“We tried that before and it didn’t work.”

Man, I’ve heard that phrase a lot in my life. And truth be told, I’ve spoken it more than I care to admit.

But when something fails once in the past (or even more than once) should it be doomed forever?

I was once lucky enough to hear futurist Bob Johansen speak, and he said something that really stuck with me:

“Almost nothing that happens in the future is new; it’s almost always something that has been tried and failed in the past.”

Acquiring new customers is hard work, but turning them into loyal customers is even harder. The acquisition efforts can usually come almost solely from the Marketing department, but customer retention takes a village. And all those villagers have to march to the beat of a strategy that effectively balances the concepts of bought loyalty and earned loyalty.

I first heard the concepts of bought and earned loyalty many years ago in a speech given by former ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed, and those concepts stuck with me. They’re not mutually exclusive. In the most effective retention strategies I’ve seen, bought loyalty is a subset of a larger earned loyalty strategy.

So let’s break each down a bit and discuss how they work together.