Customer Loyalty Programs have proven to be an effective and robust strategy to bring stability and scalability for businesses. While the concept of rewarding loyal customers has been around for more than two centuries, the idea of charging them for an exclusive membership was on its way out until Amazon hit gold with Amazon Prime. For the uninitiated, Amazon Prime is a paid loyalty management program that helped Amazon script its meteoric success and growth. Here are a few things that Amazon Prime did exceptionally well in order to implement a successful paid loyalty program:
Exclusive Benefits and Access
The first thing that Amazon Prime membership does to a new member is overwhelm them with benefits! You get priority delivery, exclusive deals, unlimited access to video and streaming services, and offers on other Amazon products like Kindle and Alexa. For an individual all these benefits for just a few extra dollars a month can prove to be rather lucrative and the numbers prove it; Amazon has over a 100 million Prime members all over the world.
Free-Trial
Before asking its customers to loosen their purse strings, Amazon gives a 30-days free trial of the Prime membership. During the trial period, a customer can enjoy all the benefits like faster delivery and exclusive discounts, in addition to accessing Prime Video and Music streaming services. While a free trial is not a new concept, it works rather effectively in whetting the customers’ appetite for special benefits and discounts.
Customised Offers
Prime membership opens the door for you to get exclusive offers on the products that you are looking for. With an army of sophisticated data experts to sort through customer information and data, Amazon has really mastered the art of offering personalised rewards on relevant products by effectively developing and using smart reporting and analytics tools to make sense of hordes of customer data.
Liberal Discounts and Renewals
Prime members not only receive their orders on priority, but are eligible for special offers, flash sales, and limited period discounts as well. Furthermore, the renewal policy on Amazon also throws in extensions of the Prime membership by one, or more, months. This creates a strong positive reinforcement that rewards customers for being associated with the loyalty program.
Aggressive and Persistent Promotions
Non-Prime members are consistently reminded of everything that they are missing out on. By making the order cheaper and faster for Prime members and highlighting the same at every step of the order, Amazon creates this sense of desire for regular customers to join the ‘elite’ club and enjoy the benefits that come along. The low entry-price barrier naturally helps in higher conversion rates.
Speedy Grievance Resolution
Companies that have a paid Customer Loyalty Programs simply cannot afford to disappoint their customers and Amazon knows this all too well. Their grievance resolution and customer service is prompt and prioritises customer satisfaction above everything else. Prime members are offered a live chat support to address all order and payment related queries and are also asked for feedback to improve products and services.
While a giant like Amazon can afford to ask its customers to pay for loyalty membership, smaller businesses usually offer it for free and absorb the costs of running Customer Loyalty Programs. However, using intelligent cloud-based loyalty management software solutions, like Loyera, businesses can offset a major part of expenditure associated with running a loyalty program. To know more about how your business can benefit from Loyera, get in touch with us today!