Michael Leander's presentation at The Customer Loyalty Conference in Moscow, Russia

Blue Business Media delivered a very successful Customer Loyalty Conference in Moscow early December 2009. Michael Leander presented the topic "Loyalty marketing in the age of multichannel conversational economy – opportunities and threats of engagement"

Once again I was invited to speak at one of Blue Business Media's events. This time in Moscow, Russia where BBM hosted their first ever event in Russia.

With around 140 delegates from many of the leading companies in Russia, the top speakers included UK based Terry Hunt presenting "How Tesco built a rich relationship with 15 million customers", Laurence Stock of Nectar, United Kingdom, presenting "Best Practice in Coalition Loyalty", Radak Hrachovec from Bata Central Europe in the Czech Republic presenting "The Club Pays Back" and Jacek Powalka of Great Open House in Poland presenting "Consumer Loyalty programs world practices", the event in my opinion was a great success.

The danger of going off topic
Since this 2 day conference was a customer loyalty conference, I took a bit of a risk on the contents of my presentation. Not that I don't find the message I tried to pass to the delegates relevant - but because the conference was very much focused on loyalty concepts, case studies and loyalty program learnings from practitioners.

I tried to pass on some simple messages, namely;

- the importance of delivering good-to-great customer experience in all touchpoints
- the importance of establishing customer listening posts, monitoring these frequently and ensuring that the feedback collected is actionable.
- the opportunity of utilizing social networks to extend the loyalty experience and to initiate and retain a conversation with customers
- be relevant, respect your customers; the importance of communicating relevant messages to customers with the right timing and contents

Luckily the six or seven people I spoke to immediately after my presentation, seemed very happy about the content and the way I presented it. In fact the volunteered feedback from those people makes it all worth my while.

Evaluation satisfactory with room for improvement
I am always disappointed if I do not get top-marks for my presentations. But sometimes one has to be willing to take a change. Well, I often do because I insist on including content, which on the offset may seem obvious to marketers, yet most marketers do not get it right.

The evaluation of my presentation in Moscow on a 5-scale where 5 is high, 1 is low was:

Contents of presentation: 4,0
Presentation technique: 4,4

If I were to rate the audience, here is my rating::

Willingness to interact: 3,5
Ability to pay attention: 4,5

So there you have it. :-)

I will be presenting at BBM's Loyalty Marketing Conference in Cracow, Poland in April 2010 and am looking forward to extending my presentation by 10 minutes and improving this rating.

Congratulations to the Blue Business Media team for organizing yet another successful marketing/loyalty marketing conference. They are indeed a pleasure to work with and they deserve all the success they can get their hands on...

In the picture CEO of Blue Business Media - Dutchman Casper Haring and business director Edyta Olbratowska.