Nowadays, large and small businesses are rushing to launch their loyalty programs. It’s no wonder why. According to research, 44% of U.S. shoppers state that a loyalty program directly influences their purchase decision.
Loyalty program cards are a huge asset, increasing sales and retaining customers. Although a simple concept, some companies fail to get it right.
Don’t let mistakes get in the way of rewarding your customers’ loyalty. PassKit has the perfect solution for you.
Our digital loyalty platform brings customers closer to your business and makes it easy for customers to enjoy contactless shopping, earn points and redeem rewards. With PassKit, you can ensure that your customers always have a positive brand experience.
To see PassKit in action, sign up for your free 45-day trial!
Over the years, we’ve identified 12 common mistakes businesses make with their loyalty programs. This article will discuss each and explain how PassKit helps you overcome these challenges.
What are loyalty program cards?
You can incentivize customers to stay loyal to your brand with loyalty program cards.
Customers can collect points and exchange them for coupons, gifts, or exclusive offers with each purchase. It’s a great way to give customers something back while they continue to show their loyalty.
By investing in loyalty cards for businesses, you can reap the rewards of increased customer loyalty and higher spending. You will boost your revenue and build strong customer relationships.
Five benefits of custom loyalty cards
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You might be wondering why you need custom loyalty cards. Here are some crucial reasons:
- Increase sales: the numbers don’t lie—49% of consumers buy more after joining a loyalty program. Knowing a reward awaits them makes them add more products to their shopping cart.
- Nurture existing relationships: custom loyalty cards help with user retention. They enable you to retain your loyal customers with different rewards.
- Improve communications: loyalty reward cards enable you to promote special deals, discounts, or gifts via email, SMS, social media, website, or another digital channel.
- Give your business a competitive edge: launching a loyalty program is a great way to surpass your competitors. Another brand might have attractive products, but people will choose your business because they’ll get rewards for their purchases.
- Collect customer data: monitoring consumer trends and understanding customers’ preferences is more straightforward with data collection. Custom loyalty cards keep track of shoppers’ behavior instead of you.
Let’s now have a look at the drawbacks.
Three drawbacks of custom loyalty cards
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The main drawbacks of digital or plastic loyalty cards are:
- Market saturation: from hotel, airline loyalty programs, and restaurant loyalty programs to beauty rewards programs, it now seems every business has one. You can only stand out if you develop unique customer loyalty program ideas.
- Excessive messaging: some companies overdo it and send promotional messages daily. When advertising a new deal, gift, or reward, you must find a balance to avoid overwhelming your customers.
- Loyalty data limitations: keeping a close watch on your consumers is crucial. A loyalty program, however, doesn’t have access to customers’ purchases from other brands. It provides a limited overview of their purchase behavior.
The advantages of loyalty program cards outweigh their disadvantages. Launching a loyalty program is the way to go if you want customers to remain loyal.
Three critical features of a thriving loyalty program
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According to Statista, average consumers in the United States belong to 16.6 loyalty programs. However, they only use 7.6 of them actively.
You can motivate customers to sign up for your loyalty program and use your digital membership cards, loyalty program cards, or coupons because
- It’s frictionless – using loyalty business cards or punch cards should be easy. Forget about traditional plastic cards people lose all the time. It’s time you introduce digital loyalty cards with PassKit and integrate them with Google Pay and Apple Wallet, ensuring consumers earn points and use rewards with their mobile devices.
- It provides exclusive rewards – people join loyalty programs to get something special. Your loyalty program cards must offer exclusive rewards available to members only. It shows customers they are a part of a club.
- It relies on personalization – getting generic messages, or irrelevant offers annoys consumers. They want a personalized customer experience. Analyze data to send them tailored messages that resonate with their needs.
Along the way, you might make some common mistakes. Let’s discuss which ones and how to avoid them.
12 mistakes businesses make with loyalty program cards
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Some loyalty programs don’t gain friction. It is because companies fail to eliminate the following mistakes.
1. Not defining the purpose of the loyalty program
Some companies create loyalty programs without clear goals. It prevents them from managing their programs effectively. You can’t craft successful marketing messages or generate rewards without clearly defined objectives.
