Tag Archive for: loyalty program

Free Loyalty Program Platforms

According to studies, only 3 percent of new customers return to make another purchase. This alarming statistic has led to the development of unique tactics to address customer retention. One of the most popular strategies is the use of loyalty programs.  

A well-crafted loyalty program offers numerous benefits including; customer retention, building personal relationships, creating brand advocates, attract new visitors, and more.  

As a new online store operating on a tight budget, it might be difficult to allocate funds for an expensive loyalty program. This is not to mean; you are not interested in retaining the customers you have acquired. In fact, for your business to grow it’s crucial it adapts to the evolving technology and stands out to attract and retain more customers.  

So do you stare at the situations hands in pockets? You don’t have to; there are free loyalty programs designed to help new businesses; like yours, to increase sales via customer engagement. Some of the best free loyalty programs include; 

AIRLOOP LOYALTY PLATFORM 

WHAT IS AIRLOOP? 

Airloop is a comprehensive digital loyalty platform designed to help businesses to improve retention, increase referrals, and generate social media. It’s a reliable program that offers an incredible strategy to create, manage, and monitor loyalty program. Besides, this platform allows you to provide enticing promotional rewards and take advantage of your referrals.  

This is a well-crafted platform that provides creative ways to engage customer for high-end customer value. Additionally, it gives you easy access to the most important customer data thereby helping you to align your business with the most profitable customers. It’s an easy way to maximize the value derived and delivered to each customer.  

The platform is free, and no card, codes, or apps is required to get started. In addition, the program integrates seamlessly with mobile devices, and it can be extended to social media platforms. It’s also fully customizable and is easy to set up.  

FEATURES 

Airloop is driven by its incredible desire to achieve product excellence and help its user operate with the best integrity standard possible. For this reason, the platform has a set of great features which include; 

  • Exceptionally crafted system: 

The platform offers an exceptionally designed system that provides the core pillars of establishing a lasting, mutual trust with your customers. Each Airloop account offers; 

  1. Unlimited customers 
  1. Dedicated phone number 
  1. Unlimited rewards 
  1. Free iPad app 
  1. Unlimited marketing campaigns 
  1. Dedicated merchants support 
  1. Printable door stickers 
  1. Analytic dashboard 
  1. In-store welcome kit 
  • Simplicity: 

Airloop is a special digital loyalty program that is focused and simple in all aspects.  

  • Excellent user experience; 

The platform provides an amazing experience to all your customers, which is paramount to customer retention.  

HOW IT WORKS 

It’s very easy to get started with this loyalty program software. It takes four steps to get your customer excited about the reward.  

Step 1: download the tablet app 

The tablet application is only available on the Apple Appstore, but plans are in place to bring it on the Google Playstore.  

Step 2: customize your kiosk 

Airlopp provides an easy to use dashboard where users can upload background images, brand logo, rewards, and the marketing messages.  

Step 3: present the reward and collect data 

Once everything is set, its easy for all your customer to sign up to the program. You do not have to hand out cards, and no punch card is needed.  

Step 4: relay targeted marketing messages 

The platform helps you to reach out to the customers from the dashboard with personalized messages and customized marketing campaigns 

SALESMACHINE 

WHAT IS SALESMACHINE? 

Salesmachine is an incredible, real-time customer scoring software designed to help business to reduce churn and increase conversion. The platform manages the lifecycle of your customers with notification, alert, and email sequence based on their status and behavior.  

The platform has reliable tracking tools which collect vital information and customer interaction with your product, location, and email activities and more. It allows you to group your customers based on their actions. Besides, it helps you to create custom customer segments to monitor customers who need assistance, who are not activated, who risk churning and those that require a coupon to pay.  

This loyalty program monitors the health and activity of your customers and helps you to focus on high-value customers. The platform is super easy to use, and in case of any complication, they have a team of knowledgeable staff to help you.  

Although it’s not completely free, the software has a free version which provides unlimited users and up to 1000 contacts.  

FEATURES  

The key Salesmachines features include; 

  • Real-time customer scoring 
  • Automatic tasks, notifications, and emails 
  • Customer success workflow 
  • Behavior-triggered emails 
  • Smart notification 
  • User lifecycle and customer health 
  • Proactive churn prevention 
  • Customer segmentation 
  • Live activity stream 

HOW IT WORKS 

This is a great platform that provides everything your business needs to grow. So how does the platform work? 

