Mrudul
Loyalty is one of the most underrated traits in relationships as well as businesses. If a business were to concentrate on increasing the loyalty of its customers, then they would see a significant increase in the profits generated. It is not easy to gain the loyalty of your customers either, Accenture Strategy’s global survey says that 47% of customers will stop doing business with a brand if they happen to disappoint them.
It is all right if you haven’t had a loyalty program in place until now. But it would be a terrible mistake to not employ one after reading this, 70% of customers are more likely to recommend a brand that has a good loyalty program, according to The Loyalty Report. One of the most important statistics that you need to observe is this- 66% of the customers say that the fact they could earn rewards for purchasing actually changes their spending behavior.
Customer loyalty programs aren’t something new. The extra candy that your retailer gives you after a huge purchase is also a method to make you keep doing business with them, and an excellent example of customer retention tactics. If your business is on the Internet, then it is a whole new game where you can collect data of your customers from different touch points so that your targeting and rewards can be personalized.
Want to get the best out of your loyalty and promotion programs? Here is what you can do:
Personalization is the key when it comes to loyalty programs as customers don’t want a reward that is impersonal to their needs. If you can’t customize the rewards to specific customers, then at least ensure that it is customized to your brand and your entire audience. The first step would be to come up with an interesting name for the customer rewards program software. The name of the customer loyalty program should be connected to your brand. Use your customer’s habits to come up with rewards and incentives that work best for them.
“The process of taking something that already exists – a website, an enterprise application, an online community – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty,” says Rajat Paharia, author of Loyalty 3.0, to describe gamification. Gamification introduces a sense of fun into any activity. With leaderboards, you can also help discover the competitor in your customers. By adding gamification to your customer loyalty programs, you can create tremendous excitement surrounding your campaigns.
If your plan is to keep the scales so high that it is too difficult to win, then be prepared for your customers to hate you. When the prizes are huge, your customers will expect some kind of difficulty, but it shouldn’t be something where they have to spend more money and time only to get something that is disproportionate to the effort involved.
If it’s too difficult to get rewarded, then it will discourage your customers from pursuing it. Keep your loyalty program in such a way where even the smallest of transactions would fetch points for your customers; it could be as simple as completing surveys, answering polls, purchasing something from you, etc.
There is hardly any other type of marketing that is more powerful than word-of-mouth kind. We would advise you to use loyalty programs not only to keep your existing customers thirsting for me but to leverage their loyalty to get newer customers. When a customer who has already enjoyed using your product recommends it to someone they know, there are higher chances that they will be more inclined to buy something from you the next time because there is a lot of trust factor involved. When you incentivize this in your customer loyalty program, you will be getting more shares than what you would normally get.
The difference between an ordinary incentive and a customer loyalty program that works every time is how unforgettable it is. Customers are enamored by gifts, and if the process of getting them is nowhere close to being remembered, then you are doing yourself a great disservice. Remember that customer rewards program software is useful not only to increase loyalty but also to improve the relationship with the customer. No matter how big or small the reward is, customers are more likely to remember how they felt when being a part of it.
Imagine if your customer has to read a long copy with instructions on how to be a part of the customer loyalty program? How inconvenient would that be! The customer rewards program software should be drafted in such a way that it should be understandable at first glance for anyone. In fact, keep it so simple that no one has to get in touch with the customer service executive to understand the rewards program.
Make your loyalty program so interesting that customers get on the bandwagon just to kill time with the added benefit being that they get rewarded for this behavior. Don’t let the customers feel as if they are being sold to. No one likes that. Use it to form a connection with the customers and not look at it as a transactional event between the business and the customer.
In this time and age, when users access everything on the mobile, it might even be a little presumptuous on our part to advise that you should go mobile. Why? Because everyone you know has a mobile phone on their person and it would not be wise if you didn’t mobile-optimize your customer loyalty program. If your loyalty program, gamified as they may be, is not adequately optimized to mobile versions, it will seriously affect your chances of increasing retention rate.
Loyalty programs are an excellent way for you to retain your customers. When the sole focus is on retaining customers, there is nothing as effective as this. It applies all the principles of marketing to create an experience for your existing customers that will reward and incentivize them for every action. When you have a working customer loyalty program in place, do not worry about your retention rate. Your only goal should be to learn from each of your loyalty campaigns and ensure that you increase its effectiveness. If you are looking to work with a customer rewards program software that will stop the leaky bucket of customers who are on the verge of leaving you, then look no further than 99minds.