Not every company has a loyalty program. Not every company has a team that is solely responsible for customer loyalty. Nevertheless, every company is currently looking into how they can build loyalty in a contactless world.
Contactless experiences are not new. The development was massively accelerated by Covid-19. The data from the past few months are indicative.
The following three building blocks can help build a successful contactless loyalty program.
1. Loyal ties are mutual
In a world that is socially distant, the question arises: What value does your brand actually create in this environment? Can they deliver positive experiences in real time that build long-term loyalty and take into account new consumer expectations? Only, argues Forrester, if a brand campaign can answer these questions with a clear yes, is the effort worth it at all.
Nowadays there are many examples like in the hotel sector, where thanks to specific apps customers can avoid any personal contact with the hotel and at the same time receive optimal care.
2. Flexibility as a core strategy
Flexibility is the key to any marketing initiative. Therefore, it is more important than ever to set up a basic and always adaptable strategy. Investing in loyalty programs is costly. A good ROI plan shows which investments will bring the returns so that stakeholders can work towards real, measurable results. Because loyalty measures are not about giving discounts, but about increasing engagement and results over time.
Planning and setting goals is the first step. But the more important thing is the implementation of flexibility. The goal must be set for the long term, but the path to it must be dynamic. Understanding real-time results is important so that companies can shift to meet goals. There is no point in setting a strict two to four year plan and never looking at it again. Things are always changing. A loyalty strategy needs to be as flexible as possible to meet this requirement, and it needs the right tools to respond to it.
3. Determination of the degree of loyalty
Knowing customers across all brand interactions is critical to building loyalty. Identity-based profiles can combine online and offline interactions with digital and physical experiences, so marketers can understand the range of a person’s engagement with the brand. This holistic customer view helps to design investments in each individual customer immediately and over time.
Implementing an analytics tool that decides which customers are truly loyal, and which customers are in a loyalty program but have less potential for continued engagement, is more important than ever in a contactless world.
For example, if a customer has a low level of loyalty, it’s okay not to present them with new exclusive offers. But if this person has a medium level of loyalty, it is worthwhile to involve him more in campaigns.
In the end, it is seen that technology is once again the great ally to achieve this strategic objective.
In addition to optimizing interactions, it allows collecting all the data and detailed analysis, which serve as the basis for decision-making.
