Boris Helleman & Mariëtta Robbé Groskamp for Younikorn Marketing Blog – May 2020.
“Loyalty marketing is an approach to marketing, based on strategic management, in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives”.
Every business should try to create an experience that exceeds the customer’s expectations because, when this happens, it leads to a strong positive response that will likely cause the client to become emotionally attached to your brand. The problem is that most companies have no process in place to accurately measure the quality of their customer loyalty. Instead, businesses tend to reach vague and baseless conclusions about the quality of customer (loyalty) insights.
Clearly, it’s safe to say that most businesses have a poor grasp on customer loyalty. The right reward on the right moment can turn satisfied customers into advocates for your business. These are the people who will become the pillars of your brand – the ones who spend the most money, bring in more customers, and shout your name from the rooftops. Did you know? A handful of advocates can double your revenue. +12% uplift in advocacy represents a 2X increase in revenue growth. Next to that most mature brands derive over 85% of their growth from their most loyal customers.
It’s a big mistake to think that the work is done once you get a customer’s money. After all, there’s a lot more money to be had if you can turn every paying customer into a vocal supporter of your business, thereby providing you with priceless word-of-mouth advertising. This is why the customer experience continues beyond the initial exchange of money for goods or services.
Our advice: you can keep the experience going by providing incentives for your satisfied customer to become a passionate promoter and referral engine for your company.
We would like to provide 5 ways to easily stand out with customer loyalty by using some effective methods for turning customers into passionate promoters include offering bonuses and rewards to those who refer friends, family and colleagues to your company. However, for such incentives to work, it’s important that the value of the reward matches the value of the extra business.
5 TIPS:
1. Start with the customer lifecycle and build your strategy around that:
It always start with a strategy in mind. It doesn’t make sense to launch a loyalty program/campaign as a one-off. It’s a waste of money if it’s not included in the strategy. Just start small, with a yearly plan, along the way you can add more topics and details to it. Keep in mind: there’s a lot of time and money spent on attracting new customers, while far less attention is given to holding on to those customers once they’re on board. In fact, most businesses spend the majority of their marketing budget acquiring customers, but it’s also quite common for these businesses to lose their hard-won customers almost immediately after winning them over.
2. Be relevant for your customer:
Don’t spam your customers with all kind of offerings and hoping the customer will take one of them. It’s annoying and it’s been proven they’re less likely to consider you any longer. Therefore be relevant, get to know your customer and communicate with them at the right moment, at the right time, via the right preferred channel. Build multiple customer profiles and look for similarities in customer behaviors to predict the needs of your customers.
The best tip we can give is to communicate to your customer before they even know they are going to look for that answer or product/service. You will create a WOW effect. Also, make customers feel like they are an important part of your company. Go for the extra mile, Create a culture of an out of the box mentality for your customer service professionals and give them the right tools to accomplish that. Such as the ability to send a handwritten card.
3. Loyalty techniques:
We can’t say it enough “DATA, DATA, DATA”! The better you know your customer the better you can serve them. So do your best to understand the emotions and behavior of your customers. If you don’t, they may well take their money elsewhere. There are all kind of different loyalty techniques. The most common loyalty program methodology are: customers earn points, which translate into some type of reward. Whether it’s a discount, a freebie, or special customer treatment, customers work toward a certain amount of points to redeem their reward.
The perfect combination is to elaborate it into a solid serious TIER based loyalty programs. With every loyalty technique it’s important to keep in mind, that it’s an ongoing learning process. It will help you building the full picture of a 360 degrees customer profile, which will help you to narrow down your different target audiences.
4. Dare to make mistakes & show your true colors:
Have you ever admitted a mistake you’ve made in your business? Your ability to establish customer loyalty depends on your ability to show full transparency! Which includes your mistakes, yes read that again. Admitting to mistakes your business and react quickly allows your customers to see the more human side of your brand. It’s also a great way to identify areas for improvement within the business. Secondly we recommend to show your true colors.
Millennial’s for example are typically very politically and socially active. They want to feel good about the purchases they make, which often means aligning themselves with brands whose values reflect their own. As a company trying to appeal to as many people as possible, this can sometimes feel like a risky step to take.
5. Don’t forget your most important promoter:
A group that’ s often overlooked: your employees. By giving your employees the trust and the right tools, they will excel themselves. Next to that: they will be willing to go the extra mile. It will contribute to higher productivity, profitability and employee satisfaction. So next time when you launch a campaign; keep your employees in mind and make them a part of it!
In the our next article we will provide a deep dive on the 5 helpful tips.
We are curious about your opinion, let us know in the comment section!
About:
Boris Helleman – Marketing Manager | T-Mobile Netherlands
Boris is the creative mind behind T-Mobile PrePaid. His experience with CVM campaigns based on AI, loyalty program “PrePaid Surprise” and the development of propositions allows him to focus on the customers needs without losing commercial momentum.
He has been nominated by Adformatie, Nima Amsterdam and Platform Innovation in Marketing (PIM) for the award of Marketing Talent of the year 2020. Adformatie also included him in the list of Top 100 Best Marketers in The Netherlands 2020.
Marhiëtta Robbé Groskamp – Country Director Netherlands | Velti
Mariëtta has an international marketing and sales background and has worked for Microsoft, Dell, Orange, T-Mobile and several international start-ups. She also shares a lot of her knowledge online in her personal Blog. She works for Velti, a leading global player in innovative, mobile marketing, customer retention and loyalty based solutions trusted by hundreds of mobile operators, media groups and brands such as Coca Cola.
