Going the Distance: Four Ways to Build a Better Customer Loyalty Program for Your Brand

It’s easy enough for a customer to join your loyalty program, especially when you’re offering an incentive such as discounts. All your customer has to do is give out some basic information, and voila! They’re in the fold, a brand new loyalty member with your company. From there, it’s happily ever after. You offer the perks; they stand solidly by you, bringing you their continued business. Simple. Or is it? In reality, just how many of those customers are act ively participating in your loyalty program? Do you know? Sure, loyalty program memberships are on the rise according to market research company eMarketer, having jumped 25 percent in the space of just two years. However, that figure may be a bit misleading. The truth is that, while loyalty program sign-ups may be more numerous, active participation in such programs is actually in decline. At the time of the study, the average US household had memberships in 29 loyalty programs; yet consumers were only active in 12 of those. That’s just 41 percent. And even that meager figure represents a drop of 2 percentage points per year over each of the preceding four years, according to a study by loyalty-marketing research company COLLOQUY.

When discounts just aren’t enough

So what’s a brand to do? How can you make your loyalty program worth your customer’s while—as well as your own? After all, gaining a new loyalty member doesn’t mean much if your customer isn’t actively participating in your program. Consider this: Does your customer loyalty program offer members anything different from what your competitors are offering? Chances are your program includes discounts. That’s a given. And what customer doesn’t appreciate a good discount? But when every other company out there is providing this staple benefit in comparable amounts, it becomes less and less likely that customers will remain loyal to any one particular brand. Frankly, it’s all too easy for customers to get lost in a sea of loyalty member discounts. They’re everywhere. In fact, just under half of internet users perceive that all rewards programs are alike, according to a 2015 eMarketer survey. The key to success, then, is to differentiate your business from the crowd. If you can offer your customers something unique and valuable beyond the usual discount, chances are they’ll be more likely to stick with your brand. Here’s some inspiration from companies who get it.

Virgin: Reward more purchases with more benefits.

That’s not to say you need to get rid of discounts entirely. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Customers still love a good discount. The goal is to be creative in terms of the loyalty perks you offer. Take the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, for example. As part of its loyalty program, the airline allows members to earn miles and tier points. Members are inducted at the Club Red tier, from which they can move up to Club Silver and then Club Gold. Here, it’s not just a discount. It’s status. And people respond to feeling important, elite. Still, even where the rewards themselves are concerned, Virgin is motivating loyalty customers with some pretty attractive offers. At the Club Red tier, members earn flight miles and receive discounts on rental cars, airport parking, hotels and holiday flights. But as members rise in tiers, they get even more. At the Club Silver tier, members earn 50 percent more points on flights, access to expedited check-in, and priority standby seating. And once they reach the top, Club Gold members receive double miles, priority boarding and access to exclusive clubhouses where they can get a drink or a massage before their flight. Now that’s some serious incentive to keep coming back for more. Discounts are still part of the equation – but they are designed with innovation and personal value in mind, elevating them to more than just savings.

Amazon Prime: Pay upfront and become a VIP.

What if your customers only had to pay a one-time upfront fee to get a year’s worth of substantial benefits? It may not sound like the smartest business idea at first glance. But take a closer look. Amazon Prime users pay a nominal $99 a year to gain free, two-day shipping on millions of products with no minimum purchase. And that’s just one benefit of going Prime. It’s true that Amazon loses $1-2 billion a year on Prime. This comes as no surprise given the incredible value the program offers. But get this: Amazon makes up for its losses in markedly higher transaction frequency. Specifically, Prime members spend an average of $1,500 a year on Amazon.com, compared with $625 spent by non-Prime users, a ccording to a 2015 report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Patagonia: Cater to customer values.