We suggest you identify specific goals before launching loyalty program cards. Some goals are:
- Increasing retention
- Boosting sales
- Improving customer experience strategy
- Increasing customer engagement
2. Not defining the target audience
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When it comes to loyalty programs, it’s essential to understand your target audience thoroughly. This knowledge allows you to design a program that caters to their needs and preferences.
You can segment your audience according to the following:
- Age
- Location
- Income
- Gender
- Interests
- Preferences
- Purchasing behavior
For instance, if your customers regularly purchase items online, you must provide offers they can redeem on your website rather than in-store. Failing to recognize your customers’ preferences could lead to an unsuccessful loyalty program. Therefore, it is essential to know your audience to avoid this common mistake.
PassKit Pass Designer lets you include advanced fields on your loyalty cards to collect customer information. You can ask for the customer’s first and last name, mobile number, gender, date of birth, member status, and more to boost your segmentation efforts.
3. Not offering enough value
Customers have a wide range of loyalty programs to choose from, and the one that stands out is the program that gives them the most value.
If you want to grab their attention, you need to give them something valuable that excites them to spend money. Consider offering discounts, rewards, or gifts that make them feel like they’re getting something special. Make them think it’s worth it to join your loyalty program, and you’ll stand out.
If you want to give your customers the ultimate experience and access to all the benefits they deserve, then it’s time to switch to PassKit. Our all-in-one customer loyalty platform makes it easy to design and deploy digital loyalty cards, membership cards, and coupon cards in minutes.
With PassKit, you can give your customers any reward you can think of. So why wait? Take your customer loyalty to the next level and make PassKit your go-to loyalty platform today!
4. Not creating a seamless customer experience
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Creating a connected customer experience across all brand touchpoints is essential in today’s marketplace. Your brand should be able to interact with customers seamlessly whether they’re visiting your website, your social media accounts, or your physical stores. You must bridge the gap between online and offline experiences to create an enjoyable customer journey.
With PassKit, you can bring the convenience of your loyalty program straight to a customer’s mobile wallet, like Apple Wallet and Google Pay, to ensure they can easily access their loyalty cards and use them for online or offline purchases.
To see how PassKit works, start your 45-day free trial.
5. Not tracking and analyzing the right data
Loyalty program cards let you track customer activity and behavior. You can receive valuable insight whenever someone buys a product or redeems a reward. It includes:
- Knowing when your customers are most likely to shop
- What your consumers do and don’t like
- How much money are they willing to spend
Having access to this data allows you to refine your loyalty program and develop successful strategies for customer acquisition or customer retention to attract existing and new customers.
With advanced loyalty platforms, such as PassKit, you can track the following:
- The number of enrolled members
- The number of installs to a wallet
- The number of uninstalled digital cards
- The number of deleted members
- Your customers’ preferred mobile wallets
- Your best distribution sources
- Your overall program performance in any period
Start your 45-day free trial to check our analytics dashboard.
6. Not offering personalized rewards
Customers want to know that their hard-earned money is worth spending on your brand. But how can you show them that your business has their best interests at heart?
The answer is personalization—sending rewards and offers tailored specifically to their interests.
Take a customer who enjoys dressing elegantly, for example. If you send them an offer for sportswear, they will likely ignore it. That’s why it’s essential to create loyalty rewards that your customers will use, which means customizing them to your customers’ needs.
7. Not creating a sense of urgency
To encourage customers to purchase your products or services, consider creating a sense of urgency by using loyalty cards with expiry dates or redemption limits. Setting these limits will motivate customers to take action and ensure their efforts don’t go to waste.
With PassKit Pass Designer, you can easily set up expiry dates on your loyalty cards, membership cards, and coupons. It will allow customers to keep track of their point balance and take advantage of great opportunities before expiration.
Doing this will help increase sales and keep customers returning for more.
8. Not promoting the loyalty program
It’s no secret that most customers don’t know when a business offers a loyalty program.
PassKit includes permission-based marketing and a multichannel distribution system to help you raise awareness about your rewards program. You can use more than one digital channel to distribute and promote your loyalty cards.
