Among the most important commerce for any company is new business. It is evidence that your company is flourishing and means someone has discovered your product or service and went so far as to give you their hard-earned money in exchange for it.
But every bit as important is repeat business because it’s a foundation for growth, and few things promote repeat business as powerfully as loyalty programs. Of course, you must have a worthwhile product or service to begin with, but once that’s established, anything you can do to be noticed in a noisy and highly competitive marketplace is valuable.
Loyalty programs take the tenuous connection to a new or existing customer and strengthen that bond. They make customers feel special and appreciated and often save them money. In fact, almost 60 percent of customers who participate in loyalty programs do so for that every reason.
But the genius of these programs is that they reach far beyond such superficial desires in customers and tap into things like competitive behavior. Almost 40 percent of loyalty program members report that they’d change their behavior to reach a higher tier on a program hierarchy. Put more simply, they’d buy more of your product or service than they otherwise would to be recognized as being in select group.
And that gets at the heart of what makes loyalty programs work: customers who take part feel special. And who doesn’t like feeling special?
Boiled down to its single most important constituent, marketing is simply getting your brand in front of as many eyes as possible, with the hope being that some percentage of those who see it will become customers.
Loyalty programs provide ways to measure the impact of marketing, the return on investment and return on objectives, allowing you to track success of campaigns and fine tune them to perform the best they possibly can. Because these are personalized items with member numbers or customer name, you can see who is using the program and what they’re spending. These programs also allow you to track referrals to see the often exponential growth they engender.
They also showcase you, the marketing decider for your company, as being cutting edge. And we all know that being seen as a guru in one area translates to having that status in other areas, whether it’s true or not.
Talk to us today for details on our innovative and effective loyalty programs and specifics of how they work to build strong connections between you and your existing and potential customers.