10 Benefits Of Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs offer various benefits to customers and businesses alike. Some of the benefits of loyalty programs include:
- Increased customer engagement and loyalty: Loyalty programs encourage customers to continue doing business with a company, leading to increased customer engagement and loyalty.
- Better customer insights: Loyalty programs often collect data on customer behavior and preferences, which can be used to improve products, services, and marketing strategies.
- Increased customer lifetime value: By encouraging customers to remain loyal, businesses can increase the customer lifetime value, leading to more repeat business and higher overall revenue.
- Improved customer retention: Loyalty programs help to retain customers and reduce churn, as customers are incentivized to stick with the brand.
- Increased brand recognition and awareness: Loyalty programs can help to increase brand recognition and awareness by encouraging customers to engage with the brand and promoting it to their friends and family.
- Rewards and incentives: Loyalty programs often offer rewards and incentives for customers, such as discounts, freebies, and exclusive offers, which can be a powerful motivator for customers.
- Competitive advantage: By offering a loyalty program, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Loyalty programs also provide a cost-effective way for businesses to incentivize and reward their customers. Unlike traditional forms of marketing, loyalty programs allow businesses to directly target and reward their most valuable customers, rather than reaching a broad audience that may not be interested. This helps to ensure that marketing dollars are being spent effectively, and that the customer experience is being positively impacted.
In addition, loyalty programs can also help businesses to improve their overall customer experience. For example, by tracking customer behavior and preferences, businesses can tailor their products, services, and communication to meet the needs of individual customers. This personalization can help to build stronger relationships with customers, and foster a sense of community around the brand.
Moreover, loyalty programs can also provide businesses with valuable feedback and insights into customer behavior. By analyzing the data collected through the loyalty program, businesses can identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the customer experience. This information can be used to optimize marketing efforts, improve product offerings, and streamline operations.
In conclusion, loyalty programs offer a wide range of benefits for both customers and businesses. By fostering customer engagement and loyalty, improving customer insights, and providing rewards and incentives, loyalty programs can help businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors, improve their bottom line, and create a more positive customer experience.
Reasons why customer loyalty programmes fail
The majority of customer loyalty programs encounter challenges
- They reward all their customers in the same way
- They initially create the program without considering the cost, but later realize it’s expensive to run further
- They become old and have no engagement
Brands engage with their customers differently, but when it comes to loyalty programs, they often reward their customers the same way even though you have customers with different needs and expectations from your brand. One approach to retain your customers won’t work.
Create a rewards program that keeps customers happy and coming back for more.
With so many brands available in the market, it is easier for your customers to get attracted to your competitors providing competitive offers like 20% discount, 30% discount. So, how are you going to stand out. That’s why your one approach to rewarding your customers should not be only about a monetary discount. Your loyalty programs must be something that set apart all your competitors and bring the customers to you.
Create a loyalty program that is focused on the customer. No “one size fits all” offers. Delight your customers with unique rewards that put your business front and center.
Keep your customers coming back by delighting and surprising them at every stage of their customer journey with unique rewards and e-vouchers for different target segments of your customers.
Focus on the customers who are most profitable or spend a lot on the brand or have the potential to become more loyal to your brand.
Segment your target groups
You can have as many segmented groups for your loyalty programs as you want, but you should be prepared to support strategic and different experiences for each group. Three or four groups should be sufficient. With Poket’s loyalty and referral program software, you can create VIP tiers that align with and effectively target each group.
The most loyal customers who engage frequently, no matter what you do, fall into the top group. The second group consists of customers with the greatest potential. They may have larger, less frequent purchases, or they may shop regularly but with many brands. Finally, there are the low value, low potential customers. This group has little need for your products or is already loyal to a competitor.
Structure of the programs
While it’s great to provide loyalty offers for each of your segments, one of the main goals of the programme should be to bring those in the second group – high-potential customers – into the top group. This is where you will spend the majority of your loyalty budget, but also where you will generate the most revenue.
To get your second group into the top group, you need varied experiences for these potential customers. It doesn’t help to simply give them a $20 discount and entice them to buy from you. Instead, offer VIP experiences that make them feel special and recognize their loyalty to the brand, such as a special pass or early access to new products. Focus on maximizing the potential of this group. Think about how you can increase their average spending so they spend more on your brand. You can offer special deals, like an event pass, etc. if they spend a certain amount on your brand.
And for the lower priority members, even if they need a less engaging approach, they should still be a marketing target. They may not get the premiere benefits, but they should be able to visualize and know the benefits of the premiere benefits to stay motivated.
With Poket’s marketing campaigns, brands can create highly targeted campaigns based on their level, spend and also demographics. These campaigns can be personalized for a unique customer experience.
Once your loyalty program is launched, you should constantly evolve your strategies. Even the best customer loyalty programmes get boring after a while and should be mixed with a variety of new programmes to keep customers engaged.
Focus on your best customers
Although we all know that 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of a brand’s profit, it is important to understand your valuable customers and their behaviour. Focus more on them and make them stay loyal to your brand for life, not just by following a discount- only strategy, but by offering loyalty programmes with great value for each segmented group.