Step 1: Health dashboard 

You get the freedom to monitor the health of your customer at every stage of the lifecycle. The dashboard provides essential tools which include; custom health score, portfolio management, onboarding, adoption, retention, and upsell. 

Step 2: get alerts 

The platform automatically tracks your customers’ health and deliver instant alerts when they require attention. The alerts include; Health alert, business alert, and real-time alert.  

Step 3: Understand your customers 

Salesmachine offers contact and account profiles provides all you need to understand your customers including; actions on your services/product, status history, contact information, and more. The success is achieved via essential features which include; dynamic fields, event tracking, enrichment, productivity, health score, integration, email activity, permission, and analytics.  

Step 4: analyze customer base and automate team process 

The software makes it easy to establish the impact of your customer base in your revenue through custom segments, notification, and daily reports. 

It also makes it easier to automate the process of your team with notifications, playbooks, tasks, and emails to deliver hands-on customer success. The automation is achieved via to do, auto emails, notifications, slack notification, email tasks, and multi-steps.  

Step 5: deliver automate, personalized messages 

Salesmachine helps you to come up with an automated success campaigns via delays, email and layout manager, opens/clicks, segment triggered, event triggered, text/HTML/liquid.  

 

 

 

 

How to Increase Participation in Your Loyalty Program

Are your customers captivated with your loyalty program? On the other hand, have they lost interest? Perhaps you have a loyalty program with a large membership, but they never use it. Alternatively, are you struggling to get people to join the rewards program?

If your members never use the loyalty program, they may have lost interest in what you offer. If this has happened, what is the point of having a loyalty program in first place? So how do you rectify this problem? How do you increase participation in a loyalty program and how do you keep customers engaged to spend more.

The Two Hurdles of a Loyalty Program

A loyalty program comprises of two main obstacles. The first part is enrollment when a customer joins your program. And once they join, it does not mean your customer will keep shopping to earn rewards. I’ve come across several articles all indicating the same stats, most enrollments end up being inactive!

Customers join loyalty programs for different reasons. Maybe you offered members a great incentive when signing up for an account. After receiving their reward, participation plays an important role in a loyalty program. This is the part where you need to keep your customers engaged wanting to come back for more.

Are your customers intrigued with your program? If not you can try the following.

How to Boost Your Loyalty Program Efficiency

You want to get members attracted to your loyalty program and need them to get involved. Here you can find different ways to encourage your members to take part in the program.

  • Is your loyalty program personalized?

How friendly is your loyalty program? Do your members feel important and needed? A loyalty program is one of the best ways to make your customers feel welcome and appreciated. They have signed up for your program have they not? Then they want to get involved.

They are more than happy to do the task to earn points the least you can do is to tailor the program around what they want. However, for this to take place your loyalty program needs to be smart. This means you need a system that collects data based on what your customer likes.

Showing customers what they might like can lead to a member buying more than one product at a time. By using this principle in your program is an excellent starting point.

  • Be Crystal-Clear

How clear is your loyalty program to understand? If you want to keep, your customers taking part in the program they need to know how it works. They need to know how they can earn points and exchange it for rewards.

Make sure, you have a dedicated area on your site informing customers of how they can earn rewards for different actions made.

Always be clear about how many points customers can earn with each purchase. Further, they need to know how many points they need to redeem it for a reward.

  • Train Employees

The most important promoter you have is your employees. Educate them to know the loyalty program, as they are the ones promoting the program.

The staff needs to be in the loop at all times. When you change the program, your staff needs and update about these changes. Further, they need to be educated to handle any question a customer has.

Show them how the reward structure works and keep them informed about the auto rewards and promotions you send to the members.

  • Variation is the tool for engagement

If you want your customer participating in the loyalty program, you need to create different ways for them to earn rewards. Never let a purchase be the only way for your customer to earn points.

Further, do not only have one way available for them to redeem the points they have accumulated. Give your customer an option to choose from a wide selection of rewards as this keeps your member engaged. This gives your customer the choice of deciding for them, which rewards best fitting for them.

Think of it in this way, if you only received free shipping what would you do? You would look for a cheaper vendor to buy a product from.

  • Do your customers know about your program

You have an online shop right! Who is informing your member of the great rewards you are dishing out? Do you have a cashier greeting them and asking them if they want to collect their points when making a purchase NO?

This is why you need to set up reminders and prompts across your site. Mention it at the homepage or show it at the checkout page! Further, you need to make it easier for them to use keeping them engaged all the time.

