“According to the study of 1,000 people, 92% of Brits are relying on loyalty programmes to give an extra boost to their everyday spending during the cost-of-living crisis. More than 50% said they’re actively looking for new ways to collect points and maximise the return when they spend money, with 20% saying they were inclined to spend more with brands with loyalty programmes.”
IAG Loyalty, owners of the global loyalty currency Avios
If you have a loyalty reward programme that you’re not fully maximising to its potential in this current climate, you’re missing out on huge revenue opportunities.
And one of the biggest failings we see for loyalty reward programmes is simply a lack of relevant communications.
As with any marketing campaign, customer experience needs to be front of mind. By reaching out regularly to help your customers understand how they can maximise their experience with you, using clear and engaging communications from the outset, you’ll reinforce how they benefit from being loyal to your brand.
Now is the time to fine tune your CRM strategy, and here are three ways to invest in your loyalty reward programme’s communications.
1. Have a solid onboarding communications strategy
Your customer has just joined a very exclusive club and expects a hearty welcome. So roll out the red carpet as soon as they sign up to get them excited about the numerous ways they can start saving money. Nurturing that relationship begins immediately.
But a welcome series of communications is more than that; it’s your opportunity to reinforce their decision to join your rewards platform. In those first few emails, it’s crucial to remind them why they’re participating and how valuable engaging with your programme will be for them going forward.
How does your programme work? And what are the exclusive perks you’ll receive? These are just some of the questions to cover at the start of your relationship so that each and every customer understands how and when they start benefiting from your scheme.
And sorry to deliver an absolute bombshell, but most people don’t actually read t&cs. If you’ve hidden important information about any limitations to your programme – their points have an expiry date, or must cover the full value of an item, for example – you’ve dropped the ball. Because you’ll have an awful lot of disengaged customers when they realise they’re not able to collect their hard-earned reward as easily as they thought.
2. Build a relationship through personalisation
You know your loyalty rewards customers’ birthdays. Now you can send them a special birthday treat each year… along with every other reward programme and email marketing list they’re part of. But for the purpose of this article, we’re going to assume you’ve set your data collection sights a little higher than that.
Most people are members of numerous different reward schemes, but only actively participate in a handful of them. Customers are generally open to brands monitoring their activity if it leads to personalised rewards they’ll actually benefit from. By leveraging your CRM’s data and your customers’ propensity to buy, you’ll be able to create dynamite dynamic content to regularly remind them of your value proposition and keep them dedicated to your programme.
If you’re a retail food outlet, taking note of dietary requirements, such as dairy free or vegetarian, is an absolute no brainer. But go a step further and tailor reward suggestions to dishes they have shown a preference for. So Jane receives a free croissant with her morning espresso this week, while John gets a free brownie with his afternoon latte.
With the right data fields identified in your sales and marketing system, we can track a vast number of touchpoints and key data to capture highly personalised information. From that, we can easily create dynamic templates that pull specific values from the database for different parts of the email. That gives us the ability to tailor the email towards that particular customer and their profile, without having to create multiple versions.
This is a win for customer experience as you’ll be putting the most relevant content in front of them at the right time. But it’s also a win for your CRM team by saving time and money with only one email build.
3. Re-engage those lapsed loyalty programme customers
What about those customers who haven’t engaged with your loyalty reward content?
Get talking to them. Now. Because anyone not actively participating in the scheme is a missed revenue opportunity.
As with any marketing message today, reigniting their interest in your reward scheme is going to need a little more oomph than a generic winback email. Up the ante by giving them a personalised snapshot of their loyalty programme to date. This could include each member’s current points total, any deals they’re currently eligible for, how many more points they need for their next reward, and even how much they’ve saved in their time as a member. You’re looking to remind them why they need to be actively using the programme, exactly as Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) did to win back their lapsed reward customers.
Again, get your data collection right from the start and you’ll be able to create compelling and relevant dynamic content that sets your communications apart.
Find out more about our specialist CRM agency services and how we can help grow and maximise your loyalty rewards programme.
