Loyalty programs are a great strategy for businesses to grow their customer base. As a tool to gather information about customer preferences and shopping behavior, loyalty programs enable businesses to deliver products, offers, and information that increase customer loyalty.
With consumers being bombarded by dozens of loyalty programs and offers, how are businesses ensuring that their loyalty programs attract and retain customers? Here are 10 things you should keep in mind when creating your loyalty program.
1. Define your goals
How are you going to define the success of your loyalty program without setting goals? The first step should always be to state achievable goals so that you can track and measure the outcome of your efforts. For example, increase membership by 10% in the next 4 weeks.
2. Know what your target market is
No loyalty program will be successful without first understanding your customer demographic and target market. Think about your product/service and what types of customers you are expecting to purchase your product/service. Explore who they are, what they like, where they go, and how to connect with them.
3. Vary your rewards
Before launching a loyalty program, it is important to consider your customer’s expectations. Offering the same reward over and over again isn’t going to maintain the interest of all your existing customers. Varying your campaign will also enable you to evaluate the offers that are most effectively attracting new customers.
4. Consider the time and cost
A loyalty program should be carefully planned if it is to have a successful outcome. Implementing a long-term loyalty program can be time consuming. Determine a time-scale for when you expect to see results, and make sure you have the necessary resources to carry it out. Reduce costs by implementing a digital loyalty campaign with mobile wallet software.
5. Stay ahead of the competition
A loyalty program can be an effective way of keeping you ahead of competitors in your industry. You need to able to offer more value than what competitors can offer, if you are to attract new customers, and ensure the long-term loyalty of existing ones. It is therefore a good idea to analyze the best ways to appeal to your target market and exploit areas in which your competitors fail to.
6. Utilise social media
Many companies are using social media platforms to connect with customers. It is a very effective way of raising the awareness of loyalty campaigns, which can be subsequently shared among friends. As a result social media will allow your campaign to promote itself with very little effort from you.
7. Keep customers up to date
Keeping customers informed with updates serves as a friendly reminder of what you are offering them. For example, use iBeacon to deliver relevant and valuable content to customers when they are in the proximity of your store. However, be careful not to bombard them with information and risk being dismissed as spam.
8. Be patient
Remember, a loyalty program is a long-term strategy and will not necessarily have immediately visible results. If this is the case don’t be tempted to stray from your original plan, you could hinder the future success of your campaign.
9. Focus on customer service
An excellent loyalty campaign counts for very little if you fall short on customer service. According to Forbes, 71% of customers have ended business relationships due to poor customer service. Be careful not to let poor customer service sever the ties you have worked so hard to build. You can leverage the power of iBeacon to provide a differentiated experience to customers.
10. Use different social channels
Effective communication is an important part of any marketing campaign. Promoting your loyalty campaign through as many outlets as possible is key to ensuring its success. Social media, email campaigns, website post and in-store advertisements are all cheap and effective ways of raising the awareness of your campaign.
Considering these simple steps are sure to greatly improve your chances of implementing a successful loyalty program. Though loyalty programs require an investment of time, with some careful planning you can build and maintain strong bonds with your customers both now, and in the future.
You can quickly launch your loyalty campaign today by using the Pass Designer. Simply create your digital loyalty cards using our customer loyalty software, distribute it to your clients, and measure the success of your campaign through online metrics and data.
