10 years of blogging about loyalty programmes

…During this time, over 100 texts have been published in line with the blog’s mission, which is: “Taken from daily practice”. I would like to thank all of you who devote your time to reading, commenting and discussing the published content during direct calls and, above all, motivate me to share my experiences..

Objectives of the blog

When I was wondering whether it was worth spending time on sharing my experiences in this way, I realized that, as every day of my professional career passed, I understood better how important it was to focus on those activities that have a direct impact on building knowledge, assets and relations. As a result, the blog is written from the perspective of my personal professional experience in four areas. These are:

1. In my daily work, I face challenges in creating, managing, changing and closing ineffective loyalty programmes. I share the most valuable, interesting and difficult issues with my readers.
2. Frequent changes in the legal and tax environment may ruin efforts devoted to even the best run project. That is why, I monitor legal changes on a daily basis, taking time to read draft legislation at an early stage. This allows me to be prepared for changes, trying to send warning signals to the readers whenever necessary.
3. In Poland, there are more than 120 B2C loyalty programmes and twice as many incentive B2B programmes. Every year, I discuss the most important changes in the market and describe in detail the trends and directions in which the world of loyalty programmes is heading, discussing also the results of research conducted by ARC Rynek i Opinia and contained in the reports: Monitor programów lojalnościowych [Loyalty Programme Monitor] and Monitor promocji [Promotion Monitor], which I receive before they are released for sale.
4. A seemingly simple activity such as organizing a lottery or a contest poses many problems, due to a high level of competitiveness on the market and complicated regulations. On the blog, I describe conclusions from experience in organizing hundreds of contests, premium sales campaigns, promotional and audiotex lotteries, which have been established while undergoing numerous inspections of tax authorities – especially in these cases – because the reality still manages to astonish or surprise me, in spite of more than 20 years of experience.

Structure of the blog

The blog is divided into two parts. The first one is devoted to loyalty programmes, the second to sales promotions. Its structure is as follows:

Blog readers

These are the main facts about reading the blog:

• 85% of all readers come from Poland (most of the rest are from the USA, Germany and Great Britain);
• 80% of readers are 25-44 years old;
• 66% of readers are women;
• 70% of readers visit the blog on their desktop or laptop.

What is particularly important to me is the fact that 56% of readers are acquired in a way described by Google Analytics as “organic search”, i.e., the blog is searched for in a natural way in Google, while another 24% of visitors enter the address of the blog’s website directly into the search engine.

I invite you to read the blog and share your comments and expectations regarding the published content in direct contact at Tomasz.Makaruk@i360.com.pl or in the comments below.