Best Strategies to Create a Loyalty Program and How to Make it Effective For More Sales

Intro

Having a great customer experience and offering value to customers in solving their pains will retain customers to your brand. Loyal customers stay with a brand for a long time as they use its services or products to solve their pains.

However, you can also use a customer loyalty program to get more customers and potential customers to convert and keep using your brand. As you start your loyalty program understand your customer preferences, behaviors, and interactions with your brand.

It will help you know what your customer wants and how to have the best loyalty program that favors them. The article gives insights on creating an effective loyalty program and driving more sales for your business.

What is a customer loyalty program?

It’s a marketing strategy brands use to motivate customers to use their products or services through offering incentives and other benefits that motivate them to keep using the business for a long time.

The program also helps brands attract and convert new buyers who start using the business to get those benefits as they solve their pains. Statista research shows that 79% of US consumers will stay with a brand for a long time when they get a loyalty or rewards program.

Benefits of customer loyalty program

• Appreciate their loyal customers Help brands recognize and motivate their customers to stay with the business for a long time.
• Brand advocacy When customers get great offers from a business that solves their pains and gets loyalty or rewards programs, they will advocate your brand to other potential customers helping you market it.
• Give the brand a competitive advantage To gain the trust and loyalty of customers in a competitive market, loyalty programs play a crucial role. Brands that offer these programs like discounts, and rewards attract and retain customers for a long time. For example, you can use Shopify POS with loyalty program to make selling simple and affordable and draw more customers to make repeat sales from your business.
• Collect useful data Brands can use loyalty programs to get useful information on customer preferences and behaviors that can help improve the brand's products or services and effectively solve customer challenges.

Strategies to Create a Successful Customer Loyalty Program

Offer valuable rewards

You don’t just want to give rewards, but ones that add value to your customer's lives and make it easy for them to solve their pain. Customers will not join or use the program if they don’t get added benefits from the business. Research shows that 68% of consumers will use brands providing the best value at an affordable budget.

Source: Statista

Offer different rewards based on the actions your customers take. For example, you could give points to a customer on any purchase they make. They can later convert those points into free tickets to events the business will organize.

Have a clear goal for your program

Ask yourself what you want to achieve with your loyalty program. This will help you know how to strategize your program and make it easy to reach your set goals. Do you want to convert leads to customers or encourage current customers to make big purchases? Or build a great community of customers as you aim to nurture them and prepare them for a higher quality product you’re about to launch?

Promote the program through marketing channels.

You can use channels like emails, social media, your website, and newsletters. Sharing the benefits customers will get when using your business can drive leads to convert and benefit from the program.

Since priorities change and customer preferences differ, use different marketing channels to engage customers and get them to join your loyalty program. Here is an example of our email newsletters to customers and prospects marketing our loyalty programs.

Source: Ranktracker

Have a great customer support team

You have to understand your customer needs and address them accordingly. As you plan to build your loyalty program, ensure you have an excellent and professional customer support team to handle customer challenges. Use different communication channels to address your customer needs anytime they come up. For example, here is our live chat link on the website to handle customer challenges anytime.

Source: Ranktracker

Customers will be more motivated to join a loyalty program when they see a brand understands their pains and gives the best support and solution to their pains. Here is a simple structure of a great customer support team.

Analyze and optimize your program

As you keep running your program, you will collect customer data and analyze what’s working. Let the customers give their feedback on the best plan they love on your loyalty program and then leverage it to drive more conversions and sales. Make the process of customer enrollment and redeeming points from your program easy. The long and complicated process will make customers shy away and lose an opportunity to make extra sales from your business.

Create a community for your program

You drive more engagement and interaction with customers and leads in your program. Through the community, customers can share their experiences about your brand products or services and even give you insights on how to better it. You can organize events within your organization to provide better value to your customers and get them to engage and even promote your brand to other prospective buyers.

Be consistent in your solving pains

Customers love brands that are consistently solving their challenges whenever they have them. With consistency in customer delivery and experience, your customers will be more than happy to be part of your loyalty program as they get consistent value from your brand anytime. Anytime a customer shows up at your business, ensure they get what they want as that will strengthen the relationship and even foster deeper trust and a sense of loyalty with you.

Share positive customer experiences

To capture target leads and get them to engage and even use and join your loyalty programs you have to build trust with them. One of the best ways to build relationships and trust is to have them take a look at your business through the eyes of your customers. Share testimonials from past and current customers with whom you solved their challenges. You can also share reviews of your business or case studies from past customers. Here is a testimonial from one of our clients.

Source: Ranktracker

Partner with other complimentary brands

You can join with brands offering complimentary services and give your customers more value when they use your business. With the partnership you can offer your customers offers that will drive them to keep using the brand and even become your brand ambassadors. The partnership encourages more sales as the customers can get different products from the joined brands to solve their pains.

Gamify your loyalty program

To make your program fun and exciting, you can gamify it with elements like badges to motivate customers to get more badges with higher levels as they keep using your brand. Other ways you can run your program with gamification include leaderboard rankings and mini-games.

Ways brands run loyalty programs

• Tiered programs Brands can offer their customers different tiers. These tier rates differ based on the features a business offers within a tier. The rewards a customer gets from each tier differ based on their spending and engagement with a brand. The more spending they have the higher tier level and the rewards a brand can offer them. Here is an example.

Source

• Early access(VIP) program. For instance, when a brand is launching a new product or feature, it can reach out to the customers through the loyalty program to give them early discounts on the products or services they’re launching. Also, some brands have paid membership loyalty programs where they get access to high-value products or solutions at discounted rates. Other benefits customers can get in this program include

1. Birthday gifts
2. Commission-free upgrades
3. Personal support agents from the company
4. Premium add-ons

• Data utilization Customers aren’t the same. You can gather your previous customer spending history and customize rewards that align with their spending preferences.
• Point system The customers can use their points and redeem them to get more from the business. For example, customers can redeem points to get discounts on products or services or get free offers from the brand.
• Referral programs Brands can offer their customers and even other marketers incentives to draw more customers to their brand. Through the affiliate program, the customers can get better services or rewards from the company while the brand gets new customers. Here is an example of our affiliate program.

Source: Ranktracker

• Subscription programs This is mostly for subscription businesses where customers can pay a given monthly or annual subscription to a brand. With that extra pay, the customer can get exclusive offers, and discounts for products or services from a brand as they keep using them on a recurrent basis.
• Hybrid loyalty program For this program, brands offer different loyalty programs to their customer. This gives the customer different choices they can take for the loyalty program. For example, a brand can combine subscription, referral, point system, and early access for their program.

Conclusion

Giving the best value to your customers and appreciating the thorough offers and discounts make them keep using the business products or services for a long in solving their pains.

Give your customers a great experience and know-how so they engage with your brand. Create loyalty programs that align with their preferences and user behaviors and motivate them to use your business more. If you’re looking to start or improve your loyalty programs for your business, implement the above tips in your marketing strategy for your loyalty programs.