  • Outbound Reminders

Is your customer visiting your website? The probability is that you do not know the answer. What does this mean for your loyalty program? This means that your customers are not seeing the reminders spread all over the website.

This is where outbound reminders as email marketing are an effective way to get the word out. Make a super campaign of it by combining your loyalty program with your email marketing.

Send the members emails when they earn or spend their points. This keeps them reminded of how active they are with the program. Another great way is to send your customers material informing them if they make a purchase this coming weekend they can earn 100 bonus points.

You can even email non-member with information about the loyalty program giving them a great reason to join.

Stay Connected with your Customers

For long-term engagement, you need to stay connected to your customers. Communication is one of the most important parts when it comes to any type of business. As soon as a customer joins your loyalty program, they want to make contact with you. This is the door to success as you connect with clients who are spending their time and money in your online shop. Grab the opportunity with both hands and keep your customers engaged, as it will make your loyalty program exist for longer and make your business a success online.

Fundamentals of a Loyalty Program

What captivates your client? How can you inspire them to become devoted brand supporters who keep using your service or your products? What can you do ensuring that your customers recommend your brand to others? These are significant questions to ask when you own an eCommerce business.

The key thing is that you need to answer these questions to make your online business a thriving one. One way of keeping your customers happy is a successful loyalty program. Maybe you already have one in place, but how effective is it. What can you do to add more value to your loyal customers?

We are here to answer this important question. Here you can find fundamentals of a loyalty program to make yours perfect.

The Essentials to help make your Loyalty Program Perfect

The great thing about using a loyalty program is that it does not have to be the same as your competitors or the shop next door. Use your customer’s individuality and competitive landscape to create programs that work for both of you.

Yes, you want to test other leading programs to see what may fit in with your budget and plan. Social media can be one of your important elements, but the reliability of a customer’s not only built into a plastic card or your brand.

When choosing a loyalty program, look at the bigger picture. Start with fresh ideas in your plan, such as a mobile app, but the importance is to keep the fundamental values of your business.

No matter what type of loyalty program you use a Tier, Point System, Value-based, VIP Benefits to a Grouping program the following essentials will help make your program function flawless.

Keep it Simple

When starting your loyalty program the key is to keep it simple. Using a basic program gives you a great success once launched compared to one loaded with features. By keeping your loyalty structure simple it helps:

  • Prevent confusion with your customers, as it’s important not to overwhelm them from the start. By starting easy your clients can understand the program. You can add extra features over a time as your customers are accustomed to the loyalty program.
  • It provides a great marketing potential as you have loads of surprises lined up for your customer to wow them in the future.
  • Further, it allows for customer feedback as they help you with improving the program. This helps you to determine what is effective in the early stage of the program and what is not effective.
  • Another reason for keeping it simple is that you can launch the program quickly compared to waiting for weeks or months down the road.

Make Power of Communication your Focal Point

For a successful business, the most important thing is communication and clarify. If you do not have clear and regular communication you and your customer, the loyalty program will become redundant.

Keep in touch with your top priority customers when developing your own loyalty program. You need to make your clientele feel treasured and valued. Get feedback from the top 5% of your customers, as ultimately, those are the most important ones!

There is nothing worse than receiving emails from online business with undisclosed receivers make it personal as this will make them feel important and valued. They will respect you for this and turn into loyal customers leading to an ROI.

Another way to communicate with your clientele is to use a loyalty strategy built into your Point of Sale System. Send them pumping messages with attractive offers to bring them to your store. Start a Newsletter to build your client base sending them a personal email with special offers.

One more great marketing tool is social media outlets and very effective to stay in touch with your customers. The big thing is to keep your posts active, interesting, and relevant.

The Customer Comes First

If you want your loyalty program to be a success, understand that your customer always comes first. In every step of your business, make sure you offer an outstanding client experience throughout their journey with you.

Your client base is what makes your business work. Knowing what they like and dislike is the key element.

Always keep your customer feedback in mind when planning your next strategic move. The importance is to place your customer’s needs first when designing your program.

This is beneficial for you and the customer. This ensures the success of your of the program and helps you to retain more customers.

A Friendly and Professional Service

Nobody wants to feel irritated when contacting your customer service for advice or when having problems with a product. Always be friendly and professional in everything you do from taking a phone call to answering an email. Follow up with your clients the best you can make sure they are happy with your service and products.

