When your customers can't get enough

Customer Loyalty

If you have started using this term in your business, then, you are doing something right. You have succeeded in meeting and exceeding your customers’ expectations and it is time you reward them as well.

“Customer Service is what you and your business provide. Customer loyalty is the reward of the service” -Shep Hyken

What is Customer Loyalty? It is the extent a customer is willing to do business with you again and again, and this happens when your business has met and exceeded your customer's expectations.

What is a Customer loyalty program – this is a reward system put in place to reward your most frequent customers to encourage loyalty and long-term business.

You can achieve this by offering freebies, discounts, rewards (trips, shopping experience, VIP treatment) etc

How do you identify your loyal customers? These people:

1. Give you referrals from family and friends

2. Are willing to try out other products or services your business offers

3. Don’t listen to your competition they are focused on you

4. Are more understanding and patient when they have issues with your product or service and trust you enough to fix the issues.

5. Give you feedback on how to improve and grow

6. Keep coming back anytime the need arises.

How does Customer Loyalty benefit your business?

· It will bring about repeat business

· It will bring about referrals

· Repeat customers usually spend more than first-time customers

· It costs less retaining a customer than getting a new one (it costs 5times more to get a new customer than retain a loyal one)

· It will encourage word of mouth marketing

· It will reduce marketing cost

· It will improve your brand's image as your customers become your brand ambassadors.

How can you build Customer Loyalty?

Now, this is where the work starts, get this right and reduce your costs in marketing as you hit your target sales effortlessly.

1. Make Customer care a priority in your business – the customer is king and should be consistently treated as such.

2. Have a loyalty system in place – I recently helped a client create one, it takes creativity to think up ideas that will delight your ideal customers.

3. Let customers know you have a loyalty program in place – On your website, on your social media pages etc.

4. Segment your client – This is to help you serve the right content to the right people. It also personalizes customer loyalty experience. Segment your customers based on age, gender, location, profession etc. Your program will be better effective as it will be custom made to each segment.

5. Customers are emotional beings; their decision making is 70% more emotional than logical. Building strong emotional relationships with your customers is valuable for your business. Create a personalized experience for each customer.

6. Frequently communicate with your clients – send birthday messages, anniversary messages, monthly newsletter to engage with your clients regularly.

7. Encourage customers to give feedback to improve your business and make it more attractive to your ideal customers.

You may be wondering what type of customer loyalty program is best for your business? I’ll mention a few and you choose the one that best suits your business.

· Tier System – in this system, it encourages your customer to purchase frequently and also increase their spend to be eligible for the more valuable rewards and benefits. In this system you move up the loyalty tiers, for example, A loyal customer that regularly spends about 1M and one that regularly spends between 150k – 200k will be put in separate tiers and each has the ability to move up the tiers to earn more beneficial rewards. This system is best for high priced businesses e.g Travel agencies, luxury brands etc.

· Point system – in this system, the more you buy the more points you get and your points can be used to redeem your reward which can be a discount, gifts, a BOGOF. This system is the most used and is suited for frequent, short-term purchases.

· Reward partnerships – I see a lot of this happening on Instagram, when a brand partners with another brand to offer their customers discounts with the use of discount codes. For a start-up, this is best as it provides your customers with benefits beyond what you can offer at the moment.

· Gamification – This is a very interesting and engaging loyalty system. It entails adding a game to your loyalty program. The prizes has to align with your ideal customer wants e.g When playing candy crush, to unlock more points a brand asks you to play a certain game to get you to the next level in the game. I have seen it many times!

· Gift card – Adding gift cards is great in bringing clients to your store. Its also a great way to position your brand as one that cares. If you are in retail this is a great loyalty system.

· Non-Monetary Program – This requires no monetary reward. The best example of a brand that has done this successfully is the Toms footwear company that donates a pair of shoes to underprivileged children in South America for every customer’s purchase. To carry out this successfully you need to understand the values of your target audience.

The major objective of Customer Loyalty is to:

understand your customer

reward your customer

engage your customer and

retain your customers.

I trust this has helped you begin to think of setting up your customer loyalty program and watch your business transform to a better version.

Have a great week.

Your Assistant.