Building customer loyalty without the appropriate loyalty program software is like climbing a mountain without an oxygen tank. If you have big lungs, there us a slight chance you could make it. However, you’re more likely to get stranded and see other climbers clamber on past you.
Loyalty program software helps you centralize the many tendrils of brand awareness you should be examining as a business. This way you can compare different loyalty strategies, see where you should invest and hold back on what isn’t working. In doing so, you make sure you know how to keep your customers happy without giving them the opportunity to become unhappy in the first place.
Making sure you have all your bases covered in terms of customer retention doesn’t mean ignoring new business. Keeping your current customers happy is one of the best ways to make sure new customers are going to respect your brand. Why use customer loyalty program software? Here’s five answers out of many more.
1. Physical Cards are a Thing of the Past
Does this sound like a familiar situation: it’s July and you’re scrounging around the study for that voucher you got for Christmas which has probably already run out. Or how about this one: you go to get the free sandwich you had saved up for only to reach in your back pocket and remember you left your loyalty card in your other pants.
With smartphones, we have address books, contact lists and even notes for random ideas all held in the one little black cuboid. Apps are a way of consolidating the information you need to perform certain tasks into one handy program. They save on bureaucracy by streamlining the information you need.
Using customer loyalty program software to consolidate your customer history means both you and the customer can keep track of their spending. For them it allows the ability to keep track of purchases, spend more when they want to reach new goals and get excited about the loyalty rewards they might otherwise have forgotten about.
For your brand, you can track where customer money is being spent and use this to better your product or service. You don’t have to spend money on printing vouchers, using up resources to create plastic cards or deal with unhappy customers who have lost track of their loyalty points. Even if it is their fault, they will likely hold not redeeming loyalty points against you.
2. Analyze to Strategize
So much of marketing strategy has, in the past, relied on trial and error. We can file reports and check our numbers, but getting up to date statistics means no nasty surprises come next quarter.
Customer loyalty software is not the only way to record customer data. It is, however, the best way to bring all the different elements of your marketing strategy together. You can collect information on each customer and then fill in your own bespoke parameters for analysis. You will be able to collate demographics and see the direction in which your brand is headed. By doing this, you will be able to provide as much push or pull as needed.
Once you set out your strategy, the process never ends. You observe the data as it comes back from your customers, learn about what is working and what isn’t, then troubleshoot. This way, when you want to target ads in the future, you will have a much better aim.
3. Social Media Central
While we have social media giants connecting us to every possible platform and ad revenue, social media is also a great leveler between customer and brand. Ignoring or dismissing the power of the customer is done entirely at your own risk.
Social media not only allows brand and customer to interact more directly, it puts them at a level pegging during this interaction. Whether brands like it or not, the social network hubs which any social media user has the potential to create, are powerful. The one unhappy customer now has a greater reach than some smaller brands have.
This is because customers are their own brand. They have created a reflection of their desired lifestyle through their online avatars. Whether or not this reflects their actual lifestyle is besides the point.
With the right customer loyalty software, you will be able to channel all of your social media accounts through the one mainframe and make sure you are responding to customers directly and correctly. You can promote contests, deal with bad press and encourage new press through your software. It is the most comprehensive way to approach and increasingly complicated system.
4. Trends Won’t Wait for You
The fast paced nature of social media can provide problems, but it also provides opportunity. Trends may generate organically or through intentional campaigns, but either way you don’t want to miss them.
You might think with the vast amount of content on social media, there is too much to consume, but all it does is make customers eager for something new. If you have the right customer loyalty software, you can stay ahead of the game. You can do this both with social media analysis as well as go straight to the horses mouth with point of sale analytics.
This way, if you keep a keen eye on your loyalty software, you will be able to know what is going to pop before anyone else.
5. Growth is Paramount
Customer loyalty software is not new in and of itself (although there are new developments all the time). If you want to know why your company needs customer loyalty program software, it’s because without it you lose your advantage.
Your loyalty program will be able to work with you for whatever style of customer loyalty you wish to engender. If you want to make it a tiered system, a points based system or a simple reward for action system, your customer loyalty software will not only facilitate your wishes, it will let you know if you are making the right decisions.
A loyalty program which works will need a referral program built in. This is because your happy customers are going to want to spread the word on your brand. To make sure you are ready for the challenges growing your brand entails, choose the right customer loyalty software to have all your bases covered.
If you want to learn how your brand can use loyalty program software, set up a free consultation with our loyalty experts today!
