Offering a loyalty program to your customers is a powerful way of getting them on board with your brand, and keeping them there. But for many modern businesses who offer both physical stores and a digital one, it can be difficult to come up with a loyalty system that really hangs together.
Let’s take a closer look at this problem, and how it might be tackled.
What is a loyalty program?
A loyalty program is a collection of marketing strategies designed to attract and retain customers over the long run. By offering rewards and incentives, they aim to get customers to come back for more after they’ve made a purchase. Typically, these rewards come in the form of discounts and freebies. They’re often given in exchange for repeat custom, but they can also be dispensed to reward non-purchase behaviours, like signing up to a mailing list, or following a particular social media account.
Loyalty programs confer a number of advantages that more traditional forms of marketing can’t really reach. They can also complement other forms of marketing.
How do customers define loyalty?
It’s worth taking a look at this from a customer’s perspective. We can do this with the help of a survey from KPMG, which looked at 18,520 consumers in more than twenty countries. They found that product quality and value for money are the two most important criteria, with 74% and 66% of respondents respectively saying that these things would keep them loyal.
Your Industry
You’ll want to tailor your approach to loyalty according to the sort of industry you’re operating in. Your products, audience and brand image will play a role in shaping your strategy, as will technological changes.
Physical stores tend to be more difficult to set up than digital ones, but they provide a direct way for individuals to engage with brands and their products. Bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds can provide a means of targeting customers at multiple touchpoints, ensuring a much stronger and more consistent message.
Today, most customers consult their phone before making a purchase in a brick-and-mortar store. This can make the precise journey they take en route to a purchase more difficult to track. This is where omnichannel marketing comes in. By joining up your approach, you’ll be able to obtain actionable information on the entire customer journey – not just a small chunk of it.
Listening to your Customers
A good loyalty program will provide a means for customers to communicate their wishes. By gathering as much data as possible, you’ll be able to engage with customers in a more targeted, nuanced way, and cater to their wishes.
Your approach to loyalty programs should be informed by your future goals in terms of customer service. You might consider offering a slightly different approach for your online and in-store loyalty. This can help you to ensure that you’re getting the best out of both platforms.
Also Read: 5 Ways You Can Improve Your Business
