Por Maritza Morales
As consumers, we increasingly seek to obtain better experiences from the brands we buy from or the businesses we patronize. Better service, attention, response times, offerings, accessibility, delivery times, etc. This is even more relevant today as e-commerce has significantly increased in our country and around the world.
Companies should currently focus on maintaining profitable relationships with their customers. Retaining and fostering customer loyalty is up to 10 times more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. Simply by increasing investment by 5%, significant increases in sales and great benefits could be achieved.
A satisfied customer usually repeats purchases, recommends the brand, becomes the primary spokesperson and promoter without receiving payment for it, is inclined to pay for a premium service, and even to try new products or services offered to them.
For this reason, it is very important for companies to seek different ways to retain their current customers and attract new ones. One of the techniques that has a great impact is loyalty programs, such as points, rewards, subscriptions, tiered programs, etc.
Companies across all sectors currently have reward programs, such as Starbucks, Sephora, Apple, Nike, Hilton, Target, Rappi, Pizza Hut, The Body Shop.
How can we determine if a loyalty program is suitable for our business?
1.- It is necessary to define the specific objectives of these types of programs and if they are aligned with the business's marketing strategy.
Some of the objectives to define could be:
- Increase purchase volume
- Generate new potential customers
- Reduce the number of lost customers
- Increase ROI
- Obtain valuable customer information for the company
- Improve the company's reputation (online-offline)
2.- Once the objectives are defined, we need to know and classify current customers: Understand their general data, age, location, gender, purchase frequency, products purchased, commercial interests, etc.
For this, the best option is to have a CRM that supports data capture and automation for customer-centric marketing strategy.
3.- Understand what motivates the customer: The incentive must be truly compelling to motivate the customer.
4.- Create a good name for the program: The name is important and has a greater impact if it is attractive to the customer.
5.- Define real benefits: Attractive to the customer according to their needs, price, delivery times, personalized attention, exclusivity, promotions.
6.- Program functionality design: Not all programs apply to all businesses; a program tailored to the business and its customers is required.
7.- Monitoring: If it can't be measured, it can't be improved. It's necessary to give real and timely monitoring to the programs launched to know if the defined objectives are actually being achieved or if a change in strategy is necessary.
Let's remember that there are no magic formulas or overnight results; it's necessary to have a specialist or expert team to analyze the data and results to make informed decisions.