Sometimes, the draw for consumers isn’t saving money or getting a great deal. The eco-friendly outdoor clothing company Patagonia figured this out back in 2011, when it partnered with eBay to launch its Common Threads Initiative: a program that allows customers to resell their used Patagonia clothing via the company’s website. Why is this program important to customers? And how does it benefit Patagonia? The company’s brand embraces environmental and social responsibility, so it was only fitting that they create a platform for essentially recycling old clothing rather than merely throwing it away. The Common Threads Initiative helps Patagonia build a memorable brand and fierce loyalty by offering its customers a cause that aligns with deep personal values. OK, so their customers get to make a little money, too. Everybody wins.

American Airlines: Gamify your loyalty program.

If you’re going to offer your customers a loyalty program, why not make it f un? After all, engagement is key to building a strong relationship with your customer. And what better way to achieve that goal than making a game of it. American Airlines had this very thing in mind when it created its AAdvantage Passport Challenge following its merger with USAirways. The goal: find a new way to engage customers as big changes were underway. Using a custom Facebook application, American Airlines created a virtual passport to increase brand awareness while offering members a chance to earn bonus points. Customers earned these rewards through a variety of game-like activities, from answering trivia questions to tracking travel through a personalized dashboard. In the end, participants earned more than 70 percent more stamps than expected – and the airline saw a ROI of more than 500 percent. The takeaway: people like games.

Stand out from the crowd.

Your approach to your customer loyalty program should align with your overall marketing approach. Effective branding is about standing out, not blending it. Being memorable is key. To this end, keep in mind that loyalty programs are no longer a novelty. That means that yesterday’s strategies won’t work moving forward, so look for ways to rise above the noise, setting yourself apart from the cloying drone of countless other cookie-cutter programs.

The Unsexy Side of Marketing

These days, everyone wants to build an app. Everyone is publishing their own e-book. Everyone is pinning their hearts out on Pinterest. They all want to be first on the latest, greatest marketing bandwagon with the hottest buzz.

And while these are all valid and effective tactics, that’s no reason to abandon the proven standbys. Sometimes the less glamorous road is the most efficient and effective pathway to reach and connect with your particular target audience.

Let’s take a look at a few of these tried-and-true methods and how you can put them to work to help you reach your business growth goals:

Blogging

A company blog is an excellent way to engage your customers on a personal level and to provide some very relevant information to your target audience. Your target audience will be much more likely to find you if you are writing about topics that interest them. Just be sure to follow these pointers:

• Blog about topics that interest your target audience. You could provide how-to articles, inspirational round-ups, updates of your company, a contest or event you are hosting, etc.
• Blog with consistency. Each post can and should be varied, but they should always reflect the values of the company.
• The blog should be personal and authentic. If it achieves both of these, then the general public and (most importantly) customers will trust your company.
• Always link within the content of each post to one other post on your site. But only do this if it fits within the context of the article. Remember, you always have the "Related Articles" section at the end in which you can point readers to more. A link within your content, however, weighs a bit heavier as far as SEO is concerned.
• Do not forget an RSS feed and newsletter sign-up form. Make these easy to find and any forms short with as little information required as possible.

Another way to use blogging is to write for other blogs that are related to your company but that are not competitors. For instance, a landscaping business could submit guest posts to "green" blogs, home and garden blogs, other landscaping blogs that are not affiliated with another landscaping company, and any other blog that has readers within your target audience description. You will just want to make sure that blogs allow you to place a keyword phrase embedded with your link either in the content of the article or in the "About the Author" section. Not only does guest blogging build up your company as an expert in your field, but it also increases your page rank on search engines.

Facebook and Twitter

Facebook and Twitter aren't the new kids on the block they used to be, but fact is, most of your customers probably still use them day in and day out.

Keep posting on these networks regularly, but make sure that updates are written on an individual basis. Avoiding mass updates will give the perception that your company is relatable and values individuals.

Your updates can be your latest blog post, a countdown to a company event, discounts or coupons, a drawing or contest for a drawing. Do not update about how you are feeling today, rants on the latest political news, your opinion of competitors, or anything else that could annoy or distract your customers from their relationship with your company. Before posting an update, ask yourself if this is something that you as a customer would want to see from a company you love.

