It's Not Your Customers, It's Your Customer Loyalty Program

Your company makes wonderful products that are expertly researched and developed to fill a gap in the market. You have a success team equipped with technology that ensures reliable and accountable customer service. Your marketing team is churning out resonant content that builds buzz among interested buyers and repeat customers. But, for some reason, you still don’t have a good grasp on your loyal customers and they aren’t responding well to the perks that you offer.

Rewarding repeat customer purchases is a good start, but that means offering more than crumpled coupons, forgettable discount emails, or point-of-sale trinkets. Successful loyalty programs are infused with the kind of undeniably rewarding value that will entice customers to come back for more. Your customer loyalty program should be like a tempting, multi-layer cake, not just the cherry on top.

It’s time to create a customer loyalty program that rewards customers and elicits strategic insight for your company, even if that means starting from scratch. Luckily, the problems that arise from simple, cut-and-paste customer loyalty programs provide marketing teams with the opportunity to implement a stronger customer loyalty strategy.

Automate, automate, automate

Mistake #1: Rewarding customers for consistently choosing your brand is a great business practice, but only if your customer loyalty efforts can match up to the rest of the customer experience. In an increasingly tech-savvy marketing landscape, it’s more important than ever to craft a customer loyalty program that adopts the look and feel of your brand. Hole-punched loyalty cards may be perfect for patrons of a quaint Mom and Pop ice cream shop, but the business goals and audience segments of a thriving brand can quickly outgrow traditional approaches.

How to fix this: Create a loyalty program platform that assigns individual details to users that opt-in and serves as a portal for customer feedback. One of the biggest perks of an automated system is the ability to share details with customers about their progress within the customer loyalty plan. There’s no reason why your cherished customers shouldn’t be able to access their rewards or be confused about their step in the process. If you’re looking to build a dynamic business, you’ll have to ditch static solutions.

Add real value

Mistake #2: According to a recent survey conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of Ambassador, 88% of Americans say they would like some sort of incentive for sharing a product via social media or email. Old-school loyalty programs offer the same basket of perks to every customer, but modern marketing teaches us that today’s customers have individual preferences and expectations.

How to fix this: Your brand must decide how to reward customers and choose specific actions to reward. Whether it’s through cold hard cash or warm and fuzzy loyalty points, be proactive in discovering what your customers really want. Upgrade your “pick an incentive, any incentive” formula to one that creates customized rewards that your customers will remember.

Create a community

Mistake #3: You have a host of loyal customers that know and love your brand, but they don’t know anything about each other. Wouldn’t it be nice to introduce and unite your loyal customers into a collective chorus that sings your praises?

How to fix this: A comprehensive customer loyalty program will provide the information necessary to enroll your customer and track their reward patterns. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to see the features that speak to specific segments. Your brand can amplify this dialogue by putting them in conversation with one another or using customer insight to shape strategic decisions. A 2016 survey conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of Ambassador revealed that two-thirds of Americans say they’re a least a little more likely to purchase a product after a friend or family member shares it via social media or email. The best loyalty programs create platforms with rich rewards that set a responsive and interactive tone for future brand efforts.

Building long-term customer loyalty

As you work to build a state-of-the-art, easy-to-use customer loyalty strategy remember that it’s never too late to spark a conversation. Find out what your customers are talking about and what they value. It will be a rewarding experience for your business and your brand ambassadors.