Is your loyalty program seeing low participation rates? Here’s how to boost customer engagement on it.
Customers like to be part of loyalty programs. An average consumer joins around 14 loyalty programs.
But…
Is active only in around 6 of those programs!
Why so?
Here’s what happens…
Customers get attracted to loyalty programs because of the value and incentives these programs offer. But they can forget about it soon enough.
There’s a lot of competition amongst brands. Every brand is coming up with loyalty programs to entice customers. It’s common for customers to get lured by loyalty programs of other brands and jump ship. In some cases, it could be fatigue that comes with being a part of so many loyalty programs, and hence, they stop engaging.
Long story short – keeping customers engaged with loyalty programs is extremely important. But it is difficult. Here, we’ve shared seven ways to engage them better.
Ways to boost customer engagement on your loyalty program
There is no one strategy fits all when it comes to finding ways to boost customer engagement. But there are a few ways that have been used time and again by industry leading ecommerce businesses. Let’s take a look into some of our favourite ways to boost customer engagement.
1. Integrate loyalty programs in the customer account page
Many brands create separate pages dedicated to their loyalty programs. Their idea is to give the program prominence and importance. However, this can backfire if you tend to neglect keeping that page active.
Let’s face it. The most-viewed pages on any site are the product pages and the customer account page. Compared to these pages, traffic to your loyalty program page might be extremely low.
For example, when customers need to refer to any information about their past purchases, track orders, return items, etc., they head straight to the customer account page.
This makes the customer account page a prime property. Here, you can include all important marketing features that are part of your strategy, such as the loyalty program.
Integrating loyalty programs in the customer account page has many benefits:
- Customers can get an overview of their store credits on this page
- They can easily turn their purchase returns into store credits
- Customers can know how many points they have accumulated and spend accordingly
- Stores can ensure the loyalty program gets more engagement as customers will notice it more often when they log into their account
- Since many other features such as recently viewed products, wishlist, etc., are also a part of the customer account page, they can be combined with the loyalty program to create exciting marketing campaigns
- You can enhance customer experience
To set up a customer account page and store credits, you need a tool like Flits app.
2. Make your store credits program interesting
Every other brand is running some kind of a program such as rewards, loyalty or store credits as a marketing tactic. In this kind of a crowded space, if you have a run-off-the-mill program, you won’t be able to hold customers’ interest for too long.
To be able to engage your customers consistently, you’ll have to make your loyalty program interesting.
Example: The Man Company store credits program
Let’s look at how one brand, The Man Company, increased their store credits spend 300x by bringing elements of gamification in their program.
The men’s grooming eCommerce brand has set up a tiered store credits program. And they’ve made it as exciting as a game.
In their tiered store credits program, customers receive credit points only after an order is successfully fulfilled. If the customer cancels the order, the points get revoked.
Not just that, The Man Company has also made the different tiers visually exciting by labeling them with names and giving corresponding colors such as gold and silver.
Customers are engaged via gamification to earn more points and cross tiers within the loyalty program.
These and many more elements have helped the brand boost engagement on their loyalty program.
The key takeaway: gamification can help boost engagement in your loyalty program.
Consider this infographic. Loyalty members who engage with gamification participate 1.7x more in loyalty programs.
Pro tip: The Man Company uses Flits store credits add-on feature, and so can you.
3. Optimize your loyalty program for mobile
eCommerce marketers know the importance of optimizing sites for mobile devices. Today’s customers are digitally savvy. They buy online across devices. And they expect a smooth experience on all the devices on which they access your site. And so, unless you optimize your Shopify customer loyalty program for mobile, your customers might start getting disinterested in your program.
Some factors to consider when you optimize your loyalty program for mobile:
- Have a mobile responsive design for your loyalty program section
- Make images lighter so that they’re quick to load
- Make buttons large enough so that they’re easy to click on a small screen
- Make it easy for people to join your loyalty program on mobile by keeping the sign up process short and quick
- Make the navigation of the loyalty program page easy on the mobile
- Create mobile exclusive offers for your loyalty members. For example, use mobile channels such as WhatsApp and SMS to run campaigns via which customers can easily click to access the loyalty program
4. Create an omnichannel strategy of communication
Customers explore and access brands from all kinds of devices and on all platforms – website, social media, email, web push, Messenger, WhatsApp, and the list goes on.
