5 Simple & Inexpensive Loyalty Programs for D2C Companies
A Loyalty Program, if created and implemented in the right manner, can bring incredible growth to a business. Many D2C brands in India are missing out on the fundamentals of building brand loyalty. The Indian D2C market is estimated to grow to $100 billion by 2025, which shows the level of competition arising in the industry. Succeeding in such a competitive market is a challenge. But if you understand what it takes to set your brand apart from others, you win the game.
One of the most important factors determining the success of a brand is brand loyalty. This is why businesses are now investing more and more in building loyalty programs to retain their customers. Loyalty programs are the strategies used by businesses to boost brand loyalty and improve customer experiences. Customers love it when they get valued for their purchase and this is exactly what loyalty programs aim to do. Before you start looking for a loyalty program company, you must be aware of the importance of boosting customer loyalty:
Why Customer Loyalty is Important for D2C Businesses?
D2C businesses are facing more competition than ever before, especially online ones. To stand out in such a competitive market, it becomes important to focus on building brand loyalty and improving customer experiences. Studies suggest that loyal customers spend 25% more per transaction than other buyers. Moreover, acquiring new customers can be much more expensive than retaining the existing ones.
Most D2C companies in India focus more on customer acquisition than customer retention. However, that should not be the case. It is fine to invest in acquiring customers. But to recover high customer acquisition costs, retaining existing customers is also equally essential. One-time buyers are less likely to become brand loyalists. Loyal customers generally feel emotionally connected with the brand and they tend to purchase more often.
A loyalty program does not only help your business increase repeat purchases, but it also enhances your customers’ experiences. Your customers feel valued when they get rewarded for their purchases. As a result, they start purchasing frequently to earn more rewards. This is how the benefits of loyalty programs are not just restricted to customer loyalty, you can also acquire new customers and improve their overall experience.
Every D2C business needs to earn customer loyalty to beat the competition in the market. Here are some most effective loyalty program strategies for D2C businesses. Make sure that you look for these features while choosing a loyalty program company:
1. Start with Reward Points/Discounts
Reward Points-based programs are the most basic type of loyalty program. Under these programs, customers earn a certain number of loyalty points every time they purchase from a brand. The monetary value of these reward points is decided by the brand only. If you are trying to start with a cost-effective loyalty program for your D2C brand, a reward points-based program would be the best option to consider.
You can build a separate portal to run the loyalty program, where your customers can log in to track their rewards and redeem them. Make sure that you offer some great redemption options. If the redemption options are not good enough to excite your customers, they will not be interested in earning more rewards. Allowing your customers to use the reward points against their next purchase is also a great idea to encourage your customers to come back.
2. Include Gamification
Gamifying your reward program strategy makes it even more interesting for your customers. Gamification is a powerful tool that helps businesses in maximizing the benefits of loyalty programs by keeping their customers engaged. Along with increasing the level of excitement, it encourages your customers to keep coming back for more. Below are some great examples of gamification strategies to boost customer loyalty:
Spin to Win Contests
You can run Spin to Win contests on your website or app and allow your audience to Spin the Wheel once every day. This encourages them to log in to your app regularly to earn rewards or prizes. It can benefit your business in two ways. First, you get more app downloads and log-ins. Second, people who win discount coupons/rewards will make purchases to redeem these rewards.
Top-Spenders Leaderboards
Having a leaderboard for top spenders is another effective gamification strategy. You can add a leaderboard to your website, where your customers can check real-time top spenders of the day, week, or month. It encourages them to spend more to see their names on the top of the leaderboard.
Referral Contests
Running referral contests is the most cost-effective way to acquire new customers while improving the experience of your existing customers. You can keep different rewards for different stages of referral. For example, offer a 10% discount on referring to a friend, a 30% discount when they sign up, and a 50% discount when they make their first purchase.
3. Promote Loyalist To Higher Tiers
A tier-based loyalty program also works amazingly well. As a D2C brand, you must understand that not every customer is equally loyal. There are customers who really like your brand and prefer you the most. Also, there are other customers who only consider you an option and might switch as soon as they see another opportunity. More loyal customers deserve better rewards as they play a significant role in the success of a business.
You can come up with a loyalty program with different tiers. Many D2C businesses are already having such programs. The more your customers purchase, the higher tier they get promoted to. And a high tier means better rewards.
For example, suppose a brand has a loyalty program with three tiers A, B, and C. The customers enter tier A on making their first purchase. In this tier, they get 5 Reward Points for every Rs. 100 they spend. As soon as they complete 10 purchases, they enter tier B, where they earn 10 points for every Rs. 100 they spend. Once they complete 50 purchases with the brand, they enter tier C and start earning 20 points for every Rs. 100 they spend.
4. Provide Proactive Assurance To Your Customers
Loyalty programs are not just about offering rewards and discounts to your customers. You also need to focus on enhancing your customers’ experiences and making them feel good about your brand. You can ensure this by providing proactive assurance to your customers. Make sure that all their questions are answered and their doubts are resolved. This is why many D2C brands are adding AI chatbots to their websites and apps.
If your business is online, you can add AI-powered chatbots to your website. With this, you can ensure that your customers’ queries are resolved quickly and with maximum accuracy. Even if you run an offline business, make sure that you have some support representatives present at your offline store. It gives a sense of satisfaction to your customers and boosts brand loyalty among them.
5. Reward Your Most Loyal Customers With Unexpected Gifts
The most loyal customers of a business are the most precious ones. You can identify brand loyalists by looking at your customer data. It is important to value these customers and appreciate their loyalty. You can do this by sending them personalized messages and small surprise gifts on special occasions like their birthdays. It helps in building stronger relationships with your loyal customers, encouraging them to stay connected with the brand for a longer period.
