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Loyalty Programs are more about relationships than rewards.

What’s so important about customer loyalty? Everything. When you have loyal customers, they do your marketing for you, referring their friends and family to you in droves. When you have loyal customers, they won’t switch to your competitor, even when your competitor is perceived as offering a better product or a lower cost.

Some of the brands who have taken advantage of Loyalty Program are:

1. Harley Davidson has gone beyond selling archetypal motorcycles and riding gear. Today the community of rabid fans they have created online encourages their customers to engage with their brand.

2. Coca-Cola used interactive technology for their reward program called My Coke Rewards and registered over 11 million loyal customers.

3. Cadbury is one of the top 100 communities on Google+, thanks to their focus on generating regular, authentic content. They discovered that creating an engaged community is a straight road to driving engagement elsewhere.

4. Zappos sells shoes. But they don’t stop there, and this is why their customers are some of the most fiercely loyal. Their #1 core value is to deliver WOW through service – and they do this well with every customer interaction.

Stories of companies which made it big by using loyalty programs are infinite.