A lot of online businesses set up loyalty programs. Why? Because it’s the most recommended strategy by eCommerce marketing experts. But merely setting up a loyalty program is not enough.
Consumers use less than 50% of the loyalty programs they are part of. This means not all brands see success in loyalty programs.
In order to make your program a success, you need to optimize it. And how do you do that?
Let’s dive right into it!
7 hacks to optimize your customer loyalty program
1. Make loyalty programs part of frequently-used features
50% of customers join loyalty programs to earn rewards on everyday purchases. This means if you make your program a part of some feature on your site that has high usage, you can optimize it.
What’s that feature on your site? For most eCommerce sites, it’s the customer account page.
The first thing registered customers do is log in. When customers need to refer to any information about a past purchase, or if they want to track orders, they head straight to the customer account page.
While many marketers argue that loyalty programs should be given a separate page and not be a sub-part of another page, we beg to differ.
Say for example, a customer visits the customer account page 20 times a month and the loyalty program page 3 times, would it not make sense to have the rewards program within the customer page?
By making the loyalty program a part of the customer page, you can increase the chances of customers clicking on the loyalty tab. It’s simple – as soon as the customer makes a purchase, they can quickly see their points balance on the same page.
The more you can keep customers engaged, the more you can boost your customer retention rate and improve customer loyalty.
But to run all this seamlessly, you need an efficient tool. Install the Flits app for Shopify customer account pages
2. Make it easy for customers to sign up
You might not have taken the sign-up process on your Shopify site too seriously, but your sign up process can do two things. It can either pleasantly surprise customers by how easy it is, or it can put them off and make them run away from your site.
Online shoppers have different preferences for everything, including the channel through which they want to sign up. All shoppers are not email savvy. Some people don’t like SMS. Some prefer other methods such as social media credentials.
That is why it’s important to make the sign up process as easy as possible. Here’s how you can do that:
- Enable sign up via different channels such as email, SMS, social media accounts, phone number, Amazon account, etc. Flexibility helps boost your customer retention rate.
- Keep the sign up process short and sweet. Refrain from making shoppers fill long forms.
- Automate the sign up and login process. Ensure customers’ login details get stored so they don’t have to enter their credentials every time they sign in. Did you know, 45% of shoppers leave sites because they don’t remember passwords.
- Offer incentives such as store credits to customers who choose to log in via social accounts.
Social sign-up process has many benefits:
- It makes sign-up and login quicker.
- It boosts the number of sign-ups.
- It reduces cart abandonment as the purchase process becomes easier.
- It reduces bounce rate because shoppers don’t have to fill long sign-up forms.
- Logins become easier because customers don’t have to remember new passwords.
- It helps brands with targeted marketing campaigns.
- It makes it easy for customers to participate in loyalty programs.
To enable easy sign up, you can use an app like Flits. It has a social login feature that helps brands convert shoppers to subscribers 3x faster.
Here’s an example:
3. Offer many opportunities to earn store credits
Almost all eCommerce stores that have store credits or reward programs, offer them for the usual actions – sign up, first purchase, on customers’ birthday, and for referrals, among other common actions.
There’s one way you can beat your competitors to their rewards program – offer customers multiple ways to earn store credits.
For example, offer them credits for many more actions, so that they stay engaged on your site, as well as in the store credits program.
Here are some actions for which you could offer store credits:
- Every time they make a purchase.
- Every time they log into their customer account page.
- Extra points for buying items from wishlists.
- For sharing wishlists with their friends and family members.
- For commenting on your social posts.
- For crossing a threshold of single order value.
- For crossing a store credits threshold.
- For signing up for your newsletter.
- When customers complete a year with you.
- Offer store credits in real-time while customers are on your site.
Read about some more ideas on when to offer store credits.
Here’s what happens when you create multiple opportunities for shoppers to earn points.
- They stay hooked to your site because they know they can earn points through so many actions.
- They engage more with your site.