Online directories

Add yourself to as many applicable online directories as possible. Online directories increase your popularity on search engines. This means that it is more likely for you to be discovered through general search entries.

Google Maps is not generally considered a directory, but it may be the most important place to get your company listed. If you have a “headquarters,” post its location on Google Maps. Mark it as headquarters. Then, if there are satellite sites, include those as well.

Direct mail marketing

Direct mail does not necessarily mean via the postal service. Direct mail marketing can also mean email. These emails should be as personal as possible, so consider using customers' names in the subject and throughout the content of the email.

For postal mailers, include a flyer or use postcards. Both print mail and emails can contain a mixture of new developments in the company, things to be looking forward to, promotions and coupons, and any other sort of relational news. Try to avoid including too many statistical reports or numbers. These turn people off, and they will promptly throw away your letter or delete your email.

Keep direct mailers short and simple. Here are a few points to consider when planning for a direct mail marketing campaign:

• Postcards are still incredibly effective so long as they’re clean, unique, and have memorable graphics, along with the other important pieces of information below.
• Include just a snatch of information, enough to make them curious.
• Tell them what you want them to do with a strong, actionable call to action (i.e. buttons that say Purchase, phrases such as "Visit our website or scan our QR code to find out more").
• Provide irresistible incentives, such as limited time offers for free items with a purchase, a discount, or a chance to win a drawing for a prize.
• Include a URL, Twitter name, QR code, purchase button, or another source for them to find out more information.
• Be sure that you cater to your recipients. Consider age, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, and religious orientation.

Yellow Pages

Both online and off, the yellow pages is a valuable marketing avenue. If your business relies on both local and online customers, purchase ad space in both your local yellow pages as well as for the online yellow pages. This will not only improve your chances of being found when prospects complete an online search but also when they are looking through the local phone book for businesses who offer your services or products. Just be sure that your ad is large enough to be seen next to other marketing giants in your industry. Also, be sure to advertise yourself as unique. What niche services do you offer that your competitors do not? Are you family owned and operated? Do you give individualized attention to each customer? Creating a unique angle on your ad will make you stand out to your target audience.

Remember that while adapting to new ideas and technologies is essential, it doesn’t necessarily render the old methods invalid. Your job is to find the right combination to reach and resonate with your target market so that you can build your own community of fans and followers. No matter how they come into your circle, their loyalty and their advocacy of your brand is a result that will stand the test of time.

Right from the Start: The Secrets to a Successful Website Redesign

Your website should be your number one salesman 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But if your site has lost its luster and isn’t performing as it should, a redesign might be just the right prescription to boost its ability to capture and convert new leads.

Redesign your website is an exciting prospect filled with so many possibilities. It is, quite literally, the dawn of a new day for your company’s web presence, but how and where do you start?

Here’s a website redesign road map that will put you on the track to success right from the start.

Start with your “wish list.”

Naturally, when you’re embarking on a website redesign project, your first inclination is to make an exhaustive list of all the features and functionality you want to incorporate in the new site.

Having a wish list is helpful, but clinging insistently to executing every single one of those items can be a recipe for a budget-busting project.

Go ahead and create your wish list, but once you’re done, the next step in the process is to put on your editor’s hat. Strike through every single feature that is not essential to success. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive in your editing. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Keep only the mission-critical features that will create a better, more value-packed user experience. Shed the “nice-to-have” features that will appeal to only a very small sub‐segment of your audience or that represent a personal “pet project.” These will only clutter your site and make it harder for the majority of your customers to find what they need quickly and easily.

If you can maintain a critical, objective eye through this editing process, your wish list will be substantially reduced, and you will have a much more solid foundation for a successful project.

Fight the “now-or-never” mentality.

One of the obstacles you’ll face when trying to pare down your wish list is the thinking that if you don’t do something now, you won’t get the chance to do it again in the near future. After all, how often do you redesign your website?

