Any online or conventional business requires its customers to keep coming back in addition to attracting new customers. Continuous growth in customer-base assures the success of a business, whereas achieving it is a cumbersome job.

The existing customers stay loyal until their expectations are met, whereas the new customers need out-of-the-way care and support to convert and become a returning consumer. The Loyalty programs were introduced to tackle the struggle of consumer retention along with growth.

A business with a short-term plan may ignore a loyalty program, as they are not about acquiring the customers, whereas a business that aims to remain in the market for an unforeseeable future, it becomes mandatory.

What does a Loyalty Program Mean?

A customer loyalty program is an initiative of rewarding customers for being a returning (loyal) customer. It shows the owners are serious in doing the business and are not just about making money.

IT means they like to own their customers and giving them back from the amount they spend towards your business success by shopping in routine. It may be in different shapes like gifts hampers, complimentary services, discount coupons, shopping vouchers, or collecting redeemable points.

Selecting from a variety of Loyalty Programs is difficult as the store managers may need to understand their customer needs and state their offerings accordingly.

Top 7 tips for Maximizing Customer Growth with Loyalty Programs

Here, in this post, I am suggesting some of the proven tips and strategies that may help you expand business outreach and attract more customers.

1. Set an Easy Reward Scheme

So, if you have finally decided to give back to your loyal community, try to facilitate them by setting easy criteria for availing the reward scheme.

For example, if you require a customer to find a card packed in your product, scratch and send it to your postal address, and wait for a reward. It is too difficult for them to earn it.

As an alternative, you can engage your customers in maximizing your social media outreach organically in return for rewards. They would like to like, share, and comment your products or deals with their friends and family. It is like getting a coupon code for spreading a word about your business by mouth, which they would do free if asked by a friend.

However, you can introduce difficult loyalty programs for higher rewards after serving customers with easy and simple ones. They will accept the difficult one as a challenge and work towards it in light of their previous achievement.

2. Create Appealing Customer Rewards

Creating a reward scheme is tricky and needs the merchants to know what their customers are craving for. This is particularly true in Magento 2 development. A reward amount or points shall be decided with the bottom-up approach rather than a top-down.

Get to know what your customers may love the most to gain in return for shopping from your store over and again. They may not always like to get a complimentary gift, which may not need.

For example, various online stores add up a gift card to the order, which may increase the shipping charges a bit more.
Therefore, the customers get a reward at their cost. Why not send such a gift separately after a week or see at the store’s expense and give them a surprise? It would be more appealing and satisfying.

3. Project loyalty scheme with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing or a refer-a-friend scheme is a form of transforming a loyalty program into multi-level marketing. With this strategy, you can empower your customers to earn rewards for bringing their friends and family on to your shopping floor beside the regular shopping points.

Referral marketing is one of the effective methodologies for acquiring customers through organic means. It is because your existing customers will only refer to their closed ones if they are satisfied with your products and services. Magento 2 Refer a Friend extension is a helpful tool in introducing affiliate marketing right on your eCommerce website to encourage your customers to bring more users in return for rewards.

The extension creates a separate section in the user accounts to track the success of their referral efforts and find how much they have earned. As a result, you get a lot of relevant and highly converting customers for your online store.

4. Spread the word with Promotions

A loyalty program may serve the existing clients, but how you can use its magnetic pull to gain more customers? It is only possible by spreading the word about your appealing loyalty programs. For promotions, you can explore a variety of mediums and channels such as emails, business blogs, or social media networks.

To ensure the message is effective and brews a higher open rate, you can focus on writing the text. For example, the subject title in email marketing is a crucial text to convey a promotion. Similarly, you can compose messages according to the norms and standards of the channel you aim to utilize.

Sending SMS to mobile subscribers is also an impressive strategy as your customers can quickly read and forward the message to their contacts. This helps you expedite the promotional campaign to gain more contacts and customers. The possible mediums you can use include:

• Social media and Google Ads
• Classified ads in local newspapers
• Renting a billboard for a week or two
• Publishing it on your company blog
• Sharing in relevant forums and guest blogs
• Press release to get mentions in online publications

5. Hold an Event to Engage more Customers

You can switch back to the conventional strategies of holding events and gatherings for maximizing your business reach among different localities. The locals in your vicinity, who may not get your message through a friend or family, can find you around the busy streets and take notice of your deals and discounts.

To make more out of events, you can manage it for consecutive two or three weekends to make the customers coming back and participate in the loyalty program. You can set a business tradition of holding an event every month, which becomes more famous among the locals. With this strategy, they will wait for the month-end to avail the offers and become a member of your loyal community of customers.

6. Create Points-based Milestones

The loyalty program with points collection is a traditional one, but still effective and proven in maximizing your customer base. You can spice up the campaign by setting milestones. For example, a customer with a collection of first 500 points becomes a silver member, 1000 points a gold, and 2000 points make them a platinum member. However, each milestone carries its benefits and rewards.

You might have seen fuel stations giving their customers gift hampers upon weekly or monthly fueling targets. Similarly, grocery stores have loyalty cards that accumulate points for purchases, which can be utilized against future purchases. Magento developers can use these concepts to implement points based loyalty programs in their stores.

7. Simplify Monetizing the Points

Coupons and shopping points that require a maturity date are not much effective in attracting new customers. It is your existing customers, who promote your loyalty program to their loved ones. If they themselves are facing difficulties in indemnifying their discount offers, how will they recommend the scheme to others? Therefore, reconsider the conditions you applied to compensate the shopping points to make it more consumer-friendly.

Over to You

A customer loyalty program has three-fold benefits if executed in the right direction. Firstly, it increases consumer trust and reliability in your store. Secondly, it boosts store conversions to meet revenue targets. Thirdly, most importantly, it attracts more customers that multiply the sales if combined with affiliate marketing. We hope the above tips will help you carry seamless loyalty programs.

The post 7 Proven Loyalty Programs Tips to Attract More Customers appeared first on Icecube Digital.