- They become your promoters and refer your brand through word of mouth.
- Your brand’s customer loyalty metrics performance will see a rise.
4. Create a tiered store credits program
Another strategy to apply to boost your store credits program engagement rate is to take a tiered store credits approach.
What does that mean?
Can you recall any brands that offer different levels of rewards program memberships? For example, silver level, gold level, platinum level? That’s what’s called a tiered program.
Tiered store credits programs enable different levels within the program. In tiered programs, members in different levels earn different incentives and benefits, as well as store credits. That way, customers would always try to reach the next level by making more purchases.
Let’s understand tiered store credit programs with the example of how The Man Company does it.
The store offers a tier-based loyalty program. The more loyalty credits customers earn, the higher they climb and receive more benefits. This has resulted in an increase in repeat purchases, as customers want to earn and use more store credits.
5. Leverage all your communication channels
The more you communicate with customers, the more you can engage them. And to be able to communicate more with them, you need to be available and approachable on all communication channels. Not just one or two.
Your communication strategy needs to go customer-centric. Offer customers what they want, not what you prefer to offer to them.
So, how can you combine your communication channels strategy with your store credits strategy? Here are some ways to do so:
- Ask customers who have signed up to give you more contact information. For example, if they’ve signed up via email, encourage them to share their other contact details such as phone number, Messenger, social media, etc.
- Once you have details of their other communication channels, create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns to engage them on those channels.
- Share updates of store credits available to them on different channels.
- Send reminders of store credits expiry or how to earn more points, etc.
- Create strategies around store credits and communicate the benefits to them via communication on these different channels.
6. Make your store credits feature multi-lingual
Want to boost store credits success on your Shopify store? You need to reach more and more people. One way to do so is by reaching out to a broad demographic.
How do you do that? By going multilingual.
eCommerce stores have a wide reach as they’re online. This means your site has a vast target market, across locations, regions, countries and cities. And you need to tap into them.
According to a study, English consists of only 25% of the total Internet users. 75% of users speak other languages. And language impacts how they behave on your site. Take a look at this infographic:
Localization or taking a multilingual approach can help you:
- Make it easy for shoppers to relate to your content.
- Make it easy for them to understand pricing.
- Make payments seamless.
- Display local social proof and boost customer loyalty.
- Make your website come up on search engines.
- Improve your Shopify customer retention rate.
7. Offer credits on items in the wishlist
What does it mean for marketers and brands when shoppers add products to their wishlists? It means data. Data about the shoppers’ likes, interests, purchase intent and products/ categories they like on your site.
And how does this data help? It helps to share hyper personalized marketing communication with shoppers. This is one of the best ways to entice them to make purchases.
Now, when it comes to rewards, it’s not just brands that offer them to customers. Customers reward brands too. Don’t believe us? Consider this statistic:
- 76% of shoppers said they consider brands that offer personalized communication.
- 78% said they’re more likely to make repurchases when this happens. (Source: McKinsey and Co.)
By making this offer loud and clear in your promotional communication, you can even get shoppers interested to sign up on the loyalty program.
Store credits have benefits for both your Shopify store and the shoppers. To retailers, it helps boost customer loyalty, motivate shoppers to spend more, and bring back lost sales.
To customers, store credits help them buy credit instead of losing their money, get benefits such as discounts, etc., and even share store credits with friends.
You can set up the wishlist and store credits strategy on your Shopify store with the help of Flits app.
Have you planned your Shopify store credits strategy?
While the above hacks will help you get started, set up and get your strategy rolling, don’t forget you’ll have to monitor and optimize continuously.
Customer preferences keep changing. Markets and trends keep changing. And so, you’ll have to consistently watch the performance of your store credits program and optimize it to keep it relevant and fresh to retain customers.
If you’re wondering how to improve your loyalty program, read how The Man Company was able to improve its customer retention rate through their store credits program.
Install the Flits app today and put store credits to work for your success!
