Use customer loyalty programmes to increase your e-Commerce

You have opened your e-Commerce site or online store, optimised your website and are ready to start a sales-oriented transformation. But in order to increase sales, you need to add to one-off purchases and make sure your customers come back over and over again. This is where effective loyalty programmes come into play, enabling you to retain customers, develop your brand and put you ahead of the competition by highlighting the things that make your brand distinctive.

E-commerce customer loyalty programmes focus on three main aims:

To motivate first-time shoppers to return to the site again in the future

To encourage existing customers to purchase more expensive products or services

To obtain customer feedback that will help you optimise marketing campaigns and improve customer experience

The hardest aspect of any loyalty programme is finding the balance between the ability to gain new customers while retaining existing ones. Perhaps returning customers might not always purchase high-profit products, but once you gain their loyalty you profit from repeat sales for years to come.

E-commerce loyalty programme strategies

You can use several strategies to help you improve customer loyalty:

Adopt a points system that rewards customers in keeping with their activity on the site

Use gaming techniques to make the customer experience more fun and practical (inter-customer competition components such as Swarm simulators)

Reward customers in accordance with the points they collect, by offering discounts, free products and special gifts

Offer additional benefits such as gift cards, air miles and upgrades.

What can you expect from e-commerce loyalty programmes?

When trying to understand your customers, begin by looking at your own customer experiences. When you shop on different e-commerce sites, what kind of experience do you have? What kind of things might make you visit a particular site again? Here are a few ideas that you may wish to consider:

Use loyalty programmes that encourage customers to buy new products through free options

Offer special deals, like 3 for 1 offers or discounts on a second item

Include credit card bonuses or opportunities to gain free air miles

Follow the examples of other companies, like Amazon’s free delivery service or free Kindle e-book campaigns

Integrate member-rated scoring methods used by social networking sites like 1UP.com and Swarm

Display customised special offers based on past purchase histories

Make the site more entertaining by using gaming techniques for activities like updating profiles, shopping, writing comments and making recommendations

It is now easier than ever to sign up to an e-commerce loyalty programme. Users can enter their details or register through their social media accounts and immediately receive a reward for signing up.

Loyalty programmes boost the performance of marketing campaigns

Loyalty programmes help increase sales consistency, and encourage customers who are happy with the brand experience to become voluntary brand ambassadors.

For instance, by having an accurate understanding of when a customer tends to shop, you can send them coupons or reminder messages. You can also use mobile or social CRM systems.

You can optimise your website by giving your customers better information about products and services and encouraging them to read product reviews. This in turn will help reduce customer service costs.

You can offer discounts, rewards and gifts through viral campaigns. You can encourage existing customers to tell their friends and family about your brand and thus bring you new shoppers.

E-commerce loyalty programmes are not there simply to fill quotas. By using gaming techniques they can also improve customer’s online experience and increase their engagement. This enables you to raise your chances of gaining new and long-standing customers while reducing the cost of your customer acquisition efforts.

An improved infrastructure that responds to everyone’s needs

A good e-commerce loyalty programme must include all the features needed to guarantee increased sales from existing customers as well as bringing in new ones. Thus focusing on providing added value will help you to measure your programme’s effectiveness and find ways to improve so that customers are convinced to return to your website over and over again. As you embark on this journey PayFlex Loyalty solutions, developed to handle all your e-commerce requirements, will be your most loyal travelling companion.