Inform your customers with a courtesy email on their loyalty points and other related discounts and gifts. Reply in a timely manner and never leave your clients waiting.

Keep Your Loyalty Program Interesting

The important thing about your loyalty program is that you need to keep it updated and interesting to boost sales frequently. Are you using a point-based program? Present customers with relevant rewards such as a discount on the products your customers are interested in, that perhaps they have purchased in the past.

If your customers like to save money and enjoy receiving big rewards offer them a reward schedule making sure they take advantage in saving points. Does your client have a short attention span? If they do have, do not make it difficult for them to get their first reward.

You can reward them with enough points to exchange for something they would need or use with their next purchase when signing up with the program. This keeps your customers motivated all the time and keeps your program interesting.

Tap into different network resources available and see what you can do to kick some dust in your competitions eyes. Always stay ahead of them and offer something new and refreshing.

Conclusion, Make Your Value Proposition Clearly Seen

The aim of a loyalty program is to extend the value of your customers. Your customers need to clearly know what is the value within the program. Furthermore, they need to effortlessly understand what they stand to win if they provide you with their loyalty. This is why it is important to make your value proposition clearly noticeable and easy to understand.

If they know the value you are offering, and how they can achieve their rewards, whether free shipping on their orders to discounts on certain products the chances are they will come back for more. Once you have your loyalty program in place and have these fundamentals in place, do not neglect to measure the success by checking the stats. If you don’t see progress, change the program. If you still don’t see progress, scrap the program and try again.

You need to know what your return on investment is. You do this by measuring how frequently customers spend in a lifetime vs the cost to run the program and the cost of the rewards. This gives you a better idea if your current loyalty program is worth it or not.

 

How to increase your Loyalty Program Enrollment Rate

Loyalty programs can prompt meritorious financial results via guest engagement and creation of astounding incentives to embolden more frequent clients and increased spending. Every triumphant loyalty program begins with a robust foundation of effective enrollment. This is the cornerstone element that fuels growth and initiates a steady stream of profitable long-term results.

Setting up a credible loyalty program is essential and a proper strategy to continually acquire new guests is equally important. Unfortunately, many online businesses disregard the importance of managing the foundational elements hence make their loyalty program to languish.

A good loyalty program should be able to build a significant amount of loyal customers who visit frequently and spend higher amounts than the occasional guest. According to statistics, a top performing loyalty program has a customer base that generates approximately 25% to 30% of all the customers’ checkouts.  Reaching such a level is a truly daunting task, it demands constant attention on building a membership base. You must adopt a multifaceted strategy to beat competitors and sustain a proper membership growth.

For this reason, we have compiled a set of laudable options that will help you encourage more clients to enrol into your loyalty program. On average a customer enrols into 13.7 loyalty programs, but only remain active in 6.7 of the programs. So how do you ensure your program remain in the positive echelon?

CREATE A SIMPLE AND MEANINGFUL LOYALTY PROGRAM

Customers are known to be very rigid with their habits. For this reason, it will be in your best interest to come up with a program that will marry the existing behavioural pattern of the customers. Make the enrollment process as simple as possible. In most cases, customers run away from complex systems. Most of them are on the go and have little time to enrol. Some customers hate complex process so much that they prefer forfeiting their rewards in a bid to avoid the tedious enrollment tasks.

Remember enrollment is an impulse decision for your clients and you have a brief instant to impress. Let your program answer the question “why should I join?” in a flash, come up with a wow elevator pitch and make use of a catchy name to energize your slogan and reinforce the key benefits of the program. Make it easy for your client to easily articulate, understand, and readily remember all the benefits.

Explaining your loyalty program on the website will make customer get a better understanding. Give a vivid impression of what the customer will earn. Whenever they spend and how they will redeem the loyalty points. Develop an explainer page and explain all the values of the loyalty program and all the benefits the customer will derive from the initiative.

BE TRANSPARENT

Studies have shown that an easily understood loyalty program records a higher level of participation. According to one study by Colloquv Loyalty, an astonishing 81% of those interviewed said a simple loyalty program motivates them to continue participating. So how do you make a bigger percentage of your customers to participate?

One way of achieving credibility and simplicity is making your program as transparent as possible. Let all the members know virtually everything they should to actively participate. This entails making all details about earning and spending points clear enough and easily accessible.