Boost Your Brand Loyalty With RewardPort
Being one of the top rewards and loyalty program providers in India, RewardPort helps businesses in strategizing and running the most effective loyalty programs. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort has already executed loyalty programs for several leading brands.
Taking every detail of your business into account, RewardPort can help you run a loyalty program that aligns with your brand objectives. With lost-cost rewards and the best marketing strategies, RewardPort can help you boost repeat purchases within three months.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
A loyalty program s a type of marketing strategy that businesses use to retain their existing customers and improve their overall experiences. Though the major goal of these programs is customer retention, they are also effective in attracting new customers.
Companies use loyalty programs to encourage their customers to keep buying by rewarding them for every purchase they make.
A great example of loyalty programs run by companies includes a rewards-based loyalty program where customers earn a certain number of loyalty points every time they spend on a brand.
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5 Channel Partner Loyalty Program for Next Level of Revenue Growth
As per studies, over 43% of businesses run a channel partner loyalty program. Developing a long-lasting relationship with your channel partners is even more challenging than finding and onboarding potential partners. Channel partnerships can be amazingly effective in boosting sales and increasing brand awareness.
However, first, you put effort into a strong relationship with your partners to use their resources effectively. This is where channel partner programs come into play. With effective channel partner incentive programs, you can motivate your partners to invest more time and resources in your business.
Before you start running a loyalty program, you must know some basics. Let us help you understand what channel partners are and how you can use channel partner programs for next-level revenue growth:
What is A Channel Partner?
A channel partner is a company that partners with manufacturers or vendors to sell their products or services. Channel partnership is generally a co-branding relationship where two companies come together to promote and sell each other’s products along with their own.
Resellers, distributors, etc., are also examples of channel partners. Having potential channel partners is beneficial for your business in many ways. You get access to a wider target audience with minimal effort, which helps you expand your market reach.
Why is Channel Partner Loyalty Program Important?
The following are some most relevant reasons for having a channel partner loyalty program:
A Stronger Relationship with Partners
Your channel partners feel valued when rewarded for their contribution to your company. Loyalty Programs open a new door for better communication with your channel partners. Building a strong relationship with your channel partners becomes easier with loyalty programs.
A Chance to Co-Brand
Your channel partners might have other brands as partners as well. Channel partner loyalty programs which include co-branding, feature your channel partner with the brand name in the ads for the region.
This adds value to your brand in building trust among local consumers while your channel partner receives praise for the partnership.
Extend Your Market Reach
Your channel partners might have a customer base of your target audience. You get access to these customers through your channel partners. By rewarding your channel partners through a loyalty program, you can motivate them to market your product to the most relevant customers and expand your reach.
Encourage Partners to Complete Essential Training
Your partners must understand your product to sell it and find new opportunities to present it to the consumers. While you can design learning and training programs for your partners, you must ensure they complete the programs and retain the knowledge. You can incentivize learning by rewarding your partners for completing the training.
Motivate partners to invest more in your brand’s success
Your channel partners probably have other partners as well. The best way to make them focus more on your brand is to run continuous channel partner loyalty programs. The more time and effort they invest in your brand, the more rewards they earn.
Ideas for Channel Partner Loyalty Program
Channel Partner Loyalty Programs should be different from the general loyalty programs for retail customers of a brand. Here are some great ideas for channel partner loyalty programs:
1. Discounts on Wholesale Products
Offering discounts on wholesale products is one of the best loyalty programs for B2B businesses. You can offer wholesale discounts to your channel partners every time they purchase. However, the discount offer need not be the same for every channel partner. The more your channel partners buy, the more discount they get.
For example, you can price your product at Rs 20 per unit when they buy 100 units, Rs 19 per unit when they buy 150 units, and Rs 17 per unit when they buy 200 or more units. These types of programs are beneficial for both you and your channel partner. Your partner can buy more for a lower price, and you can encourage them to purchase more than planned.
2. Rebates
Rebates refer to partial refunds post-purchase. Rebates are among the most common types of channel partner incentive programs. Under these programs, you can give a percentage of the sales back to your partner. Your channel partner must achieve a certain sales volume within a specified time to receive the incentive.
The benefits channel partners can pass to their customers are more attractive for the value chain.
3. Market Development Funds
MDFs (Marketing Development Funds) are the allowance you offer to your channel partners to help them with their marketing and sales efforts. These can be monetary allowances or other resources, such as learning programs.
Your channel partners can use these funds to increase brand awareness. Using MDFs, they can participate in trade shows, launch a marketing event, and purchase radio spots.
4. Sales Performance Incentive Funds
SPIFs (Sales Performance Incentive Funds) are funds brands can use to reward the sales team of their channel partners. The incentives benefit the entire channel partner sales hierarchy based on their performance. These incentives are aimed at motivating the sales team of your channel partners to perform better.
You can offer SPIFs to your channel partners’ sales representatives during slower times to boost your sales. Incentives can be monetary or non-monetary, such as gift cards, restaurant vouchers, flight vouchers, free products, etc.
5. Free Training & Certifications
Everyone loves to learn and develop professional skills while working. You can offer free training to your channel partners and combine the training with decent rewards to make it interesting for them. You can include different milestones in the training program and offer exciting awards for achieving each milestone.
Design a great learning program your channel partners and their employees can be proud of completing. If the program and the certification are not valuable and exciting enough, your channel partners will not be motivated to complete it.
Channel Partner Loyalty Program with RewardPort
The most impactful channel partner loyalty programs consider the requirements and goals of your business and your channel partners. RewardPort is a leading loyalty rewards provider in India.
RewardPort offers modern rewards and methods of engagement for your brand that will keep your channel partners engaged. RewardPort can execute your rewards program online or offline, with awards starting as low as Rs. 10.
