Is Personalization the Key to a Successful Retail Loyalty Program?
- Posted on December 16, 2022 by Robert
- Reading time about 5 minutes
Living in the competitive business era, brands are struggling to make a difference. Talking about the retail media landscape, retailers must compete to capture a loyal customer base that chooses their brands again and again over the competitors. Building a retail loyalty program that is driven by exceptional personalization is one of the crucial steps to winning customer loyalty.
Offering tailored services for consumers enable retail businesses to provide relevant & personalized shopping experience. In this blog, we will learn the role of personalization in making your retail loyalty program a success.
What makes Personalization Important for Brands?
When a customer checks out an eCommerce store and adds clothing items to their cart, they expect brands to understand their taste and recommend other clothes and accessories that are familiar to their unique shopping habits. This not only enhances their shopping journey but also helps to build a strong foundation for loyalty to grow and last. The success of any retail loyalty program highly depends on its personalization level.
Big retail brands like Amazon and Sephora are known for their successful loyalty programs. This is because they don’t rely on basic rewards like discounts and promotions. Instead, they focus on strategies that help to maintain customer satisfaction and provide shoppers with the special attention they crave. Amazon offers Prime membership to provide exclusive benefits to members like fast shipping, one-day delivery, etc. while Sephora offers a tiered program. The rewards program for businesses can be truly effective only if they focus on the personalized shopping experience.
According to reports, retail loyalty programs that focus on personalization help in attaining higher business profits.
– An average Amazon customer spends $600/per year while prime members spend $1400 per year.
– Sephora’s Beauty Insider members make up to 80% of its annual sales.
Tips to Help Retailers Integrate Personalization into their Strategy
Making use of actionable and insightful customer data is the first step to adding personalization to your customer loyalty program. Personalization not only drives loyalty programs to move forward but also creates more opportunities for retailers to build positive relationships.
Here are some of the ways that help retailers and brands to integrate personalization is their business strategy-
– Create Multiple Touchpoints
After your customers enroll in the loyalty program, ensure that you stay engaged with them using multiple channels. Make use of tailored advertisements and push notifications to ensure that every interaction with your customer focuses on making a more streamlined and humanized relationship.
– Personalized Recommendations
Make sure that your program focus on collecting first-party data, which is more accurate than 3rd party cookies to provide personalized recommendations that meet their specific needs. First, you must create a detailed profile for every customer and recommend products or services that cater to their needs specifically.
– Combine Online & In-Store Shopping Experience
With more and more customers becoming reliant on technology for their shopping, they expect a seamless connection between digital and physical stores. As they navigate a brick-and-mortar location, they can check out any ongoing offers or deals like delivery methods that best suit their needs.
Significance of Personalization in Loyalty Programs
Every customer is unique so do their shopping preferences and habits. This means offering a one-dimensional loyalty program that doesn’t meet the requirements of each customer will be a waste. They will be less inclined to join the program and may switch to competitors’ loyalty programs that better suit their needs. Personalization not only ensures shoppers feel valued and understood but also helps brands to build stronger bonds with customers, leading to more positive outcomes.
Here are some of the reasons why retailers or brands must focus on personalizing their loyalty programs-
– Increase in customer Trust
One thing that encourages customers to stick with the brands is personalization which makes them feel that brands genuinely care about their needs by offering a great shopping experience.
Making use of available data like first-source data is essential to offer meaningful experiences through customized rewards, offers, discounts, etc. When brands focus on implementing features in personalization strategy, trust becomes a natural byproduct.
– More Committed Customers
You know your customers are committed to your brand if there are repeat purchases from their side. As the market is vast, shoppers will always look out for alternatives that offer more personalized experiences.
Retailers must focus on setting themselves apart and strengthening customer commitment by keeping their shopper’s needs on top priority. Even if competitors offer affordable options, they will feel more compelled to stay with your brand and display longer-lasting loyalty.
– Meaningful Relationship
When you consistently provide a great shopping experience with customized offers and special loyalty benefits, your customers will surely return the favor. Such loyal customers will not boost the profit of your business but also help to spread the word to their loved ones.
For example, if your brand focuses on offering multiple rewards for a customer’s loyalty, this will encourage customers to make more purchases and even urge them to sign up for the smart shopping experience.
Closing Statement
Hopefully, after going through the blog, it is clear that personalization plays a huge role in making the loyalty program a great success. More than 90% of customers say the amount of money they spend on a brand truly depends on how it provides personalization. Customers today wish to be understood by the brands they associate with, by providing personalized recommendations while searching for products.
Known as the Best Business Loyalty Program by many retail brands, Novus Loyalty holds the potential to help them add an innovative personalization strategy to build longer-lasting customer relationships. If your retail business is thinking to reap the benefits of increased customer loyalty, you must focus on delivering true personalization to customers. Book a demo with our experts to see how Novus can help you build a personalized loyalty program that can boost engagement, deliver targeted content & customize the shopping experience for shoppers.