As a small business owner, you already know that it takes more than just good service to keep your customers coming back. It also takes a strong rewards program that gives them incentives to shop with you again and again—and keeps them from going elsewhere. While the best reward systems are unique to each business, they all contain these key elements of customer loyalty.
Taking care of the little things
The first step is to ensure that every customer interaction is positive. This might sound like a tall order, but it’s not as difficult as you might think. If your products are of high quality and you keep your service level standards high, customers will be more than satisfied with their experience with your brand.
The key here is consistency: if they have a bad experience once and then another time, they may not come back again. It’s important to provide consistent experiences on all fronts—from product quality and delivery times to packaging and pricing—to ensure that customers have confidence in your brand.
Diversifying your product offerings
Diversifying your product offerings is a great way to demonstrate that you’re committed to keeping your customers satisfied. This can take the form of offering new services or products or simply adding more options to existing ones.
You’ll need to go through some planning steps before launching a new product or service. First, you’ll want to decide what additional offerings you want to offer your customers. If you have doubts about whether people want this benefit, ask them. You might find out that they’re willing and able to pay for something that had never occurred to you before.
You’ll then want to market the new offering in ways that target specific niches within the larger group of potential customers—for example, if it’s an app for pet owners who are looking for dog sitters when their owners travel out of town on business trips, create targeted ads and email newsletters with subject lines like “sitter search engine” rather than just “dog sitter.” This way, only people who will benefit from using this tool will see those ads; people who don’t need what you’re offering will ignore them because they aren’t relevant enough (or interesting enough) for them.
Communicating the costs of the loyalty program
Communicating the costs of the loyalty program is another way to show customers how much they are worth. You can do this by breaking down your cost of acquisition and retention, and showing customers what they’re saving. If you know that a customer spends $50 per month on your product and has been with you for one year, it’s easy to see how much money he or she saves over time by becoming loyal: $600. This shows them what loyalty will do for them, practically speaking.
Providing rewards and incentives based on customer feedback
Listening to your customers and using their feedback is not only the best way to improve your loyalty program, but it’s also the best way to improve your business. The best rewards and incentives are based on customer feedback. If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you – whether in person or online. You can even develop short surveys that ask questions like these:
- What product did you like best?
- Which service was most helpful?
- Which employee went above and beyond for you today?
Keeping in touch with your customers
Use email marketing. Most customers are signed up for email newsletters, so it’s a great way to stay in touch with them. However, make sure you don’t overwhelm them with too much information or send too many emails. You should also use social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn to stay in touch with customers on a personal level and get their feedback on the company and its products or services.
Partnering with other businesses for a larger-scale rewards program
A great example of this is the Starbucks Rewards program. The coffee chain partners with other businesses like Lyft, Spotify, and more to offer rewards to loyal customers. This partnership helps increase customer loyalty by giving them even more reasons to use their app or visit the store again instead of simply going elsewhere for their needs. If you’re interested in building out your loyalty program for your business, consider partnering with other businesses that are already doing it.
Conclusion
To summarize, customer loyalty is the key to your success. The more loyal your customers are, the more likely they are to come back and buy from you again. By implementing these 6 strategies, you can create a program that keeps customers coming back for more.