You can include gamification, tier-based programs, and other industry-proven methods to drive engagement in your program.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
You can use a channel partner loyalty program to reward your channel partners for performance and strengthen your relationships with them. Loyalty programs can incentivize your channel partners with discount-based, performance-based, or tier-based rewards. You can also give incentives based on sales volume, products, or learning objectives in a channel partner loyalty program.
The key elements of a successful channel partner loyalty program are:
Direct communication
Must add value to your business as well as your channel partners
Transparency with partners
One of the best marketing channels for loyalty programs is RewardPort. The marketing experts’ team at RewardPort analyzes your business needs carefully and helps you run a loyalty program accordingly.
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7 Loyalty Program Rewards for Small & Medium Enterprises
More and more brands are now adopting the concept of loyalty program rewards to retain customers. Research shows that over 90% of companies, whether small, medium, or large enterprises, have a loyalty program today. Businesses must have effective strategies to boost customer retention and stand out in a competitive market.
Running a loyalty program is the most used and effective way to encourage customers to stay loyal to a particular brand.
Loyalty program rewards motivate customers to turn into repeat buyers. However, a loyalty program will work only if it aligns with the interests of the customers and the business. A loyalty rewards program that works for a large-sized business might not be suitable for other small brands.
Here are some best loyalty program ideas for small and medium enterprises:
1. Loyalty Points
Points-based programs are one of the most common loyalty programs for businesses of any size. Such loyalty programs aim to motivate customers to stay loyal to a brand. Under these programs, customers receive a few points every time they purchase.
The number of points is fixed against a certain amount spent on the brand. For example, you can offer 10 points on every spend of Rs. 100 to your customers. If they make a purchase worth Rs. 1,000, they receive 100 points.
These points can be redeemed against various options available at a rewards portal or in the form of store credit that is redeemable for future purchases. You must ensure that the loyalty points are valuable for your customers to make these loyalty programs successful.
If your rewards program is not interesting enough for your customers, it cannot encourage them to repeat purchases and stay loyal to your brand. When the loyalty points are valuable, your customers feel they are getting something in return for their spending and will be motivated to repurchase.
2. Referral Purchase Rewards
Referral purchase rewards are the rewards/benefits customers receive for referring a product to their friends. Under these programs, your referring customers and their friends (to whom they refer your products) get some benefits.
However, the terms and conditions for receiving the rewards can be different with different referral programs. Some programs offer rewards/discounts as soon as customers refer a friend. However, other programs reward them only when their friend signs up or makes a purchase.
The latter is a better option. You can run a referral purchase rewards program under which your customers receive decent benefits when their friend signs up to your website and makes a purchase. You can also keep different rewards for different levels in the referral process.
For example, your customers receive a certain number of reward points when they refer a friend, then they get a discount coupon when their friend signs up, and finally, they get a gift when their friend makes a purchase.
Referral programs are a great way to expand your market reach and acquire new customers. You can encourage your customers to make more and more people aware of your brand. The programs help you increase your brand awareness through word-of-mouth and boost sales.
3. First Access
Giving your customers the first access to your new products, flash sales, and discount offers is also an effective way to boost customer loyalty. Whenever a new product is launched, you can make it accessible to the registered customers on your website before it is available to others in the market.
Another way is to provide your customers early access to flash sales, discount offers, BOGO deals, etc., via e-mails or text messages.
With these loyalty program techniques, you can encourage your target audience to become your registered customers. Also, as your existing customers feel special when they get early access, they promote your brand through word-of-mouth.
The early access strategy works better for online businesses, where purchase does not require registration.
4. Charitable Activities
Giving back to society can be the best reward sometimes. Your rewards program can give your customers opportunities for charitable donations. Offer loyalty points to your customers for their purchases and let them redeem their earned rewards against charity.
Such programs can encourage socially conscious consumers to stick to your brand as they get to contribute to the charity through you. You can include different charity options in your reward redemption program and allow your customers to choose what they prefer.
Once they accumulate a certain number of loyalty points, the equivalent amount gets donated to charity in their name. The program becomes more effective when your charity partners are related to your brand.
5. Pay Later Accounts
Most top e-commerce companies provide ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ options in partnership with financial services companies. Pay Later is a small line of credit that allows customers to purchase and pay for it over a month or in installments.
The pay-later option makes it convenient for customers to make frequent purchases. Moreover, they often spend more than they would without this credit option.
By providing pay-later and EMI options to your customers, you can make them feel that you trust them and understand their needs. Customers with a line of credit with a brand are more likely to stay loyal to it.
6. Freebies
Who doesn’t like getting free products? One of the most effective ways to retain customers is by offering them freebies. Whenever your customer makes a purchase, surprise them with a random free product.
It can be anything as small as a free pair of matching earrings with the main outfit. If you have launched any new products, the best way to make your customers aware of them is to send them free samples along with their purchase.
You can also let the consumers redeem their loyalty points for a free product. The redemption options can include other brand vouchers, discount coupons, etc., to make the program more exciting. Using the word ‘free’ in your loyalty programs can be much more effective than it seems to be.
7. Limited Period Offers
Keep coming up with limited-period offers exclusively for your customers. When your customers make a purchase, you can provide them with a discount coupon that is only valid for a short period. Make the discount offer exciting enough to motivate your customers to visit your store back before the offer expires.
Offering great discounts for a limited duration creates a sense of urgency in your customers and prepone their purchases.
How To Build a Loyalty Program?
Almost every brand runs a loyalty program to retain customers today. However, the loyalty rewards program can be considered effective when it adds value both to the customers and the brand.
Here are some important points to consider when building a customer loyalty program for your business:
- The loyalty program must offer value to your customers. If the customers don’t find your loyalty program rewards valuable, they may not feel motivated to repurchase.
- Tie the rewards back to your brand to make the program more effective. You can offer rewards or cashback that the customers can redeem against your products.
