Customer Loyalty Programs – Giveaways or Strategic Tools?
By
Sharon Herrman
·
1 minute read
Customer Loyalty Programs – Giveaways or Transformative Strategic Tools? 🛠️
In speaking with early ecomm businesses, I’ve noted resistance to the notion of customer loyalty programs – specifically, they cite competitor programs, or perhaps other ecommerce products they use personally and come to the conclusion that customer loyalty programs are about “giving away” value or profitability.
As I caution early stage businesses on many issues – don’t confuse some other company’s front office (or how they appear to the market), with your back office challenges.
There is a way for you to win at this as well – we just need to find it.
With a refreshed perspective on why a customer loyalty program is critical for the long-term success of your ecommerce business, let’s detail the specifics of how a customer loyalty program actually can drive revenue and profitability.
Understanding these could help determine a strategic framework to evaluate platforms and apps that fortify the strengths – or improve shortfalls – in ongoing ecommerce operations.
The right customer loyalty program can drive revenue and profitability via:
- Repeat purchase rate (not just the first return purchase, but their second and third purchase as well.)
- Higher order values
- Increased Purchase Frequency
- Scalability via AI integration
- Analytics to optimize program performance
- Automated re-engagement features.
Ultimately, it’s a game of identifying, retaining and nurturing high-value customers.💰
In the Shopify world, there are several well-regarded customer loyalty apps including Smile, Yotpo, Growave, Rivo, Bon Loyalty and and LoyaltyLion. While these apps share some similar capabilities, there are differences that may make them more or less suited to your customer base, product line and revenue objectives.
Of course, the pricing for each varies tremendously which can impact your decision as well.
While I haven’t personally worked with Smile, it is the only platform with access to what they claim is the world's largest loyalty dataset, with over a decade of data from billions of ecommerce orders across more than 100,000 merchants in 148 countries. They also claim a 72% customer retention rate. That level of analytics could be something to boost your customer retention performance.
Definitely something to explore…
What customer loyalty platforms or apps have you had success using? Any that you would recommend to other businesses? Please share your insights!
#CustomerLoyalty #BrandLoyalty #CustomerExperience #MarketingEvolved