Loyalty Blogs

Customers should always be the top priority for any business irrespective of the industry. Without happy and satisfied customers, no company can truly succeed. Loyalty programs are a great way to focus on valuable customers and retain them in the long run. Similarly, for loyalty programs to work, brands must deliver unique and personalized experiences to customers, encouraging them to stick with the same brand over and over.

Around half of the population in the U.S. are people of different nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures, as stated in the research by the Collage Group. By the year 2042, it is expected that these multicultural residents will represent the nationwide majority. This is why, there will be increased demand for multicultural loyalty program.

In this blog, we will learn how a well-executed multicultural loyalty program caters to culturally diverse customers and meaningfully connects with those who speak different languages like Mandarin, Columbian, Thai, British, etc.

Key Aspects to Keep in Mind While Building a Culturally Diverse Loyalty Program

Building multicultural customer brand loyalty is all about creating a strong relationship between your business and the customer based on mutual understanding, shared values, and experiences. As millennials from diverse ethnic and nationalities become a majority of customers globally, it is becoming essential for businesses to go for a multicultural loyalty program if they want to build a strong customer base.

No matter which industry you belong to, you must be able to review your weaknesses in building a cultural bond with your diverse customers before making them loyal customers. Listed below are some of the top aspects that must be kept in mind if you want to build customer loyalty across cultures.

1. Hire Team from Different Cultures

Ensure that you recruit people from different cultures to create a diverse team. Research shows that companies with a diverse team make more money than those without. McKinsey and Co. says that companies in the top quartile of ethnic diversity perform 36% better in terms of profitability than those in the bottom quartile. This happens because people from different cultures bring distinct behaviors, attitudes, and etiquette transforming ways of doing things, which can be very helpful.

For example, if a company wants to create a product for a specific group of people, it is better to have people from that group on the team to make sure the product is what they want. Having people from different cultures in all parts of the company helps in making sure everyone’s ideas and perspectives are heard and respected. Make sure to have a diverse team if you want your business to be successful.

2. Multi-lingual Translation

If you visit a foreign restaurant and are unable to interpret the menu there, you may feel disappointed and can relate to the feeling of exclusion. Research by the global rewards platform, Reward the World says that more than 70% of customers are likely to buy products described in their native language. Just having multi-lingual support sometimes is not enough as one word may have different meanings at different locations.

Brands can misunderstand dialect and culture among global customers. For instance, the word rubber means eraser in the UK while in other countries, it is a reference to pants suggesting underwear. This is the reason why cross-cultural conversation is needed to understand the causal jargon of different communities and know which images will resonate well with different members. Integrate the technical infrastructure to support multiple languages and adapt them for diverse markets using a translation service and budgeting.

3. Use a Global Data Analytics System

Knowing more about what your diverse customer base wants from your program is what you need to make it a successful one. In a report, it was found that many Asian and Hispanic U.S. customers are unhappy with how they are represented in marketing. To overcome this issue, businesses can make use of a data analytics system that accurately presents program guidelines and messaging tailored to engage specific cultures.

Analytics can help by finding out which versions of language perform best, which features members are used most often, and if there any areas of friction. For better accuracy, it is crucial to eliminate potential ethnic biases that may be introduced by the engineers, data scientists, and marketers who are collecting and analyzing data. To prevent this, making use of an ethnically diverse analytics team can be helpful.

4. Deliver Culturally Diverse Rewards

Another important aspect is to create a portfolio of rewards and incentives that matter to program members belonging to different cultures with the help of a multilingual, and multi-ethnic analytics system. For example, in Latin America, almost 59% of consumers register to become a part of loyalty programs for discounts, while 46% prefer free items. However, in different locations like Asia, members prefer straight discounts only, which means the loyalty programs that offer American-like conventions will perform poorly.

Program accessibility is becoming an essential part of the reward structure in terms of channels and dialect. Rewarding different rewards for different customers is the key.

Language barriers can impact how members use loyalty apps on their phones. Statista report in 2023 found that 85% of the U.S. Hispanic population owned smartphones, compared with 97% of Asian and 84% of Black adults.

To ensure that your multicultural loyalty program works as desired, you must find the right test markets before launch and test the program’s features to meet diverse needs. Apart from that, your brand must reward using relevant incentives so that your customers find value in culturally aligned performance rewards. Also, you can host a multicultural event at the store and translate loyalty deals into different languages, which can help in building a stronger community.

Final Takeaways

As we can see, building a successful globally diverse loyalty program depends on in-depth planning and execution. Understanding different customers following diverse cultures requires knowledge as your brand needs to deliver global loyalty experiences. Ensure that the loyalty experts you work with view the rewards programs in the same way they experience countries and cultures that are new to them.

If you are planning to target a multicultural customer base, connect with the experts of Novus, a reliable Enterprise Loyalty Software that enables global brands to create a successful loyalty solution in multicultural markets. Book a demo with Novus to see how we can deliver value and experiences that are consistent to cater needs of the multicultural customer base.