Bricks and mortar store owners have leveraged loyalty programs for return customer sales and larger order totals, but they've rarely had the client data that a modern digital retail presence provides.
Loyalty programs translate to many benefits during the customer lifecycle, and have an even larger impact when tightly integrated with other marketing processes. Some of the benefits include:
Digital commerce has long relied on customer information supplied when signing up to newsletters, competitions, and completing carts, which are equally valid methods for gaining interest from potential customers. Newsletters and promotions are often delivered to these lists, and can be relatively successful, but don't often consider the audience or individual customers and their preferences and interactions with the store in the past.
By leveraging the customer data available, heavily customised campaigns can be integrated with premium loyalty programs. Specially crafted promotions distributed to select customers take into account their purchase and viewing history as well as purchasing habits, resulting in much higher interest from customers.
Applying similar principles used to analyse the performance of changes to content and website functionality is key to crafting a successful loyalty program. Blending the data from all interactions leads to greater success, and further analysing the impact on each customer helps drive future communications.
A successful loyalty program will identify and class existing customers, and offer a variety of incentives based on their appetite. These unique and relevant promotions include exclusive shopping experiences, personalised offers, access to pre-sale events, and invite-only promotions.
Memberships, rewards, and loyalty programs have been growing in popularity in the top digital commerce retailers. Over 35% of the top 500 retailers offered a free loyalty program in early 2021, representing a growth of around 38% since the previous year.
Advances in platforms on the B2B market have flow-on effects in the B2B2C and B2C approaches to loyalty. A well crafted, communicated, and integrated loyalty program will benefit both the wholesaler/distributor and the retailer.
To gain the benefits of premium loyalty programs and leverage integration with the rest of your digital marketing, consider discussing your intentions with our digital commerce and marketing team. If you're already a customer, we'll be able to give you an even better idea of the benefits personalised marketing would provide your store.
We improve every aspect of the customer journey, which is why we provide consulting, advice, and solutions well beyond the traditional digital commerce agency.