Won’t it be awesome when there’s only “Your Brand Name” preferable from your customers for purchasing any products in your niche?
More than 80% of customers tend to buy products from the same brand if they are satisfied with the brand values and customer services. And that is what we call brand loyalty. They are comfortable and habitual to the brand and are even happy to spend more instead of buying products from other brands. Winning a customer’s heart is not a simple phenomenon, it requires more than just selling products rather than connecting to them on a vulnerable level.
The study conducted by LinkedIn stated to have observed growing trends in e-commerce Customer loyal Campaigns, as customers enjoy shopping through personalised and rewarding shopping experiences.
What is an e-commerce customer loyalty program?
An E-commerce Customer Loyalty programs help to maintain customer retention so that the buyers are happy to return to your store to purchase their own will.
The different benefits of the Customer Loyalty Programme
- Improve Brand Value
- Able to acquire new customers
- Loyal Customers E-mail List
- Customer Retention
- Increase Engagement Rate
- Conversion rate optimisation
- Increase repeat purchase frequency
- Able to connect with the customers
- A way to become better than competitors’
- High ROI (Return on Investment)
Steps to improve customer loyalty with customer loyalty programs
First, be faithful to your customers
You can’t expect your customers to be loyal when your business services are not. Being honest, and transparent with your business, humble and problem-solving customer care services, after-sales services and priority to your customers do matters to earn and maintain their trust.
Customers are humans and you can’t only see them as a medium of selling products and making profits.
Connect with the customer
Connecting with your customers through different mediums like social media, and personalised email marketing strategies like birthday wishes and special offers helps to maintain good customer retention and customer lifetime value.
Points programs
The points program is where you give points to your customers after every purchase and reward in the form of gifts, discounts, cashback, etc after the designated number of points are completed. Most commonly used customer loyalty programs engage your customers to return and make purchases in the eagerness of what reward they will get.
You can even further ask to share a post about their rewards so that the chain of maintaining good customer retention will not break.
Flipkart has super coins is one of the best examples of points programs where redemption is acceptable outside the Flipkart plethora as well.
Cash back program
The most common type of loyalty program is where you offer cash back for some specific purchases. When the customers have more cash with them there is a higher chance of repeating the purchase.
VIP and premium membership programs based on subscriptions
Here you make your customer feel special by offering VIP and Premium memberships as the customers with the membership will be the prior customers to get special services and to know about new launches.
Amazon Prime membership gives benefits to the customer access to Amazon Prime videos, free and instant deliveries, no minimum value for order required, prime gaming, Amazon Music, Amazon Reading, and much more.
Partnership program
In a partnership program, you make a deal with your complementary business owners to give special offers for both the business customers. Apart from discounts and offers they benefit from your business they can get complementary benefits from your partner benefits as well.
Fashion and Beauty go hand-in-hand with each other, if you have a fashion brand you can make a deal with a Beauty Brand related to styling products like shades, and grooming products in the form of coupons, discounts, etc.
Gaming based rewards
Most of the customers are game maniacs, and games programs like fun quizzes, earning batches, Spinning the wheel and winning the reward, etc can be a good medium of customer engagement with a source of entertainment. Gaming-based rewards are growing in popularity in e-commerce businesses as they increase the chances of the buyer returning to the website.
Referral program
It is like a word-of-mouth program where you encourage a customer to refer your brand to their friends, family and colleagues with every reference they will get a reward. Here you can drive new customers while maintaining a good existing customer relation.
Spend based program
Customers do feel unjustified when a buyer who spends more gets the same reward compared to a buyer who has spent less. A Spend based program enables the customer to reward the customer based on the amount they spend.
Free perks program
Who doesn’t like the word “Free”? It gives customers the benefits of free services or free extra products.
Free Home Delivery, Free Servicing and Maintenance, Free Installation, and Buy one get one Free are some free perks programs.
Lenskart has offered their customer Buy 1 Cet 1 Free perks with Gold Membership where you can share the membership with your friend and family member and free eye checkups at home.
Tier based programme
As the name suggests the rewards are divided into different tiers (levels), where the more tiers a customer unlocks, the more benefits they will get.
Here there are different sets of levels, for example, silver, gold, platinum and diamond. As the customers upgrade their levels from silver to gold and so on till the end level diamond exclusive deals and benefits will be given.
Make My Trip has a tiered program
Make My Trip Black Preferred where you have to spend 30000 to 100000 within 12 months of travel with a 5% additional discount on the hotel selected and access to MMTBlack Fest.
Make My Trip Black Elite where the individual has to spend between 100000 to 200000 within 12 months of travel with a 10% additional discount on the hotel selected, MMTBlack Hotel Privilege like a room upgrade and access to MMTBlack Fest.
Make My Trip Black Exclusive where an individual has to spend more than 2,00,000 within 12 months of travel with a 15%, hotel privilege like a room upgrade, 2 holiday vouchers of 10,000 Rs, a year’s worth of exclusive benefits with their partners, premium customer care and Discounted Airpot Cabs.
Social welfare-based program
In this type of program, you make customers feel worthy and they did some good deed while making a purchase. It not only provides a good medium for customer loyalty programs but also contributes to society and shows your ethical values to the customers.
Zomato Piggybank is a loyalty program for Zomato Users where 10% of every order is stored at the Zomato Piggybank which is redeemed for food orders from their tie-up restaurants which further donates Re1 to Akshata Patra NGO Foundation that runs mid-day meals for children for every Zomato Piggybank Order Placed.
Membership with Personalisation Program
Personalisation makes the customers feel connected with the brand. Apart from only giving personalised messages with a reward on birthdays can make the individuals shop at the store.
Nyka has a tier-based loyalty program Nyka Prive, Nyka Prive Gold, and Nyka Prive Platinum where the beneficial perks increase as the points increase points get multiplied for the customer’s birthday month.
Conclusion
If you want to create a loyal customer base for your brand make sure to make some investments and plan for loyalty programs with your own personalised and unique touch. Make sure to research different loyalty campaigns of different brands and your rivals to come up with your strategy to win customers.
