Top 10 Must Dos for a Loyalty Program
Sorry Chief Marketer, your Top 10 Must Dos for a Loyalty Program was weak. so I created my own.
10) Give your loyalty program an online presence: I see a lot of small businesses with only Facebook pages. Social media is important and it's a great tool for engaging with your customers; however, it's still not everyone's go to mechanism for researching products and services. Create a simple WordPress or Tumblr site and start loading it with content about your products, FAQ's, tips, special events, how you got started, results from polls you hosted on your Facebook page - the variety of content is endless. And, oh yeah, talk about the perks of being a loyal customer.
9) Learn your loyalty customers names: In brick-and-mortar businesses, this goes a long way. [Insert shameless plug] It was really important to us when building Paycloud Business, our loyalty solution, that the customer's name was the first thing the cashier would see when a customer walks in.
Ecommerce shops should retweet, respond to e-mail and Facebook posts and thank and reward customers, by name with @, when they share a product review or endorse your brand online.
8) Your loyalty program should REWARD your customers: If your customers can't describe the benefit of your program in one sentence, then you're not truly rewarding them. If your program is memorable then you'll be more top-of-mind and drive increased shopping frequency and word-of-mouth.
7) Reward customers instantly when they enroll: Immediately demonstrate the type of exclusive perks your loyalty customers will enjoy.
6) Let your customers see the carrot: MindHacks.com recently highlighted a study from the Journal of Marketing Research that found people increase their shopping frequency the closer they get to the goal. Make your reward achievable, let your customers see their progress and you'll start seeing your customers more.
5) Give your loyalty program time to run: Loyalty program success hinges on driving repeat purchases and increasing average tickets. If you're like most businesses, you may have a an average shopper frequency of 1x per month - that means you won't even be able to measure the percent of your member base that returns for at least 4 weeks. And then, you may only get 2 - 5% to purchase on that next visit to start. Loyalty is about building a relationship. Give your data (and your loyalty program) at least 6 months to reach significance before you determine its success. During this 6 month period, collect e-mail addresses, give customers with the highest rate of increased frequency additional perks and send e-mails with special bring-a-friend or reward-for-referral to fuel word-of-mouth and new enrollments.
4) Apply the data: There are some benchmarks you can use in the beginning. If you're not seeing at least 3 - 5% of your enrolled loyalty members returning every month by month 4, then you may want to consider making your reward more enticing or shorten the number of visits required to reach the reward. And listen to your customers - maybe once a month you have a different special reward for loyalty members, chosen by loyalty members. Send an e-mail and ask people to select 1 of the 4 rewards you've selected by voting on Facebook or tweeting their response. This will increase your e-mail engagement and social visibility, gives them something to pass along to friends and keep your loyalty program top-of-mind.
3) Have a strategy: Everyone's objective is to increase revenue, but there are a million and one ways do that. If you want to increase frequency, then keep your program fresh and continually engage customers (engage - not bombard) to stay top-of-mind. If you want new customers, reward for bringing a friend, create easily passable offers and content, like videos, recipe or tip cards - show your potential customers how they'll benefit from your product. If you want to increase average ticket, then be spontaneous with sampling with your loyal customers - "Jennifer, we're launching a new drink, do you want to try it and tell us what you think?" If you start with a focused strategy, collect the data, then it's easier to see what's working and what's not.
2) Make the point-of-sale experience great: The purpose of loyalty is to reward and build a relationship with your existing customers. There isn't a better place or more valuable real-estate to enroll these best customers than at the POS. CPG companies clamor for end-cap and in-check-out aisle spots to capture that impulse buy. Take advantage of that space as the retailer to first, thank your customer, then tell them 1) What they get instantly for enrolling and 2) The reward (the carrot) they'll be earning towards with each visit. Build your member base quickly.
1) Keep it simple: If you can't describe your loyalty program in one sentence, it's too complicated. Your loyalty program is reflection of your brand and what your customers value - it's all about the relationship. You may be tempted to pick-and-chose different elements that you like in competitors' programs. The downside is that you don't have their data, so you don't know if it's working. Start with a simple program where customers earn toward a reward. Insert some surprises along the way that truly reflect your brand personality and what customers want. Then measure the response, keep an eye on your benchmarks and build from there.