- Keep a mix of instant and premium rewards for different segments of customers. Not every customer is loyal. Before offering premium rewards and benefits to boost loyalty, you can identify long-term customers and one-time buyers coming for discounts.
- Make sure that the rewards program is cost-effective for your business and that you don’t spend without analyzing the results.
Set up a Loyalty Program with RewardPort
RewardPort is one of the top loyalty program solution providers in India. With RewardPort, you can set up a loyalty program that works for your brand and fulfills your customer needs. Experts at RewardPort can plan and execute loyalty program strategies according to your business goals and consumer profile.
RewardPort helps you provide loyalty program rewards online and offline as your budget and consumers allow.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Loyalty programs are the programs that businesses use to boost customer loyalty. Customers get some sort of reward every time they spend on a brand. These rewards can be in the form of loyalty points, cashback, or store credit. Customers can redeem the rewards against future purchases or other options from the brand.
Some most effective types of loyalty program rewards are store credit, loyalty points, rewards redeemable against charity, referral rewards, etc.
Some significant benefits of offering loyalty program rewards to customers include:
- Effective in customer retention
- Encourage customers to spend more
- Help you increase brand awareness through word of mouth
- Improve customer experience
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
11 Employee Loyalty Programs for 360-Degree Employee Engagement
Running employee loyalty programs is an effective way to boost employee engagement and retention in your organization. Research shows that engaged employees are 17% more productive compared to dismissive co-workers. They consider company success their success and work hard to help their organization achieve its business goals faster. Employee engagement is beneficial for an organization in many other ways.
It boosts employee retention rates, lowers employee turnover, and most importantly, encourages employees to be more productive at work. However, studies suggest that only 34% of employees are engaged at work (as of 2022). A low employee engagement rate usually results from a lack of appreciation and motivation at the workplace.
Employers must ensure that they make their workers feel valued, and boost employee engagement. Here are some effective employee loyalty programs and activities to boost employee engagement:
1. Joining Benefits
While hiring valuable resources for your company, understand that they might be considering other job offers from your competitors. Offering a joining bonus is one way to make them choose your organization. You can also use the joining bonus as a bridge between your employee’s expected salary and the salary you are offering.
You can also pay it as compensation against any additional benefits that your employees were getting in their previous company. Generally, a joining bonus is 10% to 20% of the annual CTC of an employee. A joining bonus creates a positive anchor for the journey of your employee.
2. Rewards for Personal Occasions
Recognizing your employees on their special days, like birthdays, work anniversaries, etc., is another great way to boost employee engagement in your organization. You can send them personalized messages, organize a celebration, and ask them to share their experiences at your workplace.
Gift your employees something valuable, such as paid time off, gift cards, discount coupons for restaurants, etc., on special occasions. You can also recognize and award your employees when they achieve a new milestone. No employee likes a workplace without any
emotions. Celebrating their happy days makes them feel valued and encourages them to stay loyal to your organization.
3. Festive Bonuses
Studies have shown that employees’ engagement rises when they have a sense of belongingness to the organization and its leaders. Providing festive bonuses or gifts is a great way to build a strong relationship with your employees. Organizations should try to make employees feel that their organization cares for them and not just about their work.
Offer them a decent bonus or valuable gifts, such as gift cards, as a festive season benefit. When employees feel good about your company, employee engagement rises and increases productivity.
4. Milestone Rewards
A milestone-based rewards program can help you build a healthy competitive environment for your employees. Recognize their accomplishments at work and award them something valuable, such as a certificate of appreciation or a small gift. For example, you can reward your employees for completing a big project successfully.
Another example is rewarding them for completing their tasks within the deadlines. These rewards motivate your employees to perform even better with dedication in future projects. Running continuous employee loyalty programs with different tiers is also a good idea.
5. Performance-Based Incentives
Performance-based incentives are another great motivational driver for employees to work hard. These rewards are reciprocal for both employers and employees. Performance-based reward account for employees’ contributions to the employer’s growth. Most businesses have defined KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for every role in the organization.
Performance-based incentives will often remain linked to these KPIs. Anyone exceeding the KPIs can drive the following actions:
- Renewed or upgraded KPIs
- Surprise rewards or bonus
- Promotions or role upgrades
These incentives can be general or extraordinary financial bonuses that the employees receive with their fixed salary. You can offer these incentives to appreciate employees for working overtime, completing their tasks on time, making more than the expected sales, and being punctual.
6. Peer-to-Peer Recognition
Peer-to-peer recognition refers to the appreciation between co-workers who may not have a direct rapport. Generally, employees expect feedback from the employer. However, getting appreciation from co-workers can be equally amazing.
You can encourage peer-to-peer appreciation in your firm by recognizing your employees publicly and frequently. Organize team meetings to let all your employees know the accomplishments of their co-workers. It improves company culture, strengthens team morale, and boosts employee productivity.
7. Annual Perks and Promotions
Studies suggest that even the most engaged employees often feel demotivated at work. This can happen for several reasons, including if they do not receive appreciation or promotions in due time. Employers must ensure that deserving employees are promoted adequately and within due time.
You can promote them designation-wise, salary-wise, or both. Offering annual bonuses at the end of each financial year is also a great way to motivate your workforce.
8. Referral Incentives
Referral incentives are the monetary or non-monetary benefits employees receive on referring qualified candidates for vacant positions in the company. Your employees may have a good network of qualified candidates, which include their college peers, former co-workers, etc.
Referral incentives can encourage your employees to recommend your company to their connections. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to recruit potential employees. Well-executed referral programs are also effective in increasing employee satisfaction and retention rates.
9. Long Service Rewards
Long service rewards incentivize the service period of the employees at the firm. These can be considered a token of thanks to the employees for their commitment to the organization.
