Almost every retailer has a loyalty program. The exchange is simple: customers get monetary benefits and in return, brands get loyal customers. But is the traditional points and perks model really the best way to solidify customer loyalty?
In today’s ultra-competitive digital landscape, loyalty programs are just the beginning of the brand-customer relationship as the digital retail revolution has elevated customer expectations. Loyalty strategies that peak with points and monetary rewards will no longer cut it.
Through our customer research across multiple retailers, Tryzens has found that younger generations in particular expect more interaction with brands before pledging their loyalty. They expect an excellent customer experience where they are being rewarded at every touchpoint, not just free shipping at checkout or a few points post-purchase.
Knowing this, retailers can build an authentic loyalty strategy that maximises customer lifetime value founded on three fundamental pillars: personalised experience, emotional connection, and engagement – all fuelled by valuable zero-party data.
Personalised experience
To reduce decision fatigue, what many customers need is guidance toward products and services that are most relevant to them. Personalisation has become an expectation for customers – 74 per cent of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalised. But getting it right is difficult. With separate systems and siloed data, customers’ experiences are often disjointed.
Retailers can power consistent experiences across touchpoints by using a robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform and a powerful customer data platform (CDP) in tandem to inform a broader omnichannel strategy. CRMs help provide a consistent customer interaction while CDPs allow for a single view of the customer that can be accessed and harnessed by the entire organisation to drive seamless and personalised CX.
Retailers can analyse their supply of customer data to deepen their personalisation capabilities and inform their omnichannel strategy. This helps customers feel understood by the brand and more likely to build long-term relationships.
Emotional connection
Fostering strong emotional connections brings value to both the brand and the customer. For brands, fully connected customers are 52 per cent more valuable, according to the Harvard Business Review, which outlines a pathway from “unconnected” to “fully connected”. Forrester research found that when a brand makes a customer feel appreciated, 80 per cent said they would spend more with the brand and 87 per cent would recommend it.
Australia’s leader in authentic and sustainable furniture, Living Edge, has an omnichannel strategy that fosters emotional connections with its customers. It provides thorough self-service support across its website, which handles the base layer of delivery timeframes, FAQs, and store locators. This frees up time for its customer support team to take on the role of personal shoppers. Through live chat, a customer is immediately connected with support that can give style guidance, advising on the sizing of furniture, and how pieces fit together.
Engagement
Engagement tools are used to attract and retain customers, helping retailers cultivate more personalised and impactful experiences in an increasingly cookie-less world using valuable zero-party data.
Many retailers provide customers with customisable preferences so that it remembers how you shop, your styles and your sizes, which power hyper-personalised suggestions. Feedback forms, rating systems, AI-powered chatbots, and surveys integrated across devices and channels all act as zero-party data streams to help optimise your CX and drive loyalty.
One of the barriers to collecting zero-party data is the customer’s willingness to share their feedback and insight. Yet almost eight-in-10 consumers view brands favourably if they seek out and apply customer feedback. Brands can encourage customers by offering rewards for completing a survey or after giving a certain number of ratings.
If you’re looking to build a CX-first loyalty strategy, then connect with Tryzens.
