How to keep customers loyal through the holidays

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First, Personalize Rewards

“Only 11 percent of loyalty programs offer personalized rewards based on purchase history or location tracking, according to a study from Capgemini Consulting, and that’s a huge missed opportunity for retailers. Your customers want to know that they’re valued on an individual level, so if the functionality is available to you, offer your shoppers highly targeted, relevant rewards. Analyze their past purchases and redemptions, and recommend rewards they’d be likely to value based on previous behavior. The more relevant rewards they can earn, the more likely they are to make the purchase with you. That said if you’re not confident in your recommendation engine, it’s best to just keep it simple. Consumers can get pretty turned off when you get their recommendations wrong,” said Danielle Brown, Vice President of Marketing, Points.

Second, Get Creative with your Offers

“Try to find a way to stand out. Offer double points, reward them for referring a friend, or create gamification opportunities that will allow consumers to earn more points for interacting with your product or service in a meaningful way. Already loyal customers will appreciate the extra value, and new customers will be delighted by the added treat. And, it’s a great way to extend your relationship with the customer beyond the holiday season,” said Brown.

Third, Make it Easy to Purchase with Points

“A recent Bond Brand Loyalty study found that 42 percent of shoppers were planning to fund their holiday shopping with loyalty rewards. Allowing your customers to earn and burn within the same transaction really delivers value. This is also a great way to potentially increase basket size – consumers tend to “buy” more when they have less cash to put down, so rather than only using their points, they are more likely to pick up more items and increase their actual cash outlay,” said Brown.

Fourth, Leverage Other Loyalty Rewards

“Loyalty programs can be expensive and time-consuming to implement and maintain – not to mention it can be hard to compete with existing loyalty programs that feature already coveted currencies. If you don’t currently offer a loyalty currency of your own, consider partnering with and leveraging the currencies of already recognized reward brands. With flexible loyalty currency, you make your loyalty program extremely valuable,” said Brown.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristina Knight-1
Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
Content Writer & Editor
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Kristina Knight is a freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience writing on varied topics. Kristina’s focus for the past 10 years has been the small business, online marketing, and banking sectors, however, she keeps things interesting by writing about her experiences as an adoptive mom, parenting, and education issues. Kristina’s work has appeared with BizReport.com, NBC News, Soaps.com, DisasterNewsNetwork, and many more publications.