Loyalty programmes have been around for over 100 years, allowing customers to get rewarded for sticking with a business. Now, thanks to the internet, it’s easy for even small and midsize businesses to set up a similar arrangement. Competition may be fierce and not every programme is made equal, but these three building blocks are present in almost all successful loyalty programmes.
1. Offers for Loyal Customers and Newcomers
It’s self-explanatory for a loyalty programme to have unique rewards available to those who are part of the club. However, companies need to draw people toward that loyalty programme in the first place. That’s why modern businesses still provide offers for non-members and newcomers, as it’s a proven way of introducing users to a company.
This is popular with pretty much every online enterprise, from e-commerce stores to digital platforms like audiobook sellers or iGaming websites. With the latter, it’s common for sites to offer free spins for new or fan favourite games, so newcomers will check them out too. This approach can be seen with bingo at Paddy Power, where both free spins and deposit bonuses are on offer. At the same time, they operate a Rewards Club that includes weekly bonuses for the bingo rooms and slots hosted on the site.
By providing both offers, it creates a natural sales pipeline where customers will find the business and then engage with it on their own terms. A lot of newcomers or infrequent customers might try the offer, then some will stick around to see what the loyalty programme contains. Without those newcomer offers, the barrier to entry for a loyalty programme can seem higher and less appealing to an audience.
2. Use Insights to Give Customers What They Want
Passionate business owners can fall into a trap – offering what they think is good value instead of what their audience thinks is a good deal. That’s why the best loyalty programmes keep a close eye on their audience and what they’re talking about. They even track interest metrics for the rewards being offered.
Finding out what your audience thinks is easier than ever, thanks to social media and forums where customers can voice their congrats or concerns directly to you, the business owner. Those platforms come with likes, shares and review sections that can all be used to track how customers react to rewards. Many of them even include the ability to host polls and directly survey the audience on what they want to see in a loyalty programme.
Fans will create a community themselves if there are enough of them, but many retail and B2C enterprises start their own community to get better access to feedback. That’s why entrepreneurs can find a step-by-step guide at HubSpot Blog, all about fostering one of these online communities.
3. Personalise Customers’ Experiences
Personalisation is all the rage today, especially with retail businesses. Whether consciously or unconsciously, customers will gravitate toward companies that properly identify and cater to their interests. For e-commerce, this is where a store tracks the items each account buys. So, if a user prefers tech products, they’ll get a tech product discount if they join your loyalty programme. For a user with different buying habits, that part of the deal would apply to clothing instead.
Using widely available e-commerce tools, small businesses can achieve an impressive level of personalisation for their customers. More examples from giant brands like Amazon and Sephora can be found in this McKinsey report about personalising the customer experience.
Using these three building blocks, entrepreneurs should find it much easier to attract customers, then offer a loyalty programme that’s popular with the whole community and includes personalised rewards for each user. With all else being equal, this should create a more attractive loyalty programme when compared to competitors who neglect any of these important steps.
