Blogged in collaboration with Samantha Ngo, Senior Research Associate, serving Customer Insights professionals.

Even if you have a clear idea of where you want to end up, the route you take to customer loyalty isn't always straightforward. Outlining a strategic plan helps you understand what you need to do, but a roadmap identifies how, when and with what resources you should tackle each step. Forrester believes there are six components to designing an effective loyalty roadmap:

  1. Time frame: The expected completion of tasks and delivery of results.
  2. Desired outcomes: Key performance indicators (KPIs)that help you benchmark the performance of your advancing strategy based on your maturity.
  3. Strategic themes: A summary of the objectives an organization needs to advance its strategy.
  4. Key steps: The specific tasks — pulled straight from the strategic plan — which an organization must complete to graduate to the next maturity level.
  5. Dependencies: The people, process, and technology required to execute the key steps. Changes to the current approach may require acquiring new team members, implementing formal processes, or buying loyalty technology.
  6. Investment level: Where and when the allocated loyalty budget will be spent.

To achieve higher maturity, you must take your strategic plan and execute it with a thoughtful approach; and that will only happen if you use a well-designed roadmap. For more details on how to build your roadmap and stage your loyalty initiative, check out my recent report, Pave A Clear Path To Advanced Loyalty.