Loyalty drives customer attraction and retention for modern brands
Customers have more options than ever online and offline. Here are four ways to beat your competition by using loyalty programs:
Offering a unique loyalty experience
Companies can increase their value by adding features to enhance the customer experience. For example, Tru’s loyalty programs include custom designs for web portals, cards and card carriers. This is important because a brand’s visual presentation is often the first touchpoint on a customer’s journey. Some companies, like American Express, famously indicate tiered card rewards based on a card’s colour. As a result, the AmEx brand retains customers from hip-hop to transit.
Attracting customers with referrals
Today, 90% of companies employ a customer engagement or loyalty program. At the same time, 61% of customers switched at least some of their purchasing from one brand to another in the last year. This means companies must reconsider where they spend on loyalty and how they aim to attract new clients.
One option is to focus on retention through highly satisfied clients. For example, cities (i.e. Mississauga) running successful Tru Prepaid Programs may lead to interest from local associations (i.e. Pearson International Airport). Importantly, brands must appreciate the power that modern consumers have through online reviews and word-of-mouth advertising. Social media’s reach increases this power. So, brands retaining their most satisfied customers may rely on those customers’ relationships to recruit new customers while retaining current ones.
Using data to drive smarter decisions
With data collection, ‘the sooner the better’ is always the best answer.
Former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer
Former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer said, “With data collection, ‘the sooner the better’ is always the best answer.” In loyalty programs, this means organizing customer activity and analyzing to understand consumer habits. Global companies like Amazon, Apple and Google study enormous amounts of data, but your business can make smarter strategic decisions from your current customers too. There are many free data analysis tools to get you started.
For instance, if customers prefer converting points to crypto rather than spending points as cash online, then your business can tailor more rewards to crypto users. Moreover, this may give you a new lead when identifying new markets—a valuable time saver from the information you already collect.
Diversifying services in competitive industries
Modern customers are increasingly fond of do-it-all platforms— termed super apps— where products and services are centralized. But some industries, like Insurance, do not benefit from digital experiences like tech companies. This is because many insurance customers value price over features. In turn, insurance companies race for the lower price, creating high customer churn.
The solution is to offer loyalty programs that form relationships with customers and their families— loyalty drives customer attraction. Certainly, this type of personal relationship is useful in an industry like insurance, where children of adult customers will eventually purchase insurance too. Some loyalty examples include limiting rate hikes for minor accidents or improving reward quality over time. These adjustments retain customers in industries where “shopping around” is normal.
Contact us to grow your business through the power of intelligent loyalty.
