3 Reasons To Start A Loyalty Program

Numbers talk: Why you should start a loyalty program

If assumptions and insights are not enough for you, the stats coming from dense researches will tell you why you should start a loyalty program.

Selling to a customer for the second time is much easier compared to acquire a new customer. It is for certain that you should create a successful customer experience. The sunny side of it is that you can use the same method which powers your customer experience to create a return customer from a new customer who buys for the first time (even for multiple times): A customer loyalty program.

All the research about this topic shows that the customer retention cost is much lower than the cost of a new customer acquisition. As a matter of fact, air taxi service ImagineAir’s CEO Ben Hamilton underlines that a new customer requires 3 to 10 times more investment than a current client depending on the industry. Therefore, a loyalty program that retains current customers and ensures that they shop frequently, should be in the “must do” list for every company.

A better customer experience

According to a research by Forbes magazine, 79 percent of the people who shop online and have a bad customer service experience are tend to switch to a competitor in a week’s time. Customer experience today is not just limited to the support provided. The total value provided to people constitutes the basis of the customer experience. The points a customer wins from a program, ensures an added value that competitors can not offer for the same price. This perception provided by the loyalty program reflects positively on the general customer experience too.

Customers want to feel special

The reason why campaigns such as “Buy ten cups of coffee and the eleventh is on us” rides high is because they provide a feeling of savings to the consumers. However, this traditional approach is not enough in today’s circumstances. A research shows that 76 percent of the customers want a more personal shopping experience that is beyond materialistic rewards. With faster, trouble-free and more personalized offers, customers achieve more than just shopping and they become a part of the brand’s history. For this reason, companies should utilise a loyalty program to make the customers feel more valuable in special activities, and to reward them with points, social activities and references.

Appreciate the referrals

“Word of mouth” is now digital! Around ten years ago, people used to refer books, phones, movies or even furnitures to each other, and nowadays this “referral to an acquaintance” phenomenon has an utterly different dimension in the digital age we live in. With a recommendation to a friend which can easily be made with one click, both the customer and the new customer that is added to the system enjoy the given discounts, and the companies turn increasing number of sales to revenue. A McKinsey research shows that friend referrals result in up to twice the number of sales compared to paid advertisements. Similarly, surveys made by Deloitte show that the customers coming through friend referrals shop 37 percent more than regular customers.