GRIFFIN, Jill 1955-

PERSONAL: Born May 8, 1955, in Monroe, NC; married J. Mack Nunn (a chief financial officer). Education: University of South Carolina, B.S. (magna cum laude), M.B.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—1514 Preston Ave., Austin, TX 78703. Office—2729 Exposition Blvd., Austin, TX 78703. Agent—Jeff Herman Agency, New York, NY. E-mail—jill@loyaltysolutions.com.

CAREER: AmeriSuite Hotels, Austin, TX, director of marketing and sales, 1985-87; R. J. R. Nabisco, brand manager, 1979-85; University of Texas—Austin, Austin, TX, member of marketing faculty, 1988-90; Griffin Group, president, 1987—.

WRITINGS:

Power Packed Promotion, Marketing Resource Center, 1990.

Selling the Sizzle, Marketing Resource Center, 1993.

Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It, Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 1995, 2nd edition, 2002.

(With Michael W. Lowenstein) Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal, foreword by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Texas-based marketing consultant Jill Griffin aims to help business owners generate repeat sales with her book Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It, in which she focuses on the necessity of creating customer loyalty programs. Drawing on the examples of 165 businesses, Griffin discusses such topics as pricing, consumers' purchasing cycles, targeting potential repeat customers, regaining inactive customers, and creating a corporate culture that promotes customer loyalty. Customer Loyalty was chosen as a 1995 selection of the Fortune Book Club.

Growing up in the small town of Marshville, North Carolina, gave Griffin a first-hand perspective on customer loyalty. "By big city standards, our buying choices were limited, but we didn't know it," Griffin recalls in her introduction to Customer Loyalty. "Local businesses satisfied our needs and, in return won our loyalty." Griffin learned more about customer loyalty while employed as a brand manager for tobacco giant R. J. R. Nabisco, where she marketed Winston cigarettes.

Since leaving Nabisco, Griffin has taught college marketing courses and under the auspices of her company—The Griffin Group—has conducted seminars on loyalty marketing nationwide. She regularly works with a wide variety of clients, from the Fortune 500 to small businesses. Griffin's book, Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal, was a Soundview Executive Book Summaries selection in 2001.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Griffin, Jill, Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It, Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 1995.

PERIODICALS

American Statesman (Austin, TX), 1995.

Home News (Marshville, NC), February 2, 1995.