Generally, these rewards are offered on completing 5, 10, 15, and 25 or more years with an organization.
As a long-service reward, you can offer financial bonuses, discounted loans, family vacation packages, home purchase assistance, etc. Synchronizing this incentive with the employee’s ongoing financial or personal needs will ensure that the employee sticks with the firm longer.
10. Sales Incentives
The job of a salesperson is one of the most stressful jobs. It is common for sales executives to feel demotivated at times. Offering sales incentives is one of the best ways to help them deal with this stress and keep them motivated.
Along with their fixed salary, you can offer monetary incentives for completing targets, making more than expected sales, and getting potential clients onboard.
11. Retirement or Exit Rewards
Retirement rewards are the benefits employees will receive on completing their years of service at the firm. It is a great way to thank your employees for their continuous hard work and dedication towards your company.
You can offer monetary benefits or run pension schemes as retirement benefits. Great retirement rewards also encourage other employees to stay loyal and work for your company longer.
Why Choose RewardPort for Employee Loyalty Programs?
RewardPort is one of the top rewards and loyalty solutions providers in India. RewardPort can run loyalty programs that work best for your organization. Some of the features of Employee Loyalty Programs by RewardPort are as follows:
- Culture of appreciation
- Imbibe company values
- Lead to employee retention
- Gamification for a higher engagement
RewardPort offers modern rewards with proven engagement tactics for multiple generations to ensure the effectiveness of employee loyalty programs.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Here are the benefits of employee loyalty programs for employees:
- Makes them feel motivated at work
- Makes them feel valued for their contributions to the organization
- Reduces employee stress
Key features of a successful employee loyalty program are:
- Frequent rewards
- Valuable rewards that employees are interested in
- More rewards for better performance
Here are some important metrics to measure the effectiveness of an employee loyalty program:
- Analyze the changes in employee retention rates
- Compare employee performance before and after the loyalty program
- Behavioral changes in employees
11 Consumer Sales Promotion Tactics to Generate More Business Faster
Consumer sales promotion tactics are the strategies that businesses use to boost their sales during a particular time. The only way for a business to succeed is by gaining more customers and selling products or services. You must inform them about it and increase sales with the appropriate consumer sales promotion techniques.
Successful companies use sales promotions to boost sales, increase brand awareness, and improve customer satisfaction. All these factors are critical and ultimately drive more sales. You can find several examples of sales promotions that different businesses use. However, not all of them might be suitable for your business.
First, you can identify your business goals and plan sales promotion strategies accordingly. Here are some most effective consumers sales promotion strategies to drive more sales faster:
1. Discount Coupons
Offering products at discounted prices is one of the oldest yet most effective sales promotion techniques. The end-of-season sales are great examples of such discounts. Customers wait for end-of-season sales to purchase the products they couldn’t afford to buy during the season. Discounts are beneficial both for customers and retailers. Customers can buy more for less price, and retailers can clear their stock faster.
Apart from running seasonal discount offers, you can provide discount coupons to your customers for their next purchase. If customers have your discount coupons, they are more likely to return to your store before they expire. This is how you can drive repeat business and encourage customers to purchase more often.
2. Free shipping/returns
Consumers do consider the shipping cost while making online purchases, especially when it’s their first purchase from a brand. They are most likely to change their purchasing decision if high shipping costs are associated with a product. If your brand is charging a shipping fee on its products, you might be missing out on many potential customers.
Most customers don’t want to spend money on a product if they doubt its quality, usage, life, etc. With high shipping costs and no guaranteed returns, the overall price of the product becomes expensive, and the purchase seems riskier to the customer. Offering free shipping and guaranteed returns with a 100% refund reduces the customers’ fear of wasting money on the wrong product.
3. Contests & Giveaways
Running prize contests online or offline is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to increase brand awareness and boost sales. These contests create healthy competition among your customers, making it interesting for them to participate. Social media contests can be very powerful and bring unexpected results. Some common examples of social media contests include:
- ‘Top Spenders Offer’ under which the top spenders of the week or month are awarded. These contests aim to boost the overall business revenue.
- ‘Purchase to Win’ contests under which a brand chooses random buyers of a particular product as winners. These contests are focused on boosting the sales of the product.
- ‘Like, Comment, and Share to Win’ contests under which the participants are rewarded for sharing your brand’s official social media page with their friends. These contests are aimed at increasing brand awareness.
4. Buy 1 Get 1 Free
BOGO deals are the most popular consumer sales promotion tactics for retail businesses. The idea of getting two items for the price of one seems amazing to the customers. Businesses generally run BOGO offers to clear the stock or to encourage customers to purchase a newly launched product.
It also increases brand awareness as many customers share the free product with their family or friends. Though it is the same as a 50% discount, calling it a BOGO deal is more impactful as freebies attract more customers.
5. Free Samples
If you allow your customers to try your product for free, most of its buyers would have never bought it without trying it. Customers don’t want to spend money on a product without knowing whether it works for them or not. You can offer free samples of the new product with a popular product that most of your target audience knows about.
This has dual benefits. It boosts the sales for your main product and introduces your new product in the market. After trying the free sample product, many customers may buy it.
6. Flash Sales
Big discount offers become more effective when combined with limited periods. The duration can be anything between 24 hours to 30 days depending on your stock availability and customer interests. Flash sales develop a fear of missing out among your customers. Under these sales, products are offered at heavy discounts for a limited duration.
You can build excitement ahead of time by announcing the sale launch date. This creates a sense of urgency, and your customers buy their favorite products as soon as the sale is live.
7. Bundle Products
Bundle products or combo offers discounts on related products when you buy them as a bundle. For example, a combo of shampoo (priced at Rs 150) and a conditioner (priced at Rs 120) can be offered at a combined price of Rs 230.
