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Shareholder Loyalty: Look at Big Blue
One customer segment that public companies often overlook is shareholders.
This seems so basic: who, if not the owners of the company, should be more loyal?
Years ago we recommended to an airline client of ours that they say "thank you" to a key customer segment by offering them shares of stock as a token of thanks. It was a relatively small group of customers and not many shares of stock but it was hugely symbolic. For a variety of reasons, mostly bureaucratic and legal, the client opted not to do this.
A couple of years ago one hotel company actually built its loyalty rewards proposition solely around issuing shares to its most frequent guests. While we are not sure how this program performed, the idea of linking customer loyalty and shareholder loyalty is still intriguing.
One company that has long recognized its shareholders as customers is IBM.
Every year in its Annual Report IBM includes exclusive offers that allow shareholders to purchase IBM (and now Lenovo) goods at employee prices. (Of course employees are another key segment of loyal customers but that is a different topic for another day.)
IBM probably generates enough revenue from this promotion to pay for its Annual Report. Most importantly, they recognize shareholders as loyal customers and give their shareholders another reason to have confidence in their investment.
