Complacency has no place in selling. Today’s shoppers are not only smart; they are fickle unless you keep them engaged and hooked with appropriate loyalty programs. It is a good idea to offer quality products at reasonable prices backed by excellent services but that alone will not work in today’s environment. You need a program to retain them and keep them loyal. It is better to engage specialists in loyalty to craft and implement a strategy that works for you.
Beyond Thank You
It is not sufficient to just send an email or SMS to a customer who has just bought a product and say thank you. This is an opportunity to increase engagement and bring them into a solidly crafted loyalty program. You could offer them a chance to enroll in a loyalty membership program with suitable rewards for signing up, for buying again and then for recommending and promoting your product and company. You can offer a free loyalty program or a paid one with correspondingly higher benefits. A paid membership is more attractive for buyers because they get immediate benefits rather than the long route of accumulating and redeeming points. One thing you can do, for instance, is offer reward points they can redeem when they buy again, in the same thank you note.
Continuing The Engagement
A buyer may respond and join the program. He may put it off for another day and forget all about it. Continue the engagement with emails and SMS to keep them informed of new products or services and then recommend a product that they would like and on which you have a great deal with a chance to earn still more rewards. Encourage social media interaction and promotion, offering benefits for their comments.
Personal and Experiential
The above tactics keeps you in touch with customers but from a distance. The key is to bring them closer and offer them something experiential. If you operate a brick and mortar store then the best thing to do is to organize events on an ongoing basis and invite them to take part with promises of gifts, competitions, activities and chance to shop at discounted prices. It is something too good to pass and you can be sure a majority of buyers will attend, especially when you adopt a personalized approach.
Getting Feedbacks
Just implementing a loyalty program and hoping it will have shoppers coming back for more is not enough. As a store owner you need to be proactive and obtain their feedback on an ongoing basis as to what appeals to them and what could improved to convince them to stay tuned.
All this may seem hard work and it really is. The better way is to engage LoyaltyXperts to handle this aspect while you focus on selling and managing your shop.
