With an uncertain economic future, it's critical that businesses focus on customer retention through exceptional customer experience and rewards for being loyal. I work with a regional food delivery service and the rewards program they've developed continues to keep customers returning over and over.
Customer Loyalty Statistics
According to Experian's Whitepaper, Building Brand Loyalty in a Cross-Channel World:
- 34% of the U.S. population can be defined as brand loyalists
- 80% of brand loyalists claim they don’t purchase unknown brands merely to save money
- Loyalists welcome new ideas and respond with double the transaction rates on campaigns highlighting new loyalty program benefits
- Loyalists provide significantly higher click rates on surveys and review requests, as well as invitations to become a fan of a brand on social media sites
It's actually quite disturbing that most companies offer discounts for newly acquired customers and then ignore the customers that have remained loyal and have the biggest impact on the company's bottom line. The benefits of a loyalty rewards program are proven:
75% of U.S. companies with loyalty programs generate a return on investment. This is evidently the most significant benefit for businesses who invest their dollars on loyalty programs.
Experian
This infographic from Zinrelo, Top 10 Benefits of a Loyalty Rewards Program, illustrates the benefits of a loyalty rewards program:
- Drive Repeat Sales – this is accomplished by providing rewards for each type of activity, including account creation, email subscription, social media following, photo uploading, referrals, etc. This is also a great way to re-ignite dormant users or increase sales with current customers.
- Increase Average Order Value – Loyal customers buy more frequently and also spend more per transaction.
- Lower Customer Acquisition Cost – Add referrals to your rewards program to have your customers spread the word on your products and services. Word of mouth recommendations carry a ton of weight with consumers.
- Improve Stickiness Against Competition – If your customer has some rewards saved up, it's doubtful they're going to abandon your brand… even if the competitor is less expensive.
- Reduce Discounts to Customers – Do you have products that you need to move? Rather than steeply discounting them to everyone, offer a higher point option for loyal customers instead.
- Increase Conversion Rates – Show the number of points that customers will earn with their current cart… and they may spend more to get more points.
- Influence Product Selection – Use a multiplier to make higher margin products more affordable to your loyal customers.
- Build Rich User Profiles – Need more information to better segment and personalize your marketing communications? Offer reward points for profile completion and receipt scanning for offline purchases.
- Increase User-Generated Content – Reward customers for writing reviews, answering questions, and uploading photos.
- Increase Social Media Participation – Give users loyalty points for social sharing and advocacy.
Zinrelo also provides some formulas on calculating the effectiveness of each of these reward strategies in their infographic.
About Zinrelo
Zinrelo offers a modern-day, loyalty rewards platform that maximizes repeat sales and per-customer revenue through 360-degree customer engagement. Zinrelo encourages multiple dimensions of loyalty including transactional, social, referral, engagement and behavioral loyalty. It supports omni-channel deployments that span across desktop, mobile and physical stores.