PROPER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENTS

The simplicity of your program should also be reflected in the registration process. The signage for your program should be well placed to excite, inform, and stimulate actions. Leverage all guest interactions points to relay a simple, consistent message so as to encourage more guest to join. If the signage is used appropriately for you concept it will capture the attention of many guests.

Moreover, your program should only collect only the relevant information about the guests. For example, if your program utilizes phone number as the customer ID, it means all you require is the name and the phone number. Including irrelevant details will make the enrollment process long and complex.

PAMPER YOUR CUSTOMERS

A good program will make all member feel they belong to a class of special people. Making all members feel their opportunities are equal to those of other shoppers, will allow them to continue participating. Once you members enjoy the loyalty program, it will be the best chance to turn their enthusiasm into advocacy. Their genuine fondness will be a potent influence on other customers to enrol into your loyalty program. At this point, you can ask them to refer friends, and even reward them for their actions.

Additionally, provide reasonable returns to all the participants if you want them to spend reasonably. The best way of engaging new members is keeping the hurdle to the initial reward low. This will make it attainable for all guest and build excitement about your program.

Another, fascinating trick to make more guest enrol is incorporating a welcome incentive for your guests. Set up a welcome promotion that will be emailed or texted to all new members, so as to gain a credible basis to impress guests and make them enrol. Making this promotion fast, easy, valuable, and highly effective will enormously increase the number of guests participating in your loyalty program.

Moreover, you should remember we are living in a digital world and things are changing very fast. For this reason, you need to come up with lots of ways through which members can earn points. The reason customers enrol in many loyalty programs and only remain active in few of them is that they quickly get tired of earning points through purchases. They want a program that will present a bunch of creative options to earn points.

RUN CASHIER AND SERVER CONTESTS

This will be a magnificent strategy especially if you perform in store enrolments. Create a competition for your staff and place a precious reward for the person who registers most new members. These contest should be conducted quarterly or bi-annually so as to make it more fun and provide a regular boost to your enrollment process.

EMPLOY PROPER MARKETING

Although massive advertisement is effective, you should employ other techniques to constantly remind consumers about the loyalty program. Use all assets at your disposal including checkout process, website, and product page to keep your program at the top of your customers’ agenda. If new guests understand the value of the loyalty program, constant prompting will end up increasing the enrollment rate of your program. In the modern world, you do not have to employ a cashier to request everyone who checks out to enrol. Be creative enough and employ reminders all over your websites. If you find a room to mention your loyalty program on the homepage, do it. This will give you an edge over your competitors. It might be the key to an increased rate of enrollment.

Typically, if most new guests feel appreciated, they will feel obliged to subscribe to the email list so as to receive next promotions and latest brand news. Once they leave their email, the next step will be persuading them to be members of your loyalty program. In most cases, email is an important channel of communicating the value proposition of your loyalty program.

Another intriguing marketing strategy is incorporating social media into your program. When you promote your loyalty program on your consumers’ favourite social media platform you boost its presence and reach thereby encouraging participation. It gives you an opportunity to create conversations with the customers and better your enrollment rate.

You can also create a blog for your loyalty program. Although blogs are used for many other reasons, they can be an important channel to promote your program and encourage enrollments. A blog will give you the freedom to explain your program and demonstrate its value to customers.

PERFORM ANALYSIS

Despite the strategy used to encourage enrollment, it’s imperative that you conduct an analysis of your sources of enrollments. Understand all your tactics and determine those that result in better enrollment rates. Take your time and resource to track all participant with surveys to determine what works best and what doesn’t. Some of the best ways of measuring the success of the loyalty program include; repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value, and the net promoter score. You can also gauge success using the redemption rate which gives a ratio of issued points and those that are converted. If your program is good enough, many members will participate and spend their loyalty points.

This will be important to help you tailor your loyalty program to meet the need of your customers. Surveys, give you a deep insight into the success of your loyalty program making it easier to focus your budget and energy on things that bring desirable results.

CONCLUSION

The above tactics will help you increase the enrollment rate of your loyalty program. However, it should be noted that when enrollment rate of a program is put in a balance there is no silver bullet to guarantee immediate success. For this reason, you will have to apply different strategies before finding the one that will work best for your program. In most cases, a combination of tactics is all it takes to record any conspicuous growth in enrollment.

How to create a Loyalty Program for Your Online Business

A recent study by Experian Marketing services has conspicuously shown that approximately 7 out of 10 businesses with a Loyalty program experience the incredibly powerful revenue flow of repeat customers. This clearly shows that the power of loyalty program for online business cannot be underestimated, but it should also be noted that not all are rewarding.

