The most important relationship for any business is with their customers. Love for customers translates in the form of how brands focus on the needs of their loyal buyers. Relationships must be maintained. Brands must listen carefully to hear what’s being said and go the extra mile to please their customers, so that something amazing happens over time. As the relationship with the customer develops, customer trust grows and hence the spend. Loyal customers spend more than new ones!
By: Samir Palnitkar
Marketing Metrics states, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 - 70 percent whereas the probability of selling to a new customer is 5-20 percent. This statistic highlights the importance of retaining loyal customers. When loyalty turns into love, customers who love your brand stay and become fiercely loyal.
Brands that are making their loyalty programs cater to customer needs are most successful in attracting and maintaining engaged relationships. Brands are now rewarding customers on multiple dimensions and creating engaging rewards programs.
Here are examples of how brands are building deeper long-lasting connections with their customers and converting their one-time buyers into repeat buyers with a loyalty rewards program.
The FSAstore.com achieved a 22 percent increase in customer lifetime value with a rewards program
FSAstore.com is both the largest online marketplace for guaranteed FSA-eligible products.
With the objective of maximizing revenue by improving customer retention, FSAstore.com implemented an attractive rewards program using a modern-day loyalty platform. To improve customer retention, FSAstore.com executed several successful promotional campaigns using loyalty points.
Data analytics plays an important role in evaluating and understanding customer behavior. FSAstore.com took a cohort of users acquired over a few months in 2018. Based on past data, they applied regression analysis to predict the Customer Lifetime Value (Customer LTV or CLTV) 12 months after acquisition. Then they ran a variety of promotions for this cohort of users and measured the change in CLTV after 12 months. By comparing the predicted vs actual value of CTLV, FSAstore.com concluded that the loyalty rewards program promotions resulted in a 22 percent uplift in CLTV.
Results from the FSA Perks Rewards Program
- 22 percent increase in Customer Lifetime Value
- 46 percent increase in website purchases
- More than 1M members enrolled in the rewards program
“We have benefited from a solid loyalty platform that incorporates marketing automation and allows us to keep the program top of mind with our customers. A comprehensive platform that does everything from tracking loyalty to promoting customer engagement.”- Larry Gray, CRM Director at FSAstore.com
Yon-Ka Paris increased revenue by 48 percent with loyalty rewards program
Yon-Ka Paris a French skin care brand, pioneer and leader in aromatherapy.
To establish a stronger connection with customers and maximize revenue, Yon-Ka Paris launched the Yon-Ka Rewards Program. Customers were offered multiple point earning opportunities with simple actions to create 360-degree engagement such as purchase on website, account creation, writing reviews, sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
The points could be redeemed for discount coupons or free products. A mix of discounts and relevant freebies ensured that customers were motivated to take actions to earn points.
Increasing engagement with a rewards program in the following ways:
- Reward tiers based on various customer segments helped drive higher participation in the rewards program. After reaching a certain number of points, a customer is upgraded to the next tier and receives exclusive benefits from that tier. The three tiers were Beauty Enthusiast, Beauty Guru and Beauty Master. They were designed to offer users a reason to move to higher tiers. Data analytics helped restructure the rewards tiers so that more members could earn rewards.
- Rewards program emails received 6x higher click rates compared to non-rewards emails.
Results from The Yon-Ka Rewards Program
- Increase repeat customers and revenue
- Increase variety in promotions by including reward points-based promotions
- Get 2.2x more revenue from loyal customers
“We have seen a 48 percent increase in revenue compared to last year and this increase is directly attributable to the loyalty rewards platform. This is phenomenal!”- Brittany Boykow, E-Commerce Manager & Digital Marketing Analyst at Yon-Ka Paris
The above examples reflect how creatively brands are expressing love towards their most loyal customers with a rewards program.
More than 90 percent of companies currently have some form of customer engagement or loyalty program. Are you missing out on something?
Samir Palnitkar is the VP of Customer Success at Zinrelo, a technology company that specializes in loyalty rewards programs. An expert on building and growing “retention-first” businesses, he frequently writes on customer retention and loyalty rewards programs. Samir is also the founder of four other successful startups, holds five technology patents, and is the author of two technical books.