Every business wants their customers to return for more purchases and to talk nice about them. There are simple ways to accomplish that, yet many businesses fail at retaining customers, and hence spend a huge amount of money in marketing and acquiring new customers to sustain their business.
Businesses do create loyalty programs to retain customers, but loyalty is not just based on reward points. Customers like to get a good deal, and feel appreciated and heard.
Designing effective loyalty programs is an art. Customers who get good products, services and value for money return for more, and customers who are satisfied over a period of time even speak good words about you.
Therefore, to earn loyalty and advocacy of customers, businesses need to install loyalty software solutions like Loyera, which empower them to offer value to their customers and get value in return.
Here are a few ways an artful loyalty programs can be developed using a loyalty software like Loyera:
Know Thy Customer
Know your customers through customer data offered by your loyalty software. Identify the products your customers prefer and the services they put maximum value on. Use that knowledge to give offers on preferred products to make your customers happy and enlist their loyalty.
Appreciate your Customers
Send ‘Thank you’ notes to customers after a purchase is complete, or a few days later. This makes your customers feel recognised and appreciated. It also helps in generating recall value for your brand.
Some businesses go beyond thank you notes and send gift vouchers or physical gifts to their loyal customers. This may be differentiated for customers in different tiers of loyalty.
Identify Advocates
Advocates are customers who willingly talk good about your products and services. Use customer data from your loyalty software to identify customers who return for purchases again and again.
Offer these satisfied customers appreciation and incentive to speak well about you online and among their peers. This helps in online and offline reputation management and attracting new customers.
Show Love
We have already spoken about appreciating customers, but showing real care and love to your customers can really make a difference to your rate of customer retention.
Wish customers on their birthdays and anniversaries, use user data to identify their recurring purchases (weekly, monthly or annually) and remind them to buy it in case they have forgotten, send offers and promotions on priority to your loyal customers, follow a no-question-asked return policy with them, etc. Find creative ways to show love.
Educate and Entertain Customers
Giving something to customers doesn’t always mean giving monetary benefits. You can also offer value to customers in terms of useful information or entertaining content.
You can send user guides to customers about the products they have recently purchased, e.g. send two microwave recipes to a customer who recently purchased a microwave, or email a set of exercise videos to a shopper who purchased a fitness kit from you.
You can also send entertaining articles, images, Gifs and videos to customers as per their interest. This keeps customers engaged and reminds them of your brand.
Loyalty software solutions help you identify what customers like. They even apprise of you customers’ preferred time, days and months for shopping, so that you can create offers and content at the right time to get the maximum engagement.
Softwares like loyera help in accomplishing all the above activities—knowing, appreciating, loving, identifying and educating customers.
Businesses must approach the idea of customer loyalty with a no profit motive and with the intention of building a community. Businesses should strive to gain customers’ interest, support and advocacy.
These efforts go a long way in retaining old customers who spend 67 per cent more than new customers and even require less marketing efforts and expenses.
For this, you must choose loyalty software solutions that are flexible to let you implement creative loyalty activities and automate your efforts to gain efficiency in operations.
Make it a motto to care for your customers and see them turn into your best advocates.