How many of these channels are part of your communication strategy?
If you’re using just one or two platforms, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to engage customers in your loyalty program.
Here’s how you can use different communication channels to engage people in your loyalty program:
- You can offer loyalty points when customers engage with your social posts
- You can create contests to earn loyalty points exclusively for your email lists
- Organize product-related quizzes via WhatsApp with loyalty points as rewards
- Communicate to customers, the loyalty points they earned across channels
- Integrate different channels to offer a better experience to your customers
The results of omnichannel communication strategy:
- Create more engagement for loyalty members
- Helps retain loyalty program members
- Can engage with members in real-time
- Gather data across channels to create targeted promotional campaigns
Key takeaway: The more the number of channels, the larger your reach, and the greater the engagement.
5. Promote your loyalty program
A lot of brands start loyalty programs and restrict them to only their websites. They create a special page dedicated to the loyalty program. Soon, that page starts gathering dust because there’s less activity or traffic on that page.
But you can avoid this. You can keep your Shopify customer loyalty program active. How? By creating special promotional campaigns around them on different platforms.
Here are some ideas to leverage content and social media marketing to boost loyalty program engagement:
- In your social posts, tell customers the benefits of joining your loyalty program
- Create exclusive offers for your loyalty members and promote it on social media. This way, you can attract more people to join the program
- Create referral program for your loyalty program and promote it across platforms
- Create keyword and SEO-based campaigns to get your loyalty program seen by new people.
- Talk about your loyalty program via your blogs and articles
- Create video content for your loyalty programs
- Share different content to customers on different channels. This way you can increase the relevance of your messaging
Key takeaway: Consistency is key and hence it is important to constantly talk about your loyalty program via different channels.
6. Tie your loyalty program to customers’ interests
Keeping customers engaged requires a good combination of both, a good loyalty program and customer experience. And offering a good customer experience is all about personalization.
You can bring personalization into your loyalty program by tying it with customers’ interests.
Here are a few examples of how you could do this:
- When customers add items to their wishlist, offer them discounts on those items in return for joining your loyalty program
- Similarly, tie contests and deals on your Shopify store to your loyalty program. Customers love contests and discounts. Let them know that your loyalty program members get more discounts and exclusive contests to participate in
- Another way to personalize customer experience is to offer extra loyalty points on customers’ recently-viewed items
- You can engage customers in your loyalty program by keeping your campaigns relevant to the customers’ journey
Here’s an example:
7. Ask for feedback
You might want to keep enhancing your Shopify customer loyalty program from time-to-time. And for that, you’ll need to offer something more or something different than what you are currently offering. Or, you might need to scrap a few things and keep only those that are relevant.
But how would you know what exactly to do?
Who better to ask about your loyalty program than your loyalty members and customers themselves?
Here’s where feedback comes in.
Instead of relying on guess work or external research and market survey, reach out to your loyalty members and your existing customers. Ask them for feedback on your loyalty program.
- Are they enjoying the program?
- What aspects of the program do they like?
- What do they not like?
- What do they think is missing?
- How is their overall experience?
- Would they recommend others to join your loyalty program?
- How can you better engage customers in the loyalty program?
Customers are always looking for something new. In today’s competitive world, brands have to meet customer expectations. When you keep evolving and bettering your loyalty program, you can ensure better performance. This in turn, can keep your customers engaged.
Here’s an infographic that explains the benefits of improving the performance of your loyalty program.
Source: McKinsey
Final words
The most important metric for your Shopify customer loyalty program is how engaged your customers are on it. And so, you have to treat it like you would treat any other marketing campaign – keep it active and vibrant. To do so, you’ll have to have an efficient loyalty program tool you can rely on.
Install Flits Customer Account Page App with add-on features such as Store Credits.
