How To Start & Fund A Customer Loyalty Program

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When running a business, there may be times where you want to try and attract new customers and retain your loyal ones but are struggling to do so. Finances can factor into this as well, as you may want to drop loads of new marketing, but just don’t have the cash. You could look at taking out small business loans online or utilise a business credit card. There are other ways you can boost your clientele, and one of the best is through a customer loyalty program. So, keep reading and discover how you can start, and fund a loyalty program all of your own. 

Funding A Loyalty Program

Funding a loyalty program doesn’t have to cost your earth. In fact, it can be relatively cheap if you do it right. There are lots of things to consider when starting it up and they will need to be paid for. Things like marketing is one of the big ones, but you also need to think about how you’re going to run the scheme. Are you going to use physical cards that they can scan or an app that helps them collect points? Whatever method you choose, there will be a cost involved. However, you don’t need to set aside loads of money, but you do need to utilise what you’ve got the best you can. Taking a percentage of your profits can be one of the easiest ways to fund it, but you may also look at taking out credit as well. Funding it will be a personal decision as not every business will be in the same financial situation. 

Choose Something That Matches Your Brand

When it’s time to try and start up your loyalty program, you first need to decide on what route you’re going to go for. You need to make sure it’s something that closely aligns with your brand and ethos so that it suits your customers too. For example, if your brand is eco-friendly, going for something that involves a lot of non-recyclable plastic cards, your customers may not be interested in it as it’s not something that matches the ethics that you’re pushing. Make sure that your program matches your business, and you’ll find it much easier to implement successfully.  

Have A Goal In Mind

You also have to consider what type of results you want. Do you want to gain new customers or retain loyal ones, or both? These sorts of programs can do wonders for your business, but you need to know what you want it to do for you. You want to have a planned review of the program after certain time periods so you can see if you’re hitting your goals too. Otherwise, you may end up not doing so well without even knowing and you won’t know whether to make the changes or not. 

Know Your Customer Type

It’s very important that you know what type of customers you have when it comes to deciding how your loyalty program will work. If you have a relatively young crowd who like to do everything digitally, then opting for a loyalty app will be the perfect option. But, if you’ve got a customer base who like speaking to you on the phone and don’t really enjoy technology, you may be better off going for a classic loyalty card instead. You want your program to work for your customers, so you must take their needs into account. 

Make It Personal

As well as thinking about your customer’s needs, you also need to personalise the loyalty program when you can to ensure that they feel catered to. Your loyalty scheme should be tailored to each customer as well, much like supermarkets do when they offer you personalised discounts based on your shopping history. This sort of thing will make people much more likely to use it as it offers them something they actually want. Generic rewards can be great, but you’ll find much more success if you make them personalised. 

Use A Referral Scheme

As well as running your loyalty program, it’s also a smart idea to add a referral scheme to it as well. For instance, you could offer a customer that refers a friend a 10% discount when their friend then buys from you as well. This helps increase your brand awareness and keep your loyal customers at the same time. A loyalty program is great but adding a referral scheme to it as well will really help boost it and offers your customers something different. 

Market Your New Loyalty Program

You’ll need to do marketing for your reward program as well, because you can’t expect it to spread just through word of mouth. Post it all over your social media, have displays that customers can see on your business premises, even have leaflets that can be popped into bags with purchases. You want to really get it out there and make sure that every customer knows about it. In order for the launch of the scheme to be successful, you need to make sure people know about it. Otherwise, you’ll have wasted money and a reduced number of loyal customers. 

Offer More Than One Reward

When it comes to the rewards themselves, you need to offer more than one type of reward. Points based systems are great, but they can become boring if they only provide you with a little bit of money off every so often, it won’t really seem worth it to customers. Offering them money off, discounts on certain products, and even freebies now and then can be a much better approach. You’ll find that your customers will be happier with the option of lots of rewards, rather than just one.

Creating a customer loyalty program can be a great idea for any business, and it can really help push brand awareness and encourage loyal customers. There are so many different types of schemes you can offer from referrals to points collection, the possibilities are endless. You’ll find that you can attract many more new customers as well as encourage ones to become returning ones once you add a loyalty program. So, why not take these tips on board and start your program today? The results will speak for themselves!