Can Loyalty Programs Boost your Brand?

Customers are at the heart of your business, which is why it is important to understand and prioritize them. Loyalty programs do just that: they provide critical information about customer trends and build a brand that customers will happily recommend.

What are the Benefits of Creating a Loyalty Program?

Loyalty programs can benefit customers as well as brands. There are numerous benefits to implementing a loyalty program, particularly to reward and incentivize your existing customers. Harvard Business review states it costs 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to sell to an existing customer. The numbers are proof that a loyal customer is a rewarding and rewarded customer.

If you are growing your brand, loyalty programs also provide an attractive opportunity to gain new customers. Your brand can be a part of the customer's journey every step of the way, nurturing leads and engaging with potential and existing customers to weave in rewards and build brand loyalty.

Brands can recognize their best customers and reward them accordingly, as well as create strong customer engagement for customers to create a positive relationship with the brand. Customers will not remember the generic card they received to pay for petrol or groceries – but they will remember a special moment shared with family and friends. Make your rewards meaningful and effective, and they will go a long way towards building your brand. Especially because customers are more likely to recommend brands with loyalty programs that are rewarding and easy to use.

How do you Create a Loyalty Program?

Whether it is a stamp on a card, or an activation campaign with strict parameters and goals, loyalty programs can vary from simple to complex. Through loyalty program software, they share a critical commonality: they do not need to be complicated to be effective.

Simplicity promotes user acceptance, which then enables creative marketing strategies to flourish. Less time is spent on planning and more time and resources can be freed for service upgrades and research and development.

The concept of loyalty programs is simple. A business offers an incentive, and a customer reaps the benefits. The customer is happy with their rewards, and the business is happy with a new or returning customer. There are a few steps to creating a loyalty program.

• Define your goals – what you hope to achieve from a loyalty program.
• Start small – you can always scale up your loyalty program later.
• Capture and manage big data – transparent and clear data will dramatically help you.
• Use data and brand engagement to meet customer expectations and trends.

What Type of Loyalty Programs are there?

There are numerous loyalty program types available, which can be mixed and matched to support any industry. A few programs include:

• Earn and Burn programs, where customers earn points to redeem for rewards. This includes mobile device rewards/omnichannel rewards to reward immediately and on the go.
• Membership programs, which enable customers to obtain higher rewards in different tiers. This includes membership fees for exclusive rewards.
• Gamified programs, which create fun experiences and give members a reason to earn.
• Influencer, which creates brand ambassadors for you. Customers are more likely to recommend brands with loyalty programs that are rewarding and easy to use.
• Lifestyle, which lets people earn points doing things that fit into their lifestyle.

A loyalty program could be one of these – or a combination of all of them. Their dynamic configuration enables many possibilities. 

Where does iLoy Fit in with your Marketing Strategy?

iLoy specializes in loyalty, driven by a 360-degree customer and loyalty program view. The valuable and GDPR protected data gathered via loyalty programs is put to work through a loyalty marketing engine that provides a solid foundation for a successful omnichannel business model.

As a complete web-based solution, iLoy can help brands in any industry and scale to any size, even in the most complex and large environments. Find out more about how iLoy can create a loyalty program that boosts your brand today.