How to Market Your Loyalty Program

Implementing a rewards program is a great first step to gain your customers’ loyalty and begin building data-driven customer experiences. However, getting your business started with a loyalty program goes beyond simply signing up for some nifty software. You need to be able to sell your program’s benefits to your customers.

How to Create a Successful Customer Loyalty Program

Whether or not you have a loyalty program, creating a positive customer experience is important to your business’ success. A positive customer experience will help you turn more customers into regulars and gain new customers through word of mouth advertising.

When it comes to your loyalty program, it’s no different. To create a successful customer loyalty program and increase your list of members, you need to offer an easy sign-up experience and train your team to effectively communicate the benefits of joining your loyalty club.

How to Promote Your Customer Loyalty Program

Step one to implementing an effective loyalty program is actually getting your customers to sign up.

This might sound easy enough, but according to Bond Brand’s Loyalty Report, the average customer is a member of 14 loyalty programs but actively engages with only 7 of them.

Personally, I have about 10 loyalty cards in my wallet (many of which I can’t find when I’m checking out), and I’m not inclined to give up more valuable real estate in my wallet unless your business has some really great loyalty member perks.

This means a few things:

• If you offer your customers a digital loyalty card, you’ll have a lot more success getting your customers to sign up and use it. In fact, 90% of customers prefer digital loyalty programs. Aside from eliminating some wallet clutter, it also makes it easier for your customers to have their card on hand at the point of purchase, and it makes it easy for them to find out their points balance and if they’re eligible for any promos.
  
  
• If you want to stand out from other loyalty programs and earn your spot in your customer’s wallet (or digital wallet), you need to make sure your rewards are valuable and timely. Case in point: it should not take 3 years of point collection for customers to get their first reward.
  
  
• Training your team to encourage customers to sign up and use their rewards cards is key to a successful loyalty program.

Here are a few ways you can promote your loyalty program:

1. If you have a website, encourage customers to sign up for your loyalty program with a first purchase discount. For example, a pop-up on your website with, “sign up for our free loyalty program and get 15% off your first order”, is an easy way to demonstrate the value of signing up. You can also try offering a set number of bonus points that members get as soon as they sign up.

2. Post signage in your retail store or restaurant, which quickly covers frequently asked questions and the key value propositions. A simple sign can help convert regular customers to loyalty members.

3. Promote your loyalty program to your social media followers and email subscribers. If you already have a list of engaged customers, why not promote your loyalty program to them first? They’re more likely to sign up and spread the word to their respective networks.

4. Ensure sign up is quick and easy. If you think the majority of your customers will sign up during check out, you’ll want to make sure you’re not asking for too much information or asking them to complete a lengthy form. There are plenty of loyalty programs that simply ask for a name and email. If you want more customer information, send the new loyalty member an email with a prompt to complete their profile. You’ll have higher success rates if you offer bonus points for profile completion.

5. Finally, the most important factor in your loyalty program’s success is training your team to sell it to your customers.

Ensure your employees are knowledgeable about the process and perks, and coach your employees on how to pitch the program to your customers. You might even consider running a competition for your employees to see who can get the most loyalty member sign-ups during the first three months of launching the program.

Aside from getting new members, you’ll want to make sure that your employees are trained to ask customers to scan their loyalty cards at every purchase. This will help you to collect customer data, and encourage customers to continuously use your loyalty program.