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It’s easier to keep your current customers happy than it is to acquire new ones. It’s also cheaper, faster and much more likely to land you in the eCommerce hall of fame with a cult following of die hard fans .
This is why a loyalty marketing strategy could be JUST the strategy you need to implement today.
Loyalty marketing is a marketing strategy in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives such as discounts, exclusive offers, and rewards. Loyalty marketing can extend from simple coupons, through to complex tiered rewards systems that encourage purchases through gamification.
Loyalty marketing offers significant benefits to businesses such as increased customer retention, stronger brand advocacy, and cost effectiveness.
Loyalty marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to cultivate long-term relationships and drive growth both on and off line.
Here are some examples of loyalty marketing schemes done right:
Starbucks rewards program has more than 20 million members worldwide. 71% of the app-version users of the loyalty program were visiting a store every single week by 2021. Starbucks sends relevant offers to members at crucial times and utilises segmented lists, data and trends to stay top-of-mind. And, with its wealth of insights, Starbucks has been able to expand the rewards program into a business-within-a-business.
Sephora were able to show their alliances with their customers’ core values by allowing loyalty program users to donate funds to Black Lives Matter fundraisers, raising money, increasing their visibility and impact and building more trust with their most loyal fans.
The North Face’s loyalty program makes it easy to earn points and you don’t have to even make a straight up purchase from the store to get them. Simply going to a North Face event or sometimes checking in at a store through the Facebook app is enough to earn you some extra love from the brand. A study from Mckinsey found that customers were more likely to continue to take part in loyalty programs if it was easy to earn points and rewards.
We recently introduced an eCommerce loyalty program for our client P&Co, and the results just 2 months after launch are astonishing. Over 18,000 customers have been reengaged, with 5 million points earned already. Check out the full story here.
We can all agree that not offering rewards and loyalty programs is potentially leaving money (and impact) on the table.
So,
Most consumers are smart and wary of marketing gimmicks. Nobody wants to feel sold to, unless it’s something they really enjoy buying.
Let’s not forget, loyalty and rewards programs are about rewarding your most loyal customers. Here are a few dos & don’ts for introducing a loyalty program that has an immediate impact on your bottom line and customer journey:
It should feel like a privilege to earn, not something that gets forced upon you at the end of every checkout experience. Make it feel special, for the real loyal customers that come back again and again.
Don’t make it difficult to join, and don’t make the signup happen at checkout. Nothing puts someone off checking out more than realising that it’s going to take more than 5 minutes to do it. Offer the loyalty program in your emails, on your home page, remind people after they’ve checkout in the thank you email. And make it quick & easy to do.
Make it a win / win and make the benefit obvious for them. Don’t just talk about the features of the loyalty program, talk about the benefits and make it about them, not you. What’s in it for them? Why should they care? At this moment in time, joining with zero points or benefits is not an attractive proposition. Why should they join right now? Will they get extra points on signing up? Will they get discounts off their favourite products immediately? Can they get a discount on their first purchase?
Don’t just think about the front-end of a loyalty or rewards campaign, what happens after they sign up? What do they get that’s different from your regular list of customers? How can you make loyalty customers feel the exclusivity and excitement of being in this special club?
Do you and your customers have shared values? Are there charities you know they love to support that your brand could get behind, too? What is relevant for them right now? How can you let them know you’re both on the same team now?
Don’t make the process for earning rewards over-complicated or pointless. And keep the rewards relevant to the average order value of your products. It’s no good having a rewards scheme that offers someone a free coffee once they’ve spent £2000 if your average order value is £5.
If you set your loyalty program up well, it has the potential to feed your marketing with fresh insights and data about your highest paying, most loyal (and therefore ideal) customers. Set up the program with this in mind from the get go. What insights will be important to you? How will you know when you have data you can use? What decisions will you look to make with that data? How do you plan to grow from here?
Have you been thinking about introducing a loyalty program but don’t know where to start? Or do you have an underperforming loyalty program that you want to refresh and bring back to life? Get in touch with our team to have a chat about what needs to be done to introduce the kind of program that actually works. For both you and your customers.
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