This encourages customers to buy combo packs instead of buying only one product to save some money. Bundle offers can move your inventory faster as you sell more products with a low discount.
8. Loyalty Reward/Cashback Programs
Research has shown that gaining a new customer can be five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. This is why customer loyalty is important for every business. Running a continuous loyalty program is one of the best ways to motivate customers to stay loyal to your brand.
Loyalty programs can be of different types:
- Rewards-based programs
- Cashback-based programs
- Tier-based programs
Under these programs, your customers get rewarded every time they make a purchase. For successful loyalty programs, you need to make sure that you offer interesting redemption options against these reward points. These programs can retain customers only if the rewards you offer are valuable and useful for them.
9. Referral Discount
Referral discounts help you increase your market reach by encouraging your customers to recommend your brand to their friends. You can offer discounts to your customers and their referral friends when they purchase your products. The referral program becomes more efficient when you give a higher discount for more referrals.
You can also offer them incentives for sharing their experiences with your product on social media. Consumers believe in user-generated content more than a brand promoting itself.
10. Scratch Cards
Scratch Cards are like mystery offers. You can offer scratch cards with different discounts, such as 5%, 10%, and 25% discount. The customers only know their reward after they purchase and scratch the gift card. Human minds are curious, and curiosity makes them participate in the offer to see what they get inside the scratch cards. Once they get a discount, they will most likely purchase before the discount coupon expires.
11. ‘Spin to Win’ Contests
‘Spin to Win’ contests are one of the best ways to include gamification in your sales promotion and make it interesting for your customers. You can run a ‘Spin to Win’ contest on your website or offline store. Provide your customers with an opportunity to spin the wheel once every day. You can include reward points, cashback, discounts, and a few big prizes in this wheel.
Make sure that they win something most of the time. If not discounts and rewards, they should at least get a few reward points for spinning the wheel. They can redeem these rewards once they have collected significant points.
This motivates them to visit your website at least once every day. These contests also help you increase your brand awareness through word of mouth.
How Can RewardPort Help?
RewardPort is a reward and loyalty solutions providing company. RewardPort can help you plan and run a sales promotion strategy that works for your business and aligns with your customer interests.
The marketing experts at RewardPort take every business detail into account and run sales promotions exclusively for your business. Your marketing campaigns are not restricted to one or two platforms with RewardPort but are executed on multiple platforms, including on the web, offline, SMS, etc.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Sales promotions aim to attract potential customers by reducing the prices of products. These techniques encourage customers to purchase a product they would not have bought at their original price. Sales promotions help you acquire new customers, boost sales, retain customers, increase brand awareness, and ultimately increase gross revenue.
Some most common mistakes to avoid when implementing consumer sales promotions are:
- Not defining your target audience
- Not being consistent
- Spending a lot on promotions without proper research
- Not tracking results to optimize future campaigns
Consumer sales promotions aim to increase your sale and volume of inventory churn. You may need to use sales promotion tactics to clear old and aging inventory, move stores, renew your stock, and counter similar challenges. All these activities can result in higher revenue, however, may reduce your profit margin.
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Three Rs of Effective B2C & B2B Consumer Sales Promotion
Effective consumer sales promotions can provide rapid growth to your business. Studies suggest that 90% of consumers make their first purchase after receiving an offer from a new brand. Also, more than 90% of consumers prefer to repeat purchases from a brand that offers good discounts on the first purchase. This data shows how important it is to plan and execute sales promotion strategies to acquire customers.
Not every sales promotion works for every business. To make the most out of sales promotion, you need to understand your business goals and customer interests first. Apart from this, there are a few factors you should consider to drive a successful sales promotion campaign.
Here are the three important Rs of effective consumer sales promotions:
1. Risk Aversion
Sales promotions must be focused on risk aversion, especially when the aim is to attract new customers or launch a new product. By allowing your customers to try your products for free, you can get them out of fear of wasting their money.
Customers who purchase your product after a trial may not even consider buying it without the experience. Most consumers avoid spending on a product that they are not sure about. Here is how you can include risk aversion in your sales promotions:
- Offer free samples under giveaway contests.
- Offer free sample products with other popular products.
- Offer free shipping and returns.
2. Reciprocity
The principle of reciprocity deals with human nature that expects a mutually beneficial relationship. An ideal sales promotion strategy benefits the brand as well as the customers.
Sales promotion techniques like discount coupons, loyalty programs, etc., are based on reciprocity. You can make your customers feel that they are getting something in return for their purchase with these benefits.
3. Reward
Rewarding your customers for every purchase can bring them back to your brand. Though one part of the reward is covered under reciprocity and risk aversion, you should have a separate program that accepts everyone.
These rewards aim to identify potential customers, attract them, and motivate them to stay loyal to your brand. Examples of such reward programs include gift promotions, giveaway contests on social media, etc.
Examples of B2C Sales Promotions
Sales promotions in B2C businesses are critical for business growth. The B2C sales promotions can be very effective in:
- Boosting sales
- Increasing brand awareness
- Building brand trust
- Driving repeat business
Discounts and other offers motivate consumers to make prepone their purchase decisions. Here are some most effective sales promotion techniques for B2C businesses:
1. Discount Coupons
Offering discount coupons for the next purchase is one of the most effective ways to drive repeat business. Whenever your customers make a purchase, you can provide them with a discount coupon for their next purchase.
These coupons must be valid only for a specific period, like one month or two months. It encourages your customers to keep shopping at your store more frequently.
2. Giveaway Contests
Giveaway contests work best for introducing a new product to the market or attracting new customers. You can run these contests on social media. Ask your followers to like and share your product launch post to win the product.
The more they share, the more their chances of winning. With this, you can make more and more people aware of your new product and gain more followers.
3. Flash Sales
Flash sales are short-term deals under which a brand offers some specific products at huge discounts. Flash sales will offer attractive discounts for a short period creating a sense of urgency for the customers.
