Is Your Loyalty Program Efficient?

With all the loyalty programs on the market, it’s not enough to simply offer incentives or loyalty dollars. In order to make your loyalty program a success you have to continuously revise and fine-tune it. Your customers must feel that  your loyalty program offers interesting and personalized communication to them if you want it to play an integral part in their consumer habits.  A loyalty program can serve as an impressive leveraging tool for business growth but it must first work to enhance the customer experience before contributing to building solid engagement.

Here is a short list of staring points that you might want to give thought to either in choosing a loyalty program provider or evaluating your current program:

1. Does your loyalty program provide insider information only available to members?
2. Does your loyalty program offer advantages for its customers that would be impossible to provide for anyone else? Example: Starbucks Rewards programs offers free refills, custom offers, early access to new products, and easy payment with our mobile app.
3. Does your loyalty platform automatically process customer purchasing records to make the program better by generating personalized communication that targets its customers purchasing habits? Example: Mothercare connects to its database to generate tips and inspiration for every step of your child's development and personalized emails to help you each week of your pregnancy and as your baby grows.
4. Does your loyalty program also offer exclusive and relavant information to its members that does not directly serve as an incentive for a purchase. Example: Sephora encourages their Beauty Insider reward members to sign up for free beauty classes. Very Important Beauty Insider members get access to a custom makeover. Both the classes and the makeovers take away the pressure of having to purchase products, so members can explore makeup options.
5. Does your loyalty program make a distinction between active and non-active member in order to differentiate communication strategies. Examples of questions you must ask yourself: How many members are consciously aware that they belong to the program? How many members understand the program? How many members are truly actively managing their status to earn rewards and leveraging other program benefits.

Tune in next Friday for an in-depth analysis about differentiating communication strategies for active and inactive users.