You can combine PassKit with
- SMS marketing
- Email marketing
- Receipt marketing
- Social media marketing
- POP marketing
- Retail marketing
- NFC payment
It boosts your customer experience metrics and lets you shine on digital channels your shoppers use the most, leading to increased sign-ups.
9. Not engaging with customers
PassKit is here to keep your customers engaged and informed so they don’t forget any discounts, rewards, or points they have earned with your business.
With our location-based alerts, targeted messages, push notifications, and real-time updates, you can be sure your customers will never miss out on a great deal.
10. Not being consistent
Regarding product, service, or reward promotion, you must ensure your messaging is consistent across all channels. Why? Because the slightest discrepancy can confuse your customers and make them question your brand.
The same idea applies to the loyalty card design. You must ensure that your logo, colors, style, and visuals are all the same. This way, customers will easily recognize your brand and associate it with your loyalty program.
PassKit provides loyalty card templates and makes it easy to add your logo, choose a color scheme, and showcase your brand identity in minutes. It ensures your loyalty program remains consistent and recognizable.
11. Not being flexible
Give your customers the power to choose how they earn and spend loyalty points. If you want a successful loyalty program, make sure your customers can decide how they use their loyalty cards.
Make sure your offers are available on all channels, whether online or in-store. Don’t limit your customers to just one platform – let them have the control to make their own decisions.
12. Not having a plan for customer churn
If you’re noticing that customers are dropping out of your loyalty program, it’s time to take a closer look and understand the problem.
Keeping track of customer churn and monitoring the number of customers you lose over a specific period is vital to understanding why this is happening and making the necessary adjustments.
Introducing new and exciting elements to your program can boost customer engagement and help keep them coming back.
By avoiding these 12 most common mistakes, you can ensure a positive customer experience and have your loyalty program in high demand. Let’s share some valuable tips on using loyalty cards to help you reach your program success faster.
Four tips for using loyalty program cards effectively
Here are our tips on how to use loyalty program cards effectively:
- Your staff members are your most valuable asset in promoting your program. As they frequently contact customers, they can spread the word about your loyalty cards during their daily interactions and quickly get more people to join.
- If you want to get the word out about your loyalty program fast, your existing customer base is the perfect place to start! These people already know and love your products and services, so let them know that by signing up, you’ll reward them for their loyalty with exclusive discounts, deals, and offers. It’s an easy and effective way to show appreciation for your customers, keep them returning for more, and spread the word among their friends and family.
- To increase program enrollment, consider offering sign-up incentives such as coupons, vouchers, and discounts. People will be more likely to sign up when they know they’re getting something special in return.
- Social media can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to expand their reach. By leveraging social media, you can open the door to new opportunities and build relationships with potential customers who may have never heard of you. With the right loyalty program, you can attract more prospective customers and create a positive impression of your business.
It all leads us to the most critical question.
Wrapping up: Are loyalty program cards worth the hassle?
Loyalty program cards are the way to go if you’re looking for a way to help your business grow and stand out. They’re a great way to increase sales, attract prospects, and keep your customers coming back.
The best part is that you don’t need a team of tech and design pros to get started. Thanks to PassKit, you can design, launch, and manage a loyalty program without custom app building.
Our platform provides everything you need to make the most of customer loyalty. From creating the loyalty program to tracking customer data, PassKit has you covered. Take advantage of this valuable opportunity to help your business reach its full potential.
Get started today with PassKit loyalty program cards and take your business to the next level!
FAQs about loyalty program cards
We answered some of the most frequent questions about loyalty program cards. Here they are.
What are examples of loyalty cards?
Some examples of loyalty cards include programs like Amazon Prime, Starbucks Rewards, and Sephora Beauty Insider. The examples show that every business can use a loyalty card to increase customer loyalty and give value.
How do you program a loyalty card?
You don’t need a custom app to create a loyalty card. The only requirement is a digital loyalty platform that enables you to design and launch your program. One such platform is PassKit, and you can start using it today.
What is the most popular loyalty program?
The most popular loyalty programs belong to Sephora, Starbucks, and Barnes & Noble.
Is a loyalty card worth it?
Having a loyalty card is definitely worth the effort. It helps you build a relationship with customers, reward them for their loyalty and boost your sales.