As the deals are amazing, customers want cash on these discounts. They tend to prepone their purchases to benefit from the sale.
4. BOGO Deals
A ‘Buy One Get One Free’ deal is among the most widely used sales promotion techniques in B2C businesses. Though offering a 50% discount on a product is the same as a BOGO deal, the word ‘free’ has a greater impact on the human mind.
Combining these offers with certain limits makes them more effective. For example, you can run BOGO offers only on a particular day of the week or choose different days to run BOGO deals on different products.
5. Free Shipping/Returns
If your business is majorly online, you might be missing out on many customers by charging a shipping fee. Products with free shipping and return seem to be risk-free to the customers. Many customers change their minds at the time of final payment when the shipping cost is added to the price of the product.
The idea of offering free shipping and returns can be much more powerful than it seems to be.
Examples of B2B Sales Promotions
Sales promotions in B2B are different from B2C sales promotions. However, the impact can be equally good in B2B as well. Sales promotions can attract potential dealers and channel partners to your brand. Also, promotional offers can encourage your partners to give preference to selling your products and drive more sales. Here are some most popular B2B sales promotion strategies
1. Trade Shows
Trade shows are events where different businesses from a particular industry showcase their products to attract potential buyers. You can use brochures, displays, and other promotional materials to identify prospects and make your customers aware of the existing as well as new products.
The trade shows also allow you to gather information about your competitors. You can observe how your competitor businesses are presenting, selling their products, which offers they are running, etc.
2. Conventions
Participating in conventions or meetings with your industry professionals is also an effective B2B sales promotion technique. You can display your products and market them to the right audience.
For example, a textile convention allows you to display your sewing machine and its unique features. You can contact the market leaders in your industry and sell your products to them.
3. Advertising Allowances
You can give your channel partners trade allowances to encourage them to push a product. You can offer different incentives at all levels, i.e., to your wholesalers, distributors, and retailers, to boost the sales of a particular product.
Advertising allowance is a popular trade allowance you can offer to your partners and encourage them to advertise your products.
4. Sales Contests
Sales contests are incentive programs that businesses use to motivate their sales representatives to drive more sales. These contests generally focus on boosting sales for high-profit-making products. The more sales representatives sell, the higher incentives they receive.
The salesperson making the highest number of sales wins the contest. The winner can be awarded exciting prizes, such as a free vacation, monetary bonuses, a promotion, etc.
5. Free Merchandise
Free merchandise refers to a free product offered by the manufacturer to a partner or retailer to push a particular product to the market. For example, the manufacturer of formal clothing can gift a set of clothes to the staff of a high-performing retail store.
These gifts can be linked to the sales targets. The retailer can receive free items for selling a particular number of products within a pre-specified time.
Gamify Your Sales Promotions with RewardPort
You can attract more customers and retain the existing ones by offering discounts, rewards, etc. Including gamification in sales promotion builds healthy competition among your customers, making it more interesting for them to participate.
With RewardPort, you can plan and execute a sales promotion strategy with the latest tools and methods of consumer engagement. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, your sales promotion strategy should include rewards that modern customers value.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Effective consumer sales promotions are the strategies that help a business - attract more customers, boost sales, and achieve other short-term business goals.
You can judge the success of your consumer sales promotions by comparing the sales figures before and after the promotional campaign. Another metric to measure the success of your sales promotion is customer satisfaction before and after the promotions.
Some common types of consumer sales promotion strategies are:
- Flash sales
- Discount coupons for future purchases
- Giveaway contests
- Buy One Get One Free deal
- Free shipping and returns
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10 Elemental Strategies for Building a Successful Dealer Incentive Program
Dealer incentive programs are the initiatives taken by businesses to encourage their dealers and distributors to sell more by incentivizing their efforts. A dealership can be considered successful only when it adds value to the business as well as the dealers. Strong dealerships can bring unexpected growth to your business. However, you need to ensure the satisfaction of your dealers and distributor for this.
Even the most dedicated dealers can become less efficient at times. Although they work for their profit, it becomes necessary to encourage them to perform better. To keep them motivated for a longer period, the best way is to incentivize their performances.
You can build healthy competition among all your dealers or plan other types of incentive programs that align with your business.
1. Open-Ended Strategy
Under an open-ended incentive strategy, you can encourage your dealers to sell more than the previous year. Set a sales milestone slightly higher than their last year’s sales quota and offer attractive incentives for achieving their goal. These programs are budget friendly as you only need to reward the dealers on incremental sales.
You can also do it via a plateau-based incentive program. This type of program sets different goals and offers higher incentives for achieving higher goals. For example, set different milestones at 5%, 10%, and 15% of their last year’s sales. The higher milestone they achieve, the better incentives they receive.
2. Closed-Ended Strategy
This strategy is based on the concept of rewarding the highest-performing dealers. You can reward the top performers region-wise, category-wise, and based on other factors. Also, you need to plan whether you are going to offer these incentives monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly.
Along with the category-wise top performers, you can make your program more exciting by rewarding the overall topmost performers. If you are offering category-wise top performers incentives monthly, you can keep a different incentive scheme for the overall 3-5 top performers of the year.
3. New Product Introduction
When you launch a new product in the market, it becomes difficult to encourage your dealers to sell these new launches. They are already comfortable with selling the older ones and don’t want to complicate their process by learning about a new product. But with a well-planned incentive scheme, you can make your dealers sell these new products in the market.
It can be done by offering higher margins on these products as an introductory benefit. You can reward your dealers in the form of some monetary or non-monetary benefits for achieving a particular number of sales for a newly launched product.
