5 Factors to Keep in Mind When Using Loyalty Software for Convenience Stores

Store owners who have recently installed loyalty software for convenience stores: pay close attention to what follows. The design of your customer loyalty program needs to incorporate the following five essential factors in order to succeed:

Ease-of-Use

Customers visit a convenience store because it is ‘convenient’. Bombarding customers with complicated terms and conditions of a complex loyalty program isn’t the best strategy to keep them coming back. The program should be as simple as possible, and more importantly, easy to explain. You can offer unique discounts and deals on a variety of products to make the program engaging and relevant for your customers. As a thumb-rule, if you cannot describe all the essential features of the rewards program in under 20 seconds, you need to simplify it.

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Frequency of Offers

Identifying when a particular customer prefers to visit your convenience store can help you roll out timely rewards, discounts, and deals. It is important that marketing and promotional offers reach your customers in a timely manner to increase the likelihood of them availing for the same. Intelligent loyalty software solutions for convenience stores, like Loyera, will help you record and analyse customer behaviour and thereby help you design the best offers and deals for them. Furthermore, you will also get insight into customer taste and preferences, and be able to identify popular products. This information can assist you to take important business decisions as well.

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Employees

Unlike most other businesses, the employees of a convenience store play an integral role in the success of a customer rewards program. They not only enrol more customers into the program but also educate them on current offers and deals in a personalized way. Designing an incentive program for your employees to get maximum customer sign-ups, or ensuring the maximum sale during festivals and events is a sure-shot way to ensure that you are able to use your loyalty software for convenience stores to the best of its potential.

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Flexible Rewards

Nothing puts off customers more than when stores and loyalty programs are in the wrong or even the mere impression that they are not being fair. To ensure that loyal customers are able to actually accrue some tangible benefit by being a part of the loyalty program, the rewards on offer need to be flexible enough to be redeemed interchangeably. On the plus side, a convenience store is the place to find any product of everyone’s liking, and store owners need to make the most of this. In simple words, make sure you offer flexible and valuable rewards to loyal customers and design the customer rewards program to be as inclusive as possible.

Engagement

The most critical aspect of any customer loyalty program is consistent and effective engagement with all types of customers: loyal, new, and recurring. By the virtue of the business, convenience stores owners can engage their customers in a multitude of ways while they are shopping. The trick is to stimulate customer buying behaviour using concepts of psychology and retail and keep them completely engaged during the entire shopping experience. An immersive shopping experience for your customers will enhance their active participation in the program.

What are some of the other ways in which store owners can use loyalty software for convenience stores to increase customer retention? Get in touch and let us know!