It takes laudable efforts and highly innovative strategies to come up with a loyalty program that will give you a praise-worthy return on investment. When done well, a loyalty program can be a gift but when done wrong it will be a burden to your customers and a waste of time for the business.

So are you planning to create a Loyalty program? Here are some facts to consider.

ENROLLMENT

A good loyalty program should be unique for your business. Taking cues from businesses similar to yours is okay but to build a unique brand you must come up with a unique loyalty program.

The key to the success of any loyalty program is understanding your customer. Once you understand who your customers are, you need to devise the best way to getting the customers enrol to the program.

The first step in getting customers to sign up to your loyalty program is educating your employees. This will make it easy for the staff to conveniently promote and enrol many customers in the loyalty program. The best way to get the enrollment done faster is rewarding your employees based on the number of customers they enrol.

You can also engage you customers in the sites they visit most. You can add sign up links to the online ordering forms or your merchant’s homepage to create attention to the loyalty program. This will increase your signups by up to 4 times. Moreover, you can engage your customers at checkouts. This is usually the best time to approach the customers and introduce the loyalty program to them. Since there is a great potential that the customers will be rewarded with their purchase it makes a lot of sense to mention the loyalty program at this point.

Loyalty program for online business and email list

Alternatively, you can promote your loyalty program via email. If you already have a compiled email list use it as a paragon to generate sign ups for your program. Statistics have shown that most successful loyalty programs utilize emails to send signup reminders and incentives.

Above all, you should make the signup process to be very easy. Once a customer develops the interest in your loyalty program the next step is asking for their contact. This should be done in the simplest way possible, otherwise, the opportunity will be passed on to the customers.

 

Loyalty program for online business

REDEMPTION REWARD

Customers enjoy the benefit of being registered in a loyalty reward when they redeem a reward. According to statistics, about a third of all the loyalty program points go unredeemed.  So, as you craft a loyalty program you must come up with ways to make your customers redeem the points they get.

Some online stores impose point’s expiry or high spending threshold as a way of making customers redeem. However, this might not be a good way. Customers might get frustrated when their points expire before they cash them in.  Some have also resulted in long-term expiration but without the pressure to redeem the points, customer loyalty might fade. So how do you get the best out of the power of redeeming points and at the same time maintain the customer base? You must come up with a good plan that will strike a good balance.

Reward redemption boosts sales. If a customer is motivated to make the decision to redeem a reward it will impact positively on their buying behaviour before and after the redemption. Actually, redemption creates positive feelings and attitudes that make members of a loyalty program buy more frequently so as to increase the number of program points.

POINT BASED SYSTEM PROGRAM

One of the most crucial nitty-gritty details of a loyalty program for online business is the points to reward. Coming up with a comprehensive point based system program will require you to make two very important decisions. First, you will have to decide the actions to reward. The biggest reward should be assigned to the most important customer action. To encourage repeat clients you should aim to reward all check-ins handsomely.  In case your objective is to encourage your clients to spend more when they visit your online store, award the highest points for each amount spent.

Secondly, you need to pick the point’s ratio. A good way of setting the best point’s ratio is first deciding what the rewards are. Both a low-value ratio (a point for each dollar) and a high-value ratio (100 points for every dollar) will have a huge psychological impact on your customers. If your goal is to attract more casual clients the high point ratio will work magic for your business. On the other hand, the low point ratio will work best when looking to encourage power customers.

Statistics show that high points ratio overwhelm customers no matter how close they are to the reward. But on the flip side, this type of point’s ratio is tougher and abstract to track. For this reason, you should settle for such a plan only if you have a good base of loyal customers.

If your business has a gained a wider appeal but only attract casual customers then a low point ratio will work effectively.

DISCOUNT ON PRODUCTS AS REWARDS

Discounts have the highest caliber of universal appeal because it’s easier to apply them to many products.

For long they have been the backbone of loyalty programs because they make terrific rewards. Furthermore, discounts are impressive because they do not give businesses the tiresome task of performing rigorous monitoring. Typically, most loyalty programs provide enticing discounts to members than to the non-members get. This helps the business to build a strong base of customers since most of them are encouraged to join in order to receive the discount.

But a good loyalty program should not only focus on discount on the product as a reward. This is because, to some extent, discount does not impact on all the purchasing behaviour of the customers. Thereby, failing to affirm the ultimate goal of improving business revenue. So, if you thought creating a loyalty program is a puzzle, then discounts are a piece of it.

