The deals culture is shifting from customer acquisition to customer loyalty by necessity. Why? Deals have begun losing high-income women. That’s the view of Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, a featured speaker at ILM East in Boston March 26-28.

“Daily deals had an initial surge then quickly lost flavor on a key customer segment — higher income women with jobs,” Kim said in an email exchange with us. “This segment is the most profitable to most merchants. Acquiring them as a loyal repeat customer is worth quite a bit over any other customer segment.

Are deals really losing these women? Kim said the explosion of daily deals has led directly to lower conversion rates. “Daily emailing of 50 percent discount offers quickly turned from value to fatigue users,” he said. “ Email response rates and all conversion rates took downward dips across almost every vertical. That’s echoed by all the e-commerce merchants we have talked to.”

Loyalty programs such as those run by Next Jump, however, have begun to reverse the downward course “Towards the second half of 2011, we managed to climb conversion back up. This was not done via targeting, but through loyalty. The growth of loyal repeat visitors increased conversion rates at every level 50-150 percent higher, category by category.”

Kim said loyalty is mostly measured as a byproduct of points and rewards. “From 2010 to 2011, as the points platform got stronger, we saw metrics increase as follows: 100 percent increase in first-time visitors converting into a transactor. 300 percent increase in single-transactor converting into a repeat loyal transactor.”

Kim adds that the big trend on the horizon will be ease of purchase — convenience. “Make it easy for me to find and buy what I need,” said Kim. “Earn my trust as a consumer, and even at good prices [not best], you will have my wallet share. This is how you earn loyal customers.”

Charlie Kim is a featured speaker at ILM East, which takes places March 26-28 in Boston. Other loyalty-related speakers include Jim Douglass, SVP, Cartera, and John Valentine, VP, SCVNGR/LevelUp. You can register here.

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Chicago Magazine will partner with Next Jump April 28 for “Intersections of Style,” a “VIP Shopping Night” that will bring thousands of Chicagoans to select stores offering exclusive discounts and perks (i.e., “champagne check-in”). The event is being promoted by Chicago Shopping, a new shopping portal by the Chicago Tribune, which partners with Next Jump to provide curated offers to consumers based on their personal interests.

Speaking today at Where 2.0 in Santa Clara, Next Jump CEO Charles Kim said the Intersections of Style event was modeled on a September event held in New York that featured 43 stores in SoHo and the Meatpacking District. The a-ha moment for that event was the use of a simple check-in app for invited guests. It would have otherwise been impossible to check in the 108,000 members of the site who had RSVP’d. Members who check in for the Chicago event will receive 1,000 WOW reward points.

Kim says the service, which began in 1994, uses its database and tracking tech to not only provide leads to stores, but also to “understand what consumers are doing and the time and location of their activity.” It discerned, for instance, that 80 percent of its New York VIP Night attendees were “new” to the service, and that 30 percent actually came from outside the city. It also knew that visitors typically visit three to six core “origination” stores, and then branch out to others based on their personal interests.

Next Jump manages 90,000 enterprise databases and has 30,000 merchant partners. Its white-label partners not only include the Chicago Tribune (and sister Tribune paper, the LA Times), but also such players as MasterCard, Barnes & Noble and AARP Discount Club.

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