How to maximise your loyalty program

Launching a loyalty program is just half your success. Once you have onboarded a customer, it's important to keep them engaged with your brand, while enjoying the benefits of your offering. 

Here are six tips on how you can grow your loyalty program -

Train your staff - If your business has a direct contact between customers and sales assistants, start there as they can be your biggest advocate. Your team are the face of your company and have the advantage of building a rapport, tailoring a personalised approached as to why the customer should sign up. Have an in-depth training session about your loyalty program and teach your staff how to encourage customers to join, how the program works and the benefits the customer will receive. 

Make it super easy to join - The longer it takes to sign up the fewer customers you will have to join. Make sure your customers are able to join quickly and easily. If you are signing customers up face to face, use a table and keep the number of questions you ask low to capture only the most important information like name and email address. If your loyalty program can be further personalised, you can always contact the customer with additional questions later to build their profile.

Give them an incentive - More often or not chances are that your customers are on several mailing lists and are constantly being hounded by brands competing for their business. Stand out from the crowd and make your customers WANT to join your loyalty program, and give them a reward for joining. For example, if you own a cafe offer their first coffee for free, or you could try offering free upsizes for the first week of their membership. There are other options which could include; a $20 voucher to spend the next time they shop, free shipping or delivery or a discount code to share with friends and family. 

Make it appealing -  The key to a successful loyalty program is to research and understand what your customers actually want from you and your business. Identify what it is your customers are seeking to gain - is it discounts or exclusive offers and merchandise they can’t get elsewhere? Identify and implement this and your chances of them joining your loyalty program will increase.

Go digital - As a society day by day we move closer towards being paperless, so if possible go digital. Just think if your loyalty program depends on a physical card, chances are your customers are not going to carry it on them regularly, and may even lose it. If you are in a position to do so, explore creating a digital card that can be stored on phones like the AppleWallet, or develop an app where customers can log in and view their rewards while engaging with your content.

Social media - Be sure to engage your social media channels. Linking your website and your social media allows you to have a present voice and reach your online customers. Start posting regular updates to your social media channels whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or even TikTok. Use these platforms to advertise your loyalty program and encourage more signups, run small promotions, where if they can like your post they’ll receive a 15% discount. 

Customers need to feel appreciated for their loyalty and support. A loyalty program can be the key to high conversion rates of sales, by implementing the above 6 tips you can boost your customer interest and, in return will have more customers join your loyalty program.