Just like any other rational reward, discounts should be coupled with a number of experimental rewards. So the loyalty program to stand a good chance. This will make the program more effective since it will address emotional and rational needs of your customers. However, to arrive at the right balance will require some testing and experimentation.

FREEBIES AS REWARDS

Most of the loyalty programs present a great opportunity for members to earn rewards. One of the most enticing rewards is freebies. When setting up a loyalty program you should try to come up with the most effective way of awarding freebies as rewards.

One of the best ways is awarding freebies to the most frequent purchaser of a particular good. This will develop a desire for all loyalty members to buy a certain product frequently. They will hope to earn the freebie in return. The freebie should also be an attractive reward which appeals most to your customer.

CREATION OF VARIOUS CUSTOMER LEVEL BASED ON SENIORITY OR CUSTOMER IMPORTANCE

Segmentation of customers will bring 3 indispensable advantages to your loyalty program. The first, creation of different customer levels will help you to send more relevant and personalized content to a specific group thereby generating better engagement, yields, and conversion.

Second, you will be able to establish the group of customers that contribute most profits to the program. And finally, it will give you the freedom to combine customer intelligence with the predictive analysis to expand the scope of your business.

When creating customer groups you should focus beyond purchase history and demographics. Be creative and highly innovative to come up with customer groups based on either customer importance or seniority. You can also classify your customers as either offer induced customers, offer denied customers, offer necessary customers, or offer adverse customers.

GAMIFICATION

Gamification helps online businesses to get the best out of the fundamental aspects of human behaviour. When implemented well, it will make the mundane activities of your business generate enthusiasm thereby creating the desire and motivation for your customers to keep “playing”.

Gamification taps into the human need for social interaction and competition. By nature, human beings are hard-wired to love winning. Everyone loves to achieve more than their friend and become the best in whatever they are doing. Applying this psychology in the online retail space has become a popular marketing tactic.

This is because customers feel more satisfied to participate in game oriented shopping rather than being tricked to purchase. This aspect gives the shopping process a new dimension, and the retailer is utilizing the art of gamification to boost customer loyalty and engagement.

The best way to incorporate gamification into your loyalty program is using a tiered reward program. Such a program will encourage your customers to take certain actions and reach a specific milestone to claim their reward. Every time the customer buys anything from your online shop they will get closer to the goal of ‘winning’.

However, caution must be taken when adopting gamification into your marketing strategies. A bad plan might end up pulling your customers away from the primary goal of your products in favour of misplaced rewards.

Do you want to find out more about Loyalty Programs for Retails? Check out our article 5 Loyalty Programs in Retail that add value to Online Shopping

 

5 Loyalty Programs in Retail that add value to Online Shopping

If there is one thing, technology has made easier for everybody it is the ease of online shopping. This is great as you lie on your bed with a mobile device or sit at your desk with your shoes kicked out and do shopping in one place online. There is no standing in long lines as you can have your order delivered to your door. Now that is what we call outstanding. Loyalty program cam make it even more interesting not only for the shop owner but also for the shoppers.

However, if you are the owner of an e-commerce shop gaining new clients is not as easy as you would like it to be. It takes time and effort leaving you with other tasks heaping up on your desk. The fact remains you need new business to grow your e-commerce that needs fewer resources and time. Sounds like an excellent idea, right?

Therefore, what is the solution? Easy you use a customer loyalty program. In fact, new clients do not spend the same amount as your current customers. Statistics show that your repeat customers spend over 67% more than a new client. However, turning your new client into a repeat one is not an automatic process. This is why you need to consider one of the 5 loyalty programs for your retail and add value to your online shopping business.

By selecting the right one your clients will keep coming back to your online shop and purchase from you. In this post, we’ll guide you through five different loyalty programs to help you make an informed choice in which one is best for your e-commerce business.

What is a Loyalty Program?

The loyalty program is a way to reward your repeat customer, encouraging them to stay devoted. Using a great loyalty program is not about only giving away free stuff it is a channel to strengthen your customer relationships with them. There is much e-commerce, loyalty programs and choices are endless. So today, we will show you the top five programs on how to use them in your online shopping with great benefits.

