Why your business needs a customer loyalty program?

Understanding your customers will help you sell more. The more effort you take to identify your customer’s needs, the easier it will get to target them with products and offers.

Targeting existing customers will not only reduce cost that you spend in marketing but also allows you to attract, educate and convert new ones. It becomes easier for you to find similar prospects, and market to them in the same pattern. Now that doesn’t mean you’ll benefit from all your customers. Every business will have some customers who are more valuable than others. Hence, it becomes important for you to identify the loyal ones and have a customer loyalty program in place, if you are looking to build a potential customer base, increase sales, and create a good brand name in the market.

Profiling your loyal customers and targeting them with your offers will make the most valuable use of your resources as well gain you results more than what you get targeting new ones.

How to identify your loyal customers?

Back in the days, customer loyalty had been measured using customers surveys.  Regularly identifying metrics like this with any accuracy will be costly, time-taking, annoying to customers, and is never going to be hugely meaningful. Google Analytics and other similar platforms collect data that could give you more meaningful metrics for free. Also, some platforms offer insights on what metric will be more effective and how you can replicate them in the platform. Implementing such tools will help you identify potential customers who can then be targeted in the loyalty program.

Customer loyalty program

Loyalty programs are found everywhere, even if we don’t realize or recognize it. For instance, when you visit a restaurant or a coffee shop that you frequently do – you know that feeling when the steward greets you with a smile and knows what would you like to order upon entering in. This approach does not only encourage you to make it one of your favorite places, but you also recommend it to your friends and family. Similarly, as a business owner you should thank your customers for their business by rewarding them, and if you don’t – you’re missing out on a potential opportunity that your competition may be capitalizing on. This method is known as customer loyalty program.

Advantages of a loyalty program

– Boost revenue

All successful businesses have one major goal in common: to make money more than what is spend. Loyalty program is one of the effective way that will help you boost revenue, as implementing this method most of your revenue will come from the small percentage of your total customer and those customers make loyal purchases on a regular basis. Also, this will boost brand value and enhance customer acquisition too.

– “Retain” existing and “Attract” new ones (@ less cost)

Have you ever figured out how much money you spend on acquiring new customers through channels like social media, PR campaigns, blogs, PPC, and others? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Or, maybe even millions? Implementing a loyalty program means you keeping your existing customers happy, which automatically shrinks a business’s need for acquiring new customer as well as create wonders for its retention.

– Good customer experience

Positive reviews of your brand can do more better that a marketing campaign. Rewarding your customers through a loyalty program will make them share their experience on your behalf. Doing this they are more likely to become your repeat customers and move into your “repeat” customer category.

– Stand out from the crowd

Thanking and rewarding your existing customers will give your business a unique identity. Repeatedly infusing some fun, engagement and attractive perks to existing customers will increase the brand value for your business, making it different from other businesses out there in the market. Loyalty program is an effective branding method what many businesses overlook.

Panning a customers loyalty program: Things to keep in mind

– Implement a tool to measure customer’s behavior and analyze what leads higher loyalty.

– Segment the loyal ones and identify opportunities to fit their needs and ways to take a step ahead.

– Analyze each segments behavior on social media accounts.

– Define the right mix for each segments using email marketing, content programs, etc. and create sub-segment based on their behavioral analysis and patterns to identify the correct channel to run your loyalty program.

– Plan a loyalty program layout to ensure each segments are targeted at correct intervals.

In Closing

If you take time and analyze – you’ll realize that close to 80% of the customers you have lost were once satisfied. Don’t overlook the importance of loyalty program to keep your existing customers satisfied, turning them into loyal customers and eventually advocates.