Customer loyalty has always been grounded in human interaction. Years ago, you'd walk into your favorite store and the staff would know your name, they'd remember your favorite brands, and they'd smile, nod, and take pains to make sure you came back. Because you were treated well by a personable, friendly staff--and because you were physically constrained by time and distance to limit yourself to particular stores--you'd go back to the same stores again and again.

The reach of the Web and advances in database technology have made this same level of personalized attention attainable by e-tailers thousands of miles away with a virtual staff customers may never meet. With customers now freed of the shackles of distance, they can comparison shop and fill out a profile that introduces a personalized element where e-tailers remember their name and preferences at a level that exceeds what a brick-and-mortar retailer can provide.

More than ever, the Web is empowering customers, making them more demanding of a great shopping experience, and consequently more fickle. Today's customers have the world at their fingertips, and keeping them loyal has become even more difficult. This is why websites are failing at an alarming rate. It's more obvious than ever that success lies not only in attracting customers but in retaining them.

In e-Loyalty, Ellen Reid Smith, leading customer loyalty expert and nationally acclaimed speaker, offers the definitive and essential step-by-step guide to creating and managing highly effective online loyalty and retention strategies.

Using some of the Internet's leading consumer and business-to-business websites as case examples, she takes readers from the early stages of implementing e-loyalty marketing programs through budgeting and evaluating their impact. From explaining the key concepts of e-loyalty to advising on critical website design factors, Reid Smith imparts techniques that can be applied by companies of any type or size--from the Fortune 500 companies she is regularly called upon to consult with to Internet start-ups.

Most of all, what truly distinguishes Reid Smith is her unwavering focus on not just retaining customers but retaining a company's most valuable customers through customer lifetime value modeling. Her advice will help companies ensure that their retention programs are focused on the most profitable customers since this aspect of online marketing has become the most important issue facing websites worldwide.

No matter which segment of the online economy you hail from, this is the essential handbook for initiating, cultivating, and extending that rarest of company assets: e-loyalty.