Loyalty Blogs

What is relevant today might be outdated tomorrow for the new-age customers. Let’s face it—with Gen Z taking over a huge share of the market, brand loyalty is becoming one hard objective to achieve. This generation wants to experiment till it finds the brand with which it relates. With such a crescendo of expectations and behaviors to deal with, businesses are left with no choice but to adopt a flexible approach to loyalty management.  

Harder than being said, building an agile customer point system is not a cakewalk. Many factors play a role in enhancing the bandwidth of a business to deliver customer-centric and ever-evolving loyalty programs. Let’s understand further what it takes to build an agile loyalty program and how it can benefit your business. 

But first, let’s know more about what an agile loyalty program is.  

Agile Loyalty Programs: The Need of the Hour   

A customer who wants to earn 2x points when purchasing an electronics product during the festive season must not feel dejected when they earn basic and fixed reward points instead. No customer wants to get stuck in the loop of a stagnant and company-centric customer point system. If your loyalty program is checking the following list, you have succeeded in turning it into a customer centric reward program.   

• It gives control in customers’ hands when it comes to redemption types.   

• It remembers customers’ preferences and offers something personalized.   

• It offers a top-class mobile-first experience for customers to track and manage their loyalty points.   

• It takes customers’ feedback seriously and reflects the same in their loyalty initiatives.   

• It is constantly improving the loyalty programs to keep them relevant, rewarding, and easy.   

Agile loyalty programs are flexible and continuously evolving. The iterative approach makes customers seen and heard. Let’s find out what features agile loyalty programs must have.   

How an Agile Loyalty Program Must Be?   

Let’s start exploring what the different touchpoints are through which a customer interacts with a loyalty program. An agile loyalty initiative will take the following things into consideration:  

Customer Experience   

It’s the customers that’s at the focal point of brands aiming to build lasting relationships. With customers being highly dynamic in what they want from a brand, it has become paramount to prioritize their experience. They want more than just good products or services.   

It’s the loyalty program platform that makes or breaks the deal for businesses. If the design, interface, and features are intuitive and engaging, customers are likely to participate more in the loyalty programs. Talking about making your platform design and interface agile, customer feedback is the goldmine that can help you stay a step ahead. By using data-driven retail loyalty software, you can analyze customers’ data and tweak your loyalty programs as per the liking of the customers.  

Iterative Approach  

Don’t just go for a platform revamp or update overhaul. It can make retail loyalty software way too alien for the customers. Customers appreciate the ease and familiarity of a loyalty platform to the point they truly feel rewarded. Instead of introducing too many new things to your loyalty structure, you can go for gradual updates that can keep your loyalty programs relevant and fresh.   

You can make small yet significant updates on reward structure, points, redemption options, merchant catalogs, and promotional offers. It will make customers feel valued and keep them engaged for a long time.   

Data-Driven Optimization   

Customer data can be the best fuel for your loyalty success. By using a real-time data-driven loyalty program platform, you can extract valuable insights on customers preferences, purchasing history, and habits. This can allow you to adjust your loyalty programs in real time, leaving no time or space left for customer attrition.   

A data-driven loyalty program will not turn outdated or unrewarding for the customers; it will evolve according to their taste and liking.   

Seamless Integration with Other Platforms   

Cross-platform functionality is a must for the success of a loyalty management platform. Customers switch between various apps to redeem their reward points. If anything hinders that process or experience, chances are customers would not want to go through similar unpleasant experiences again.   

By ensuring that your loyalty management software integrates well with your other CRMs, you can track and dispense loyalty programs more efficiently. In addition to that, by ensuring cross-app integration for the customers, you can offer a seamless customer experience, leading to efficient loyalty building.   

By taking care of these simple but important aspects, you can keep your loyalty programs relevant. Now let’s take a look at how your business can benefit from building an agile loyalty program.   

Benefits of Agile Loyalty Programs   

Agile loyalty programs stay relevant for customers for a long time. The relevance of loyalty programs is highly proportional to customer loyalty. As long as customers are engaged with a loyalty program, they will stick with a brand. They won’t search for alternative brands if they are getting rewarded for being associated with your brand.   

The longer the engagement, the better the customer retention rates. Customer retention is far more cost-effective than customer acquisition. With the CAC seeing a skyrocketing curve, brands are focusing more on customer retention. Agile loyalty programs keep customers engaged for a long time, enhancing customer retention rates significantly.   

Moreover, it helps businesses tackle tight-neck competition. You can make your agile loyalty ecosystem your USP and stay ahead of the competition.  

In a Nutshell   

A loyalty program that is constantly evolving, adapting, and improving is bound to succeed in retaining customers. By adopting this approach, businesses can solve one of the biggest challenges of loyalty management. It can get tricky to keep your loyalty programs updated without experts’ touch. By investing in advanced retail loyalty software like Novus Loyalty, you can stay assured of the agility of your loyalty programs.   

Novus Loyalty is a leading loyalty management platform, empowering businesses with the most relevant loyalty mechanisms and programs. Our data-driven platform helps businesses make use of customers’ data and feedback in the most productive ways.   

If you’re thinking of upgrading your loyalty ecosystem with agility, get in touch with us to move forward in the right direction.