By Shirley King
A loyalty program gathers transactional, demographic, behavioral, preference, and customer experience data from various sources within the business and can craft compelling stories by bringing all this customer information together. That means it can inform your brand’s overall marketing strategy, tactics, and creative development. Shirley King explains how.
Hyper-personalized Marketing
Customers who join a loyalty program provide personalized data at registration, and smart loyalty program managers have a welcome series and customer journey in place to capture actionable info going forward. This zero-party data allows for developing highly targeted and personalized offers that present members with what they have told the brand they desire or need.
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Opportunities to expose your products to customers are diminishing due to privacy concerns, and consumers are becoming more aware of how their data is being used and who has access to it. Loyalty programs allow marketers to access data directly from customers rather than relying on inferred data or purchased data.
Predicting New Customers
By analyzing the loyalty data, brands can predict which customers to target to become advocates within the program and which types of potential customers to advise marketing to target outside of the program.
Thinking about starting a program?
Consider these types of loyalty programs:
- A points-based program allows customers to accrue points via purchases or referrals or even by writing reviews; they then use those points to obtain free stuff.
- A tiered program allows members to receive perks for how they rank in the program.
- A paid program offers members the opportunity to pay a (normally) nominal
fee for extra perks that are more valuable than the fee. - A value-based program allows members to donate their points to a charitable cause.
- You can also partner with other brands that fit with your industry to offer customers value beyond your business.
- Game-based programs, such as sweepstakes and contests, make the process more fun by offering a chance to win perks.
