In today’s landscape of business, keeping a sustainable growth and success takes a lot more than making great products. Customers are now prioritizing support, branding, and emotional bond. That’s why creating a customer-centric loyalty program is important.
In today’s article, we are going to run through all about customer loyalty. We’ll learn about what it is, how to build it, and the benefits of using loyalty programs for your business. Let’s get started!
How to Build Customer Loyalty?
A great way to start building customer loyalty is by integrating a tool like chatbot WhatsApp to your business. By doing this, you’re creating a positive experience by being accessible, available, and responsive.
Additionally, here are some ways that you can build customer loyalty by leveraging WhatsApp chatbot as one of your solutions:
- Understand your customers. Try to collect data through surveys, feedback forms, and analytics tools to gain insights into what matters most to your customers.
- Use personalization. Use customer data to offer personalized recommendations and promotions. WhatsApp chatbots can help in collecting and analyzing data from previous interactions.
- Offer consistency. Be sure to maintain the same level of service and information across all service systems, including your website, email, and social media channels.
- Reward customer loyalty. Offer programs that rewards customers for their repeat purchase. For instance, you can give discounts, exclusive offers, or points.
- Provide excellent support. Make sure to focus on listening and solving customers’ problems when they inquire with you about something. Additionally, respond promptly to any issues.
If you’re wondering how to start building a chatbot for your business, this tutorial by Kommo can help:
What Is a Customer Loyalty Program?
A customer loyalty program is a marketing strategy that rewards customers for their repeat purchases. These programs encourage customers to continue purchasing from your business.
Some of the most popular customer-centric programs include cashbacks, discounts, exclusive offers and promotions, as well as early access to new products or events. This way, customers will feel appreciated and want to continue purchasing from your brand.
In fact, more than 65% of customers are interested in joining a loyalty program if offered by businesses. Moreover, customers who join loyalty programs spend more money thanks to the offers and promotions.
Overall, a customer loyalty program is great for creating long-term relationships. It also increases customer retention, encourages repeat purchase, and boosts company revenue.
What Are The Benefits of Customer-centric Programs for Businesses?
- Better customer retention
Retaining customer’s attention in this day and age can be challenging. With so many competitors available on the market, it takes more than just your product to keep a customer loyal. That’s where loyalty programs can help improve customer retention.
Offering rewards, discounts, and exclusive benefits can create a sense of appreciation from customers. This is a great strategy to build a bond between the customer and the brand.
One loyalty program that can effectively increase customer retention is Starbucks Rewards program. They use a points-based system, where customers earn a start for every purchase they make using the Starbucks mobile app. The more points you have, the more benefits and rewards you can get. This incentive provides quick benefits and engaging experience, making customers remain loyal to the brand over the long term.
- Higher purchase frequency
Loyalty programs encourage customers to make more frequent purchases. In fact, 83% of customers that feel appreciated plan to spend more. This is because customers are motivated to accumulate points to unlock rewards.
Earning rewards creates a psychological effect on customers, where they want to continue engaging and making repeat purchases. From this, businesses can see higher purchase frequency from loyal customers and drive revenue growth.
A great example would be the Sephora Beauty Insider program. The program has multiple tiers based on customers’ annual spending. Each tier unlocks additional benefits, such as exclusive products, free gifts, and points.
- More customer referrals
Satisfied and loyal customers tend to recommend your business to friends and families. A great loyalty program for this is offering referral incentives to encourage existing customers to refer your business. This can also be categorized as word-of-mouth marketing. Additionally, customer referrals are valuable as they often result in instant new customers.
For example, Dropbox has a program called Refer a Friend. Existing users are offered additional storage space for free when referring a new friend. The way it works, if a friend signs up using a unique referral link, both users will get the bonus storage space. This clear benefit can be enticing for users, which encourages referrals.
- User reviews
Loyalty programs also contribute to generating positive user reviews. This is great for building trust and credibility for your brand. If a loyal customer has benefited from your program, it is more likely they will share that experience online. These reviews and testimonials are great marketing assets for your business.
For example, Amazon has a customer-centric program called Vine Loyalty Program. Selected users will receive free products for an honest review. If you have more than one product, you can send them out to different users and get more variative reviews.
Find Out How to Create an Effective Customer Loyalty Programs
Pick a catchy customer-centric program name
Choosing a catchy name is important to creating an affecting customer-centric program. It is easy to remember, which increases program awareness and encourages participation. Additionally, it helps your program stand out from competitors.
A catchy program name can also enhance your brand identity. It communicates your brand tone and creates an emotional connection with customers. Plus, a catchy name is easier to promote through various marketing tactics, including word-of-mouth!
A great example of this is the beauty brand Beauty Insider, where they use catchy and easy to remember program names, such as Insider Cash, Dollar Savings, and Rouge Rewards.
Define a clear goal
With so many loyalty programs available, a clear goal helps businesses focus on achieving specific outcomes. For instance, point-based programs are best to encourage repeat purchases to redeem rewards. Meanwhile tiered programs motivates customers to increase their spending to unlock higher benefits.
In addition, there’s also referral, subscription, and surprise programs. Therefore, choosing a loyalty program should meet your brand’s specific goals. This can be increasing customer retention, fostering ongoing engagement, or providing personalized incentives.
Offer relevant rewards
In the beginning, we’ve learned to understand your customers. This is so you can provide them with rewards that match their interest and preference. This can be free gifts, discounts, or special invitations.
This shows that your business understands and values customers’ preference, which results in long-lasting customer loyalty.
Incorporate WhatsApp lead generation
WhatsApp is a popular messaging app. Incorporating WhatsApp lead generation with a loyalty program can help businesses capture more leads for other programs. This way, customers can get instant access to updates, offers, and rewards via WhatsApp!
