power: You can identify high-value segments and create lookalike audiences that outperform generic targeting.
• Message Testing Ground: You can test messaging and offers with known customers before scaling to acquisition.
• Attribution Clarity: You can track which channels and messages actually drive behavior, not just clicks.
  

Practical Integration Steps

• Week 1: Audit Your Overlap
  • Identify how much of your paid media budget targets existing customers
  • Calculate the cost of this duplication
  • Map which channels your members are actually active on
• Week 2: Create Suppression Lists
  • Upload customer emails to advertising platforms
  • Exclude existing customers from acquisition campaigns
  • Redirect that budget to member engagement or true prospect targeting
• Week 3: Build Member-Informed Audiences
  • Create lookalike audiences based on your best customers
  • Use member survey data to improve targeting
  • Test member-preferred messaging in broader campaigns
• Week 4: Measure True Performance
  • Track acquisition vs. retention campaign performance separately
  • Calculate the member engagement impact on lifetime value
    
  • Identify which member insights improve acquisition efficiency
    

The Platform-Independent Strategy

The beauty of starting with your members is that this strategy works regardless of which platforms rise or fall. Whether it's:

• Email (still thriving despite predictions)
• SMS (growing rapidly)
• Push notifications (increasingly sophisticated)
• Direct mail (experiencing a renaissance)
• In-app messaging (highly effective)
  

You control the relationship and the communication.
When algorithm changes hit, privacy regulations tighten, or new platforms emerge, you're not scrambling to rebuild audience relationships from scratch.

Your Members as Growth Engine

The most successful loyalty programs don't just retain customers, they turn members into acquisition channels:

• Referral Programs that leverage member enthusiasm and networks
• User-generated content that provides authentic social proof
• Community Building that creates network effects
• Insights Generation that improves all marketing efforts
  

When you start with your members, you're not just optimizing retention. You're building a sustainable growth engine that gets stronger over time.

The Competitive Moat

While competitors burn budget chasing attention on "rented" platforms, member-first companies build something more valuable: direct, trusted relationships with their best customers.

This becomes a competitive moat that's hard to replicate. New entrants can copy your products, match your prices, and even steal your talent. But they can't instantly create the trust, data, and direct access you've built with your customer base.

New entrants can copy your products, match your prices, and even steal your talent. But they can't instantly create the trust, data, and direct access you've built with your customer base.

The attention economy rewards those who own relationships, not just rent reach. Your members aren't just your current customers, they're your competitive advantage in an increasingly noisy world.

Ready to transform your marketing from attention-chasing to relationship-building? Let's design an integrated strategy that puts your members at the center of growth. Your best customers are waiting to hear from you.