Loyalty Blogs

Loyalty is an underrated aspect as most of the industries & businesses have not realized its importance until it became an unavoidable necessity! When it comes to loyalty programs, personalization is quite an imperative aspect and has proven to boost 6.4 times member satisfaction. Speaking with numbers, only 2 in 10 members say that they are very satisfied with the level of personalization they’re getting from their loyalty programs.

Personalization is all about making use of customer data for better and fruitful customer relationships to not just carry long-term bonding but also drive better conversions. It basically means sending regular and relevant communications for delivering a helpful and extensively engaging experience. However, sales are not predictive, it’s better to use analytics and make an effort to improve your customers’ loyalty program’s personalization.

To your surprise, a stat states that on average 71 percent of consumers express some level of frustration when their shopping experience is impersonal. A loyalty program that fails to recognize a customer’s interests and behaviors would eventually lack in the process and will not be able to cater to customer interest in the future. Loyalty programs are all about rewarding customers for their long-term loyalty to a brand.

Why’s Personalization Important for your Loyalty Program?

Personalization is the key to an effective loyalty rewards program. Here’s what to expect-

• It should be exactly what the customers would expect

Customers have preset expectations from their brand loyalty program, though every customer knows a brand is collecting their data and always expect them to use it for the right purpose. A study by Marketo found that 79 percent of consumers are only likely to engage with an offer if it’s personalized to reflect the interactions they’ve had with the brand so far.

• It makes customers feel super valued

Personalization is one of the crucial pillars of customer retention. In absence of personalization, customers can slip away and may have a feeling that they’re not valued. Ultimately, customers would have strong reasons to spend on a brand that can value and understand what they would like to have. Also, some studies show that around 68 percent of customers will abandon a business relationship if they feel like the company is indifferent to them.

• It drives better revenue

It’s a simple rule, more customers getting onboarded will trigger greater revenue for the brand and that’s why customer retention is considered such an imperative aspect. A survey reveals that 86 percent of customers say that personalization influences their purchase. While 40 percent of U.S. consumers say that they’ve purchased something of a higher amount than the one they have planned because of the personalized service.

• It elevated loyalty program satisfaction

A satisfied customer would prefer the brand more and even have a probability to send in information to their friends and family. A press release in 2019 from Bond Brand Loyalty states that when personalized is done the right way, members are 6.4 times more satisfied with the program. Alongside data from the year, 2017 revealed that the customers think personalized rewards are the top thing that a loyalty program should be doing for them.

Essential Steps to Loyalty Program Personalization

Knowing your customers and basing your loyalty program on the same can land you great benefits! Here are 3 steps to make sure you’re on the right0 track with the right information.

• What information is required?

To send in personalized recommendations and provide customers with an experience worthwhile, you require to know your customers. What information should be collected and how your customers would expect the personalization.

First of all, there is no reason to resist oneself asking customers about the necessary information. A survey reveals that over half of consumers, around 57 percent are willing to provide personal information to a company online as long as it will be used to benefit their shopping experience with a brand. Before you start minting information, better to understand, what should you ask for

Starting from the basic information including name, email address, contact details, a brand should be asking for more detailed stuff like age, gender, professional, marital status, preferences based on products and services availed. It is equally important to know what information should be tracked? You must have tons of data collected instead of customer purchase patterns and their regular preferences, as a brand, you should be majorly focusing on tracking the purchase history and the loyalty program activity (rewards received, redeemed, and if any referrals are provided, etc.).

• How to ask customers for the information required?

Some reports state that around 55 percent of marketers believe that they don’t have enough data insights for effective personalization. So, as a brand, it’s not easy to fetch information or simply come forward asking customers about their details as they might not respond exactly when you’re willing to get one! To get the right information, it is important to know that customers would only respond as per their feasibility.

To simplify the process, you can start with a profile completion rewards program where customers can get rewarded for completing their incomplete profile. You can include all sorts of information in the same and choose what customers receive once they’ve completed filling in the required information. Another option is to start interactive activities and quizzes/gaming where customers can answer the questions asked on their preferences and product selections and receive rewards in return.

• How to put the collected information at work?

Now that you have all the necessary information collected, understand how to use it the right way! Important is to show the customers that their preferences and all the data collected are in proper use. Firstly, segment customers to provide the like mindset of individuals with the right offers/deals. Customers simply abandon a brand if they’re not providing anything relevant and the race gets tougher when there’s an excess of competition around.

Reward customers on basis of their regular transactions, checkout their purchasing history and personalize deals for them and make use of the demographics to create a VIP membership tier. You can use milestone-based rewards or offers options for the customers falling in one geographical area.

Final Thoughts

You must be having a loyalty program management software but are you utilizing the power of it in full force? If not, understand that personalization is the key! Experiment with customer data, use it the right way, and make sure you’re always on the edge when your customer needs any services related to your brand’s offerings.