Written by: Mrudul

Importance of omni-channel loyalty programs

Customers these days want a seamless and flexible shopping experience. They want to have the same experience and maintain their preferences across all channels, be it mobile, website, or physical stores. There is no doubt that customers would want a personalized and consistent experience across all channels. You need to be able to cater to

Customers these days want a seamless and flexible shopping experience. They want to have the same experience and maintain their preferences across all channels, be it mobile, website, or physical stores. There is no doubt that customers would want a personalized and consistent experience across all channels. You need to be able to cater to such expectations in this highly competitive eCommerce sphere.

The behavior of customers keeps changing, and it has been so for a long time. There has been an evolution in it. Customers will not think of different channels of your brand as separate entities. All they want is to complete the transaction as fast as possible with little resistance. Omnichannel loyalty programs help you build profitable sales and increase your customer retention.

Let us look at why omnichannel loyalty programs are important for your business.

  • Offers seamless customer engagement:
  • Omnichannel loyalty programs offer a variety of ways to engage customers; it allows them to go through their rewards while increasing their loyalty and your sales. Thanks to RFID, Personal Shopping Assistants, wireless E-tags, real-time POS, etc., such strategies are possible.

  • Connect with customer’s preferences and passion:
  • By aligning your omnichannel loyalty program with your brand identity, you will be able to enhance the value of your offering. If you are a fitness brand, you can offer a special discount for customers who walk daily or complete a marathon. It will bring them closer to your brand as you connect with something they are passionate about. The same works when you promise to send a part of your profits to a charity of the customer’s choice for customers who are into giving back to society.

  • Boosts customer loyalty:
  • Omnichannel customers not only tend to spend more, but they also become premium customers. It drives repeat purchases and even makes them stick to your business instead of going for a competitor. They would even be more likely to recommend your business to their friends and family as well. As long as you maintain a positive relationship with your customers, you will be able to draw in more customers. The ones with you already will be loyal to you because you are giving them an experience that they did not get from your competitors.

  • Better sales and more traffic:
  • When you incorporate an omnichannel loyalty program for your brand, it will positively affect your sales and see an increase in traffic. Customers who used an omnichannel program were more likely to spend more money than customers who only used a single channel.

  • Unify your customer profiles:
  • Today’s business growth is all about data. Without it, many decisions that companies take will be only based on guesswork. One of the best ways to collect data that can be actionable is to tap into a customer’s lifestyle. If you happen to have different data from your POS, CRM, or loyalty program, it can be confusing. You need unified customer profiles that will help you collect the correct information and help you understand what your customers want to give it in the right manner.

  • Engage customers across channels:
  • The average customer’s journey is layered and is across different channels. In an omnichannel communication, the customer is targeted at various communication touchpoints. The brand will choose to connect with customers based on their user journey. It will target them based on existing user data that they will collect and analyze.

  • Treats customers like royalty:
  • The objective of royalty programs is not only to increase sales but mainly to reward the shoppers throughout the entire lifecycle. With the help of an omnichannel loyalty program, you will be able to track customer behavior, segment them, and personalize each and every interaction with them. You could create any type of loyalty program according to what will work for your business. By leveraging it, you can increase the value of your average order, improve your customer retention rates, boost customer engagement, connect with customers on a deeper level, and so on.

  • Provide exclusive experiences:
  • Thanks to omnichannel loyalty programs, you can offer exclusive experiences for your customers. By offering them something personalized and original, you can make them feel privileged and special. By using data-driven insights, you will be able to figure out the kind of rewards that will make them happy. There are a variety of reward systems that you could add to your loyalty program. 99minds’ loyalty program lets you choose the kind of rewards that you want to offer to your customers and customize it as much as possible.

  • Customer journey orchestration:
  • When a customer goes through your suite of products and finally decides to buy, you have to make the buying process effortless and smooth. They should have a uniform experience during every step of the transaction process. If a customer breaks their journey on one channel, let’s say your mobile app, and then goes to the web version of your site, they should be able to continue the journey without any difficulty. They should not make the customer start the whole process again.

Here is an omnichannel loyalty checklist:

Planning a loyalty program that helps your customers in the way you want requires a process and effort from your side. Here are a few items that you need to have in mind to achieve that:

    1. Where do your customers browse and shop the most? Make sure that they have a smooth experience across all of these channels.
    2. Map out the data from different points so that it is unified.
    3. What are the offers and promotions that you use to attract your customers and prospects?
    4. What are the rewards that your customers would love to have
    5. How can you build a better relationship with your customers?

The answers to the above questions will help you build an omnichannel loyalty program that will give the right rewards for loyal customers.

Conclusion:

Omnichannel loyalty programs will help you make rich dividends as soon as you implement them. Thanks to the data that you collect as a part of this program will also enable you to measure, and it will help you analyze your results. This way, you can keep improving your results. Attracting new customers is more challenging than you think. In fact, it is much easier to make your existing customers stay with you if you keep them happy and satisfied with you.

With the help of 99minds loyalty program, you can create a reward system for your business where you could show appreciation for your loyal customers. Talk with our loyalty program experts, and we will be more than happy to set up your loyalty program.