Loyalty Programs - How Can You Benefit?

If you’re in business today, chances are you’ve got a group of loyal customers. The challenge is how can you get more of your customers to be loyal? Loyalty programs have been around forever and very successful.

Loyalty programs simply put, is the act of rewarding your customers for their behavior of coming back to you multiple times. So here are a few great examples of programs that might spark an idea for your business.

Rewards Cards

We’ve seen a ton of coffee shops be very successful with rewards cards. It's nothing more than a business card with 10 cups of coffee printed on it or boxes to be stamped. Each time a customer buys coffee they get one of the cups “punched” or the box “stamped”. When they reach 10 they get a free coffee. Doesn’t seem like much does it? Coffee doesn't cost that much. But customers come back. We’ve seen businesses even store the cards on behalf of the customer. This way they don’t need to remember to bring it each time they come in.

Armani does this as well. Their card comes in a tin box (fancy!) with a brochure that talks about the program and which stores are participating. Each $100 spent gets one of their 10 logos punched. When customers get the whole card punched, they get $100 off of a purchase. Cool program. Their problem? They don’t widely publicized it and there’s no email marketing around it.

At Zaza a local nail salon, if a customers buys 8 treatments, they get the 9th one free. They keep all of  treatments on file and hopefully send you an email to notify you.

At a local pet supply store, one food manufacturer gives customers a card in exchange for some personal information. The store keeps the card and for each $50 spent customers get a stamp. At then end of the card they get a discount.

Points & Rewards

If you’re a member of OpenTable and you make your restaurant reservations here, you know you get points for each reservation. For some restaurants that want to entice more people to come in, they offer more points than others. I make sure to make my reservations here not only because it’s convenient for me but also because I’m amassing points. Here I come Gary Danko!

If you shop for your business at Staples, you know that you get a certain amount of rewards for each purchase. Then you can redeem those rewards at another purchase. Makes you only want to shop at one business supply store huh?

Friend get a friend

This is a form of loyalty that promotes word of mouth. A few of our employees get vegetables from a local farm, Capay Organic, delivered to the office and their home. Erik, one of our Engineers, started it all. Then Jill saw the veggies Erik got delivered and asked about them. Erik got a free box of veggies for Jill signing up. Now they’re trying to get others to order veggies so they can get veggies free.

Our dentist gives wine for customer referrals. It’s a nice gesture from him, but it is red wine, maybe he wants us to get a whitening procedures!☺

How can you take advantage?

1. Print out some business cards that fit nicely into a wallet. Print a number of icons or boxes on them and buy yourself a unique whole punch or stamp to punch the cards. Have a box and offer to store the cards by last name. Make sure you track how many you’re giving out and track your monthly sales. You might be surprised at your growth!

2. If you’ve got a system and can track total dollars spent, send an email when a customer reaches a certain amount spent. For instance if you’ve tracked that someone has spent $500 with you, do a Loyal Customer Promotion and send them an email to get them back in.

Hi Big Spender! You’ve reached the limit! Whose limit? Ours! For your patronage we’d like to extend a 25% discount on everything in the store or on the site just for you. This will expire in 7 days so act now! Use Promo Code XRE123T, but it’s for you only so don’t share!

3. If you’ve got an offline retail location send an email about your special "After Hours" sale to your best customers. Cater it, play some music, make it a social gathering while your most loyal customers shop. They’ll either bring a friend or tell ALL their friends about it. GREAT word of mouth.

Loyalty programs can be great for any business, do you use one?

Comments

[Dental Carlisle]

I think loyalty programs are wonderful because it captures the interest of customers and they get to enjoy benefits and rewards. It's also a good publicity for the business.

[Deb S.]

I have a hair salon that offers loyalty points and gift cards, and I use this online service, called StickyStreet.com. It keeps my customer's point balances, lets them check their balances on my site, and is really cheap to run (I pay $39.95/month).

[Farooque]

Excellent customer loyalty program where everybody wins.

[Victoria Schmitz]

I have found a site called confirmit that does the tracking of points and etc. They are a bit expensive. Also- google just picked up a company that does it as well. I just can't remember the name.

[Janine Popick]

I found one site that looks like it services small businesses, www.zlimit.com. Does anyone else know of others?

[Joan Fleischmann]

How can Internet stores take advantage of the reward card effort. Is there a site available for use and storage or something similiar to the idea that you recommend?

[Diane Seltzer]

Got any good recommendations for online companies that can help automate a rewards tracking program for b2b?