Retaining an existing customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than acquiring a new one. Yet 44% of businesses focus on customer acquisition and only 18% on customer retention programs. As business owners, you must know that the growth of your business and revenue depends on bringing in new customers and retaining the ones you already have. This is why you need to put in just as much time and resources to promote customer loyalty programs to ensure you have a high overall customer retention rate.

Here we will share a few easy strategies for loyalty marketing that will boost your customer retention and create a loyal customer base for your brand.

What is Loyalty Marketing?

Loyalty marketing is the marketing tactic for customer retention. It is built around retaining frequent shoppers with the help of providing free samples, discounts, and exclusive offers.

Why Should You Adopt Loyalty Marketing Tactics

• To maintain customer loyalty and have consistent profit margins.
• To interact with frequent buyers and build a profitable business relationship with them.
• To increase the trustworthiness and dependability of your brand.
• To generate essential data about what your customer like and dislike, their demographics, buying patterns, and the kind of advertisements that work for them.
  
  

Benefits of Loyalty Marketing

• Increases the number of purchases
• Improves conversion rates
• Increases profit margins
  

Vital Statistics About Loyalty Marketing

• Customer loyalty programs help businesses retain high-value customers. In the apparel industry, a shopper’s fifth purchase is usually 40% larger than their first.
• Almost 65% of customers said they were more motivated to buy when they received personalized offers, and 61% said this about customized product recommendations.
• Customer loyalty programs help businesses acquire new customers, as they are more likely to recommend your business to their friends and family. Case in point, online grocery shoppers referred by other customers spent an additional 75% of what the original customer spent.

This makes customer retention and customer loyalty programs essential for most businesses.

Goals of Loyalty Marketing

You also need to know the goals of loyalty marketing to build appropriate strategies for customer retention.

Increasing The Number of Repeat Customers

As you have already seen, repeat customers will likely spend more on their subsequent purchases than first-time customers. These customers may also follow brand updates that motivate them to buy more products and make regular purchases. Their relationship with the brand encourages them to spend more money on the brand over their lifetime than a one-time customer.

Make Predicting The Success of a Product Easier

A loyal customer provides brands with essential data about their needs and desires. This allows the team to predict the growth of a product more reliably. It can help customers make predictions concerning the success or failure of a line and improve their current products. A loyalty management software like QueueBuster can help businesses collect customers buying history and capitalize on the same.

Loyalty Marketing Strategies To Help Boost Customer Retention

Use A Customer Loyalty Program

Customer loyalty programs encourage customers to return to your store more frequently. They typically provide customers with points for making a purchase which can then be used for purchasing additional items. Some brands even allow their customers to convert these points into cash. With special offers and exclusive access to new products only for members, these customer loyalty programs ensure customers are tempted to visit your site or store every chance they get.

Offer Referral Benefits

You want your customers to talk about your brand and say good things. When you offer rewards for referring the company or product to their friends, you build customer loyalty and gain additional customers simultaneously.

These benefits can be in the form of: 

• Discounts
• In-store credits
• In-store gifts

Coupons management software and discounts management software can help you keep track of the coupons and discounts you are offering with their validity. Some customer rewards management software also enables you to send a prompt to your customers before the expiry of a coupon to encourage them to use it before its last date.

Have an Active Social Media Presence

Social media can be a business’s best friend or the complete opposite. However, if you use it well, you can stay connected with your customers daily and directly promote new products or services to your customers. Here are a few tips to improve your social media presence:

Post Consistently

The more consistent your posts are, the higher the chances of them actually reaching your customers. Consistent posting also helps interested customers stay updated with your products and services.

Create Giveaways

Giveaways are like a reward program that offers value to your customers for interacting with your company. Create precise requirements and entry rules for the contest, including sharing a specific post, leaving a comment, or making a purchase.

Sponsor Social Media Influencers

A social media influencer will promote your product if you sponsor them. Popular influencers give you access to their fans and followers, who are likelier to try your products or services.

Respond to Feedbacks

You create a personal bond with your customers by responding to feedback, even in the simplest way. This helps give the impression that your company focuses on the customer and their needs.

Share Positive Feedbacks

While negative feedback needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, positive feedback should be celebrated and shared. This can show potential customers why they should consider buying your products or services.

Directly Ask For Feedback

Customers will feel valued if the company they have purchased from asks for their opinion. Customer feedback can be requested through:

• Personalised emails
• Survey advertisements
• Mobile apps or customer loyalty program apps
• Social media

Tap Into Customer Data to Create Targeted Campaigns

As low as 27% of customers believe a brand understands its needs before providing promotions and offers. A random irrelevant advertisement will lead customers away from your brand. Customer satisfaction is critical to reducing customer frustration and improving customer retention. When you understand your customers’ needs better, you can provide them with the kind of products and offers they want. This is where customer loyalty programs come into the picture, as you have access to most customer information allowing you to create customised promotions for them.

Make Your Program Different

Most brands today offer customer loyalty programs, making it vital for you to come up with one that will stand out. Creating tiers based on your company’s niche, opting for brand-centric rewards, and offering surprise gifts can help you stand out from the crowd.

Create Tangible Rewards

A customer may lose interest in the customer loyalty program if it is too challenging to earn the rewards. Customers will more likely choose a reward system with a faster initial payout. To keep your customers hooked, ensure you offer rewards that are easy to obtain, like large signup points. After initial success, a customer will work harder to reach the other tiers if the reward is reasonably accessible.

Monitor and Optimise

This is probably the most crucial aspect of any customer loyalty program. Keeping track of what’s working and what’s not will help you create better programs in the future. It also allows you to accommodate changing trends among customers and collect customer engagement data that will help you strengthen the entire program.

While customer loyalty programs sound like much work, they can be easily accomplished with the right tools. Customer rewards management software helps you track almost all these factors in one place. POS apps like QueueBuster can also help with other aspects of your business, giving customers a seamless shopping experience that will only encourage them to return. You can configure this app to match your requirements without additional equipment, fees, cards, or apps. Request a free demo for the QueueBuster™ app and see how it can help boost your customer retention and your business on the whole.