What Makes A Good Loyalty Program? The Top 6 Characteristics

At White Label Loyalty, we know what a good loyalty program looks like. Here are the 6 top characteristics that every good loyalty program has...

Encourage repeat purchases

Studies have shown that  12% - 15% of customers are loyal to a single retailer. However, this small number of loyal customers generate between 55% - 70% of company sales. Therefore, retaining customers is of paramount importance even more so because retaining customers is less expensive than acquiring new ones. There are a number of ways that repeat purchases are encouraged by loyalty platforms. Firstly, smart rules being in place encourage specific actions in different lifecycle stages. 
 

Loyalty Levers

Furthermore, you can utilise loyalty levers to increase revenue from repeat customers. Some examples of loyalty levers include include:

1. Firstly, you can improve on the number of visits that a customer makes to your platform by providing a certain number of points for a first visit and then a continuation of rewards following repeat visits.
    
2. You can also improve the number of transactions that are made by sending a code to a customer following a purchase that is offering a discount for an item they did not purchase the first time around.
    
3. You can increase the basket size of a customer by offering a certain number of points depending on how many items are in a basket.
    
4. Finally, you can increase the actual basket value of an item by rewarding a customer a certain number of points depending on the quantity of a certain item they are purchasing.
    

These four loyalty levers provide an opportunity to encourage repeat purchases through your loyalty program.

Create strong bonds with customers

Additionally, an emotional bond is what differentiates customer loyalty from solely customer retention. You need to realise a loyalty program’s potential for fostering customer relationships as true loyalty usually comes from emotional connections to a brand.
 

Loyal customers who have had this emotional bond created are more likely to purchase more, with a high-margin of supplemental products and services. Furthermore, these loyal customers are far more likely to refer their friends to the program: increasing growth even further. 
 

Find out how a referral program can be the most powerful acquisition tool here 
 

Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is helpful for creating strong bonds with customers. There are four main characteristics that make up relationship marketing. These are: 

• Trust: a willingness to rely on a partner who you have confidence in with promises not being broken. A break of trust can lead to defection from the company.
• Commitment: a higher obligation to make a relationship succeed in a mutually beneficial way.
• Communication: keeping in touch with valued customers in a timely trustworthy manner.
• Conflict handling: the ability to perceive what conflicts can arise with customers and being able to deal with them.

Make it not just about transactions

In addition, important to engage customers through rewarding all and any of their positive interactions with the brand, not just transactions. 
 

The events based nature of our system makes our loyalty program not just about transactions. Our reactor engine can reward a number of different actions. These include, offering feedback on a product, social media interaction and referring a friend. With this approach, you can drive any desired behaviour and are not confined by predefined rules as you would be in a rigid loyalty program. 

Turn data into insight

Moreover, collecting the right data is crucial but you will only see results if you can create actionable insights from the data, such as targeted rewards.
 

At White Label Loyalty, we have a range of data-capturing solutions that enable us to turn data into insight. These include card linking and receipt scanning. 
 

What happens to this data to make it insightful? 
 

This is where the loyalty console works its magic. Our loyalty console provides visibility and control over your loyalty program, so you can configure it based on real-time user data. The analytics module then helps to immediately identify opportunities for data-driven strategies.

Allow for personalised actions

Primarily, a good loyalty program is predominantly data-driven. This allows for personalised communication and offers for your customers. Customers expect brands to tailor their messages and they respond to them better, therefore personalised actions are crucial for a strong customer loyalty program to be successful. This is because they provide the ability for an emotional bond between the customer and company. 
 

This is where the loyalty engine comes in and drives the White Label Loyalty platform. Every part of the loyalty engine is designed with your business in mind, giving you the power to maintain a customer base, improve retention and drive return visits.
 

Furthermore, our new audience engine allows you to segment your user-base in real time. This involves a high-level of flexibility using rules that categorise these users on any of the data available. This then unlocks an unprecedented streamlined way of targeting unique segments of your loyalty program members. Therefore providing a great way to personalise your offering to specific customers.

Flexible to change

Finally, circumstances, goals and customer needs change therefore your program should be able to adapt with your requirements. This is why an events-based engine is the future! As companies grow, their objectives and targets change with them too.
 

Thus a rigid loyalty program with set rules isn’t a viable long-term option. If you participate in a costly development of a rigid loyalty program in-house your brand is likely to outgrow this in a few months or years. Alternatively, choosing a tried and tested loyalty platform such as White Label Loyalty offers flexibility. Our solution is extremely adaptable and won’t make any presumptions about the needs of your business or your customers. You can build and change the rules and reactions of your program anytime without expensive additional development. 
 

With that being said, you need to make sure that when these changes are made, that there is a clear communication channel so that your customers and team are always aware. 

We hope that this article has provided you with the know-how to make the best loyalty program possible!

Get in touch here if you want to learn more about the next steps you can take in loyalty!