Five different Loyalty Programs

There are different ways to implement a loyalty program and can do it as follow:

1. The Tier Loyalty Program

You have an online shop and your business has some exceptional customers. You have your regulars who visit your site at least once a day, week or during the month. These are your important clients and bring in the most revenue. Why not make it worth their while in the Tier Loyalty Program.

The tier systems a unique program based on your customers’ levels of loyalty to your brand. The program offers customers higher rewards when they spend more. This will give your clients a great reason to visit your online store often. The tier system is great for both the travel industry and other related industries. The size of the rewards increases over time for long-term clients and encourages them to use your service often.

You can set the tier loyalty program up as follows with different levels related to your client’s loyalty: Blue, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Whenever your customers make a purchase, they receive points. The more they buy the higher level they will reach and the more rewarding it is for you and them.

The important thing is to find a balance for customers to reach the next level and needs to be realistic for them to achieve that. Set up different milestones, as it can be anything. You can offer clients special benefits like 25% more points with every purchase they make or include free shipping. You can even offer them discounts on your high-end items you are selling. The choices are endless with this loyalty program.

2. The Trouble-Free Point System

The point system is a trouble-free loyalty program based on the more your customer spends the more they receive. This is a great setup of your brick and mortar store or online shop. Why every time a client makes a purchase, they receive a certain amount of points based on the size of purchase they make.

Do not make the system complicated and keep it simple for your clients to understand and calculate. For example, one point could be a $1. You can also make a point count for every $5 – $10 spent. This helps your client to see the value and they do not need to grab the calculator to work out how many points they have earned with each purchase.

You can decide on which products you want to use the point system. For example, you can use the point system on buying beauty products. On the other hand, you can use it on each product available in your online shop. When the customer makes another purchase, they can redeem these points for discounts. This increases the average spends per customer and encourages them to invest in your brand.

3. The Value-based Loyalty Program

The value-based loyalty program is an excellent system for your online shop. This program is a more charitable related system. You need to structure your program around the values of your client. So how would you use this program to reward your client? Excellent question as you first need to define the values.

Whether you own an eco-friendly product store, bookstore, music equipment store, or online pet store your audience’s values count. For example, if you own a pet store and sell pet products you can start a loyalty program where client’s purchases render into currency or points.

Every time a client makes a purchase of $50, you can donate $5 to an organization that deals with different animal rescues. Here you need to keep your client updated on all the donations you have made to the organization and what is still due to them. No matter what form of e-commerce business you own you can support different organizations.

Further, you will help organizations and create a chance to connect with your client on a deeper level. This helps you to build a stronger relationship with them.

4. Charge Upfront Fees for VIP Benefits

This loyalty programs simple as customers pay a monthly or annual fee to join your VIP benefits club. The biggest concern with this program is you need a solid client base. This will help to keep your current clients and frequent buyers coming back for more. You need to make your paid program exceptional and valuable to your exclusive members or they will lose interest. Make sure that your membership fees are affordable. Further, you need to offer customers discounts, free shipping, and other great benefits that are valuable for clients to use.

5. The Grouping Program 

Are you the owner of a beauty product online store, pet food, or any other interesting brand online? This is where the grouping loyalty program can work for your business. This system offers customers with a more flexible reward. As a beauty product or a pet food supplier, you can collaborate with other online business to create a program beneficial for both of you and your customers.

If you own a beauty store, you can use a point base system and collaborate with different other fashion businesses to spend their points on a diverse range of products. Even collaborating with a salon is a great idea as the points earned can pay for a wash and a cut. The same applies to a pet store, as grouping with a local pet salon or veterinarian is a great advantage for both businesses.

Further, the more your customers spend the higher-priced product they receive. This creates brand awareness and drives revenue for all involved in the program.

Final Thoughts

If you implement any of the above 5 loyalty programs with care and thought, they will add value to your online shopping business. Further, you will see positive results, build a bigger customer base, and build a connection between you and your client. The results may not be instantaneous, but the results will astound you. Keep those retail businesses of yours going, as we cannot live without it anymore.

Site Navigation

> Home

> Solutions

> Payment Methods

> Consulting

> Partners

> About

> Careers

> Contacts

> Blog

Resources

> Privacy Policy

> Terms and Conditions

> PCI Certification

> SRO VQF Membership

Developers

> API Documentation

Your ARETO Profile

> Sign In

> Apply Now

Compliance

DISCLAIMER

Areto Payment Processing Services AG is a licensed Financial Intermediary and member of the VQF, a self-regulatory body approved by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) for the supervision of the financial intermediaries.