Instead, take a phase-based approach to the project. With your long-term goals and objectives in mind, decide what you must have now and what can wait until your company and your customers’ needs have reached the next plateau.

By mapping out anticipated future iterations and additions at the outset, you can make sure that your new site is built with the underpinnings it needs to support later growth and expansion.

Also, by breaking your redesign project into phases, you can launch the first version more quickly and without blowing your entire budget. This will give you time to gather feedback on the site and shape your future development plans accordingly.

The responses you receive from your customers after your new site launches may reinforce your decision to shed certain unnecessary features, or you may discover that they’re asking for another feature you had not previously considered. By breaking your project into smaller phases, you can take action on this valuable feedback quickly, instead of waiting until the next big redesign project. In this way, you can show your customers that you’re listening to them and that you care deeply about what they have to say – a great way to continue to build customer loyalty.

So now that you have your wish list and your phase-based approach nailed down, what’s next? It’s time for the big “d” – design.

Never cut corners on design.

Many redesign projects center around the need for a new look and feel for the website. Maybe your site’s current design isn’t a good reflection of your brand, or perhaps your company has simply outgrown a site that was launched early on in its history. Or you may just feel that your site is tired and outdated and in desperate need of modernization.

Regardless of the reasons driving your redesign, creating a Class-A look and feel with a user experience to match is a critical, yet often undervalued, piece of your website redevelopment project.

Adding new features or functionality will be pointless if the look of the site or the experience it creates is not up to par. Success starts with great design, and quality design should never take a backseat to fancy bells and whistles.

Consider this scenario: Let’s say you have a website with an outdated look that’s lacking the helpful features your customers want. If you were to update it with a strong modernized design but include none of those new features, you would still realize some measure of success. You’d have an attractive new design and a quality user experience, and that alone is an improvement that you can then build upon in later phases. If, however, you go the opposite route by trying to shoehorn new features into a bad existing design, your site will still suffer from that outdated look and poor user experience, and your investment will be for naught.

Great features supported by bad design have a very steep hill to climb. By investing in good design early on, you’ll ensure that all future investment in the website – when you do add those extra features – will have the best chance for success instead of being forced to fight a losing battle against a poorly designed user interface.

Design with the future in mind.

Deploying a website that is streamlined, efficient and customer-focused is a great start. But the feedback you receive after launch and the desire to continually improve the site will ultimately drive what comes next – those subsequent phases that you have already planned for. To this end, you will need to make sure that the new design and platform will support future growth.

As you edit aggressively early on in this process, you should also continually ask yourself if the plans that you’re making will scale appropriately. How will the site grow with your company over the next 6 months? How about the next 12 or 24 months? How will this mesh with the future phases you have planned as well as the unexpected feedback you may get along the way?

Whether you are hiring a web development firm for your redesign project or are working with an in‐house team, ask them about the technologies that are being used on the new site, from HTML5 to CSS3 to responsive design to the content management system (CMS), and think about how those technologies will work for you today and tomorrow. When it comes to the foundation behind the scenes, never make a choice to save money in the short term that isn’t the best choice for the long term, or else you’ll ultimately end up shelling out a lot more money over time.

A successful website redesign project can start small and focused on critical elements, but to achieve long-term success, that streamlined approach must allow for future scalability so your website will grow with your company, evolve along with emerging technologies and continue to fuel your success.

Take the plunge.

There are many different ways to get from point A to point B when building a website, but regardless of the process you and your team follow, the fundamental principal of starting small and focused on critical elements for success and adding improvements over time is one that will never steer you wrong. Instead of trying to do everything at once, taking this approach will allow you to launch a new website that is a visual and functional improvement without getting bogged down by “nice-to-have” features that will ultimately add very little value but potentially cause very big headaches.

A great design bolstered by key usability features and an eye towards future growth and scalability are the keys to creating a website that will serve as a catalyst for the growth of your business today, tomorrow and beyond.