A loyalty program is a strategy that enables a business to offer incentives to customers on a timely basis. Recently, digitalization changed the way people transact with businesses. Because of this, a loyal customer is now not only necessarily a regular customer but someone who spread the word about you and brings referrals.
To retain existing customers in a competitive and ever-changing needs of consumers is not an easy task. It requires the right marketing strategy, resources, and engaging incentives. It requires immense efforts, various marketing strategies and innovative customer loyalty programs to make customers happy and to increase customer engagement and boosts conversions.
1. Do your research
To have a successful loyalty program, you have to first conduct research. Some of the most important variables you may want to focus on your research is the right product(s) you want to use, characteristics and behaviour of your target clients, preferences in terms of reward and the like.
You need to find out the objective of your campaign, analyze the nature and size of your business and create a program that can help you to accomplish your goals for the business. Also, just not consider just the business objectives but also consider the customer’s expectations, behavior, and current market trends. This will help you build the mechanics for your loyalty program.
2. Simplicity
The more complicated the loyalty rewards program is, the harder it is for your customer to understand it. Thus, it will be less enticing for your customers plus the take-up rate will be below average.
Make the mechanics and the process as simple as possible so that customers can easily understand it. To implement a customer loyalty program successfully, the very first step is to make it easy for your customers to sign up for the customer loyalty program. You may want to maximize digital platforms to make it easier for you and your customers. Also, with digitalized platforms or tools, it will be easier for you to track your loyalty campaign.
3. Use of digital rewards
One of the burdens carried by the consumers in loyalty programs is claiming their rewards. Most of the times, they have to claim their rewards in a physical store. On the other side, companies also have a lot of burdens too such as distributing their rewards to their consumers which is harder when consumers are geographically diversified.
Thanks to digitalization, all of these burdens can be solved. With Sodexo Mobile Pass, you can easily send your rewards without additional cost and hassles while your customers can easily receive their rewards via SMS. Sodexo Mobile Pass is accepted in the country's top preferred merchants. Learn more about Sodexo Mobile Pass here.
4. Stay connected with your customers
Always stay in touch with your customers when you start your loyalty program. Provide additional value over your loyalty program to keep them engaged. Email marketing and Facebook ads are great channels to stay in touch with your customers. Through this, it will be easier for them to get to know about all your special offers or news about your company or product.
5. Make it personalized
If you want to make your loyalty program standout against your competitors, make it personalized. Maximize the customer data that you have such as:
- Demographics
- Purchase history
- Basket size
- Frequency of buying
- Wish-list
The more personalized, the more engaging it is for your customers as it brings an 'exclusive' impression or feel to your customers.
