You have a loyalty program up and running, what now?

So, you have created your loyalty program and you hopefully have followed most of the advice from our blog post “The 4 key ingredients to design a successful loyalty program”. What are the next steps? Following the steps to properly design your loyalty program was the first step, now you need to make sure that you make your customer aware of your loyalty program, monitor its performance and adjust as well keep in touch with your customers. We have listed below in more details each of these points.

Visibility:

Visibility is the third item on this list, but it is equally important as the first two. No customer will join your loyalty program unless they know about it and it is your job to make that happen. Some easy ways to do that are:

• Make sure your staff are fully aware of the program, how it works, what are the benefits and that they have to actively promote it at checkout;
• Utilize any social media accounts, email lists, or other ways you have, to contact your customers and let them know about your new loyalty program and its benefits;
• Make sure you create a link that points directly to your app/website where people can register. At Yollty we create a link that not only takes your users to download the app but will already add your business in their memberships. Are you already registered with Yollty? Learn how to create your link

Some other ideas that could help onboard customers:

• Reward your customers for spreading the word by activating a referral reward;
• Add visual marketing materials in your physical location. If you have a restaurant, printing some table mats or some table tents is a good way to let your customers know about your program. If you have a retail store, then adding a flyer in their bags might be a better option.

As this ingredient is so important, we have created a full blog post to help you out. So, if you want to go into more details please read our post “Best Ways to Onboard your customers” for more details.

Keep in Touch

Onboarding a customer to your loyalty program is the first way to increase their loyalty but keeping in touch with them can significantly increase their lifetime value. Imagine that you are out with friends trying to decide where to go for dinner tonight and a message comes on your phone from one of the places you love with a nice image of their amazing burgers. You haven’t visited for a while and now you got an offer for a free drink with every burger you buy. They even made it sharable by telling you that they love friends so if you come with your friends they all get a free drink with their burgers.

How does that sound? How much more likely is it that you will go there tonight?

The classic paper stamp cards did not provide you with the option to reach back your customers, but with the technology innovation, loyalty programs like Yollty make it super simple for you to reach back your customers with news, offers, etc. The customer database that you are building with your loyalty program is worth gold but only if you take advantage of it!

Bonus Point: Try to keep some element of surprise when possible. When was the last time you received a notice from the post that a package is waiting for you, but you did not know what it was? Most people can’t resist this type of emotional rush to go and check out what is it. But be careful not to use this tactic with an insignificant reward or your customers will feel deceived and it will have the opposite results of what you wished for.

Monitor and Adjust

Following the advice in this post will increase significantly your chances to have a successful loyalty program but most probably you won’t get everything perfectly right on the first time. Every business is different, and we can’t overstate the importance of monitoring and adjusting your loyalty program based on the results you are getting.

We recommend that when you start your loyalty program you create a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) that you want to measure over time. For example, the number of members that join your loyalty program, the number of active members every month, frequency of visits of loyal customers, etc. This way you have a way to measure the impact of the changes you will make over time, your marketing activities, etc. By using a loyalty program like Yollty a lot of these KPIs are already prebuilt in the dashboard and you can always go back in time to see how your loyalty program is evolving.

In addition, another way to improve your loyalty program is by listening to customer feedback. Asking questions regarding your loyalty program is a good way to get to know what your customers think about it and what changes they would like to see.

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