4. Presales Incentives
When you give your dealers a yearly or half-yearly sales target, presales incentives can come in handy to help them stay motivated. While your dealers are focussing only on the yearly goal, you must focus on short-term as well as long-term sales goals. You can allow them to collect a part of their incentive commission in between. Or offer some small non-monetary gifts to remind them of the bigger incentive they can receive after achieving their goal.
5. Training Incentives
Educating and training your dealers is very important as they are the ones to deal with your end users. If they don’t have a thorough understanding of your products/services, they will not be able to explain them to the consumers. It affects them as well as your business.
So, creating dealer education programs and certifications becomes essential for every company, especially when you expect most of your revenue to come through dealers. But how can you make them enrol in these education programs?
Offer monetary incentives or certifications or other types of benefits upon completing an education program. After they complete the certification, you can send them on a fully-funded trip and ask them to visit your offices there. They can learn new things there and implement them after coming back.
6. Product-Specific Programs
When you want to boost sales for a particular product, the best way to do it is to offer additional margins or some incentives on it. Motivate your dealers to sell these products on a priority by offering them additional bonuses or rewards that they value.
However, you might be putting the sales of your other products at risk. So, implement such a scheme only when you need to push the sales for a particular product.
7. Split Incentives
A split incentive program can add excitement to your dealers’ programs and improve dealer productivity. You can ask two or more dealers from different locations to work together and achieve specific sales targets. This can be done by offering double bonuses to both dealers without any differentiation, i.e., each of the two dealers receives equal benefits upon reaching the target.
8. Dealer-Affinity Programs
To make the best-performing dealers valued, you can organise special meetups. Such meetups should provide the dealers with opportunities for networking, learning, and interacting with relevant managers at the company. Dealers from different locations and backgrounds can connect and learn from each other.
9. Sales Pusher Programs
To promote sales during a particular season, you can come up with short-term incentive schemes for your dealers. These schemes can either be target-based or performance-based. Offering bonuses or incentives based on short-term sales goals can be very effective in accelerating sales during a particular period.
10. Database Programs
The importance of customer data needs not be defined as every business is aware of it. This data will help you understand the interests of your customers and recommend products relevant to their needs. As your dealers are connecting directly with your consumers, you can collect customer data only through your dealers.
Incentivizing customer data collection by your dealers would be the best way to do it. The more data they collect, the more rewards they offer. Using your customer data in the right manner can be much more profitable for a business than you might have expected.
Build The Most Effective Dealer Incentive Program
Dealer incentive programs must be simple and offer rewards valued by your dealers. You can reward the dealership or specific employees at the dealership. The brand’s relationship with the dealership plays an important role here. However, rewarding the dealers personally for their business and achievement is also important.
RewardPort can help you create and execute an effective dealer incentives program for your business. RewardPort offers you access to thousands of the latest rewards products and a quick setup for the program.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Increasing profitability is a sum total of trust, value and costs. While cost reduction is important, it only serves as baseline hygiene, i.e., increasing the survivability of the dealer’s business during hard times. Gaining the trust of the consumers and offering value will ultimately improve the revenue potential for them.
Brand loyalty, defined as repeat purchases of a specific brand based on the perception of higher quality and better service than any competitor, is not price dependent. Companies with high brand loyalty grow revenues 2.5 times faster than their peers in the industry.
Any dealership which meets the minimum qualification criteria should be eligible to participate in the dealer incentive program. For example, regional dealerships, dealerships with a specified minimum turnover, etc., can be the criteria for qualification.
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5 Critical Motivational Drivers for A Successful Channel Partner Program
Channel partner programs aim to motivate and engage channel partners to build more value for customers. Channel partnerships, when strong enough, can bring incredible growth to your business that could not be possible otherwise. Onboarding the best potential channel partners is fine, but how do you ensure the success of your partnership?
Zoom, the leading video conferencing platform, drove over 70% of the company’s growth through channel partners during Covid Pandemic. It was possible due to their channel partners’ referral program. This is how well-structured channel partner programs can make your partnership a success.
A channel partnership should be mutually beneficial. With every additional year of partnership, it becomes stronger and adds more value to your business. Therefore, it is essential to keep your channel partners motivated and loyal for a longer period.
What is a Successful Channel Partner Program?
A Successful channel partner program ensures that you and your partner are on the same page. Along with boosting your sales, it should add value to your B2B customers and end users. Motivation plays a significant role in keeping your partners committed. Most businesses believe that the commission they pay to their channel partners is enough to motivate them. They are mistaken here.
Consider your channel partner as your additional sales team. Put in every possible effort to make them perform splendidly. You need to invest money, time, and effort in your channel partner just like you invest in your internal salespersons. The efficiency and profitability of your channel partners depend on their lifetime value. To increase their lifetime value, it is essential to keep them encouraged.
Motivation is a principal factor for a successful channel partner program. It helps a business utilize its partners to the maximum. Here are the top 5 motivational drivers for channel partners:
1. Money & Rewards
Money is the most common factor of motivation for every business. To keep your channel partners motivated for a long time, you must invest in them. Make sure that your investment is in correspondence with the efforts your partners put into your business.
The best way to use money as a motivating factor is to help your partners reduce their marketing costs. You can do it through joint funding for advertisements, joint ventures, etc. Don’t just throw money at your channel partners. But also ensure that you can measure the impact of this money.
Investing in your channel partners is the greatest way to make them feel valued. Don’t think of this investment as your loss. Partners who are valued become loyal and loyal partners can bring incredible growth to your business. Adding rewards or incentives to your channel partner program encourages your partners, even more, to perform better. RewardPort, being the top rewards company, can help you build the perfect reward/incentives program for your channel partners.
2. Access to High-Quality Sales Tools
Most businesses do not provide their channel partners with high-quality professional sales tools. As channel partners are also driving sales to your business, you must offer them the same tools that your internal sales team has. If your channel partner is selling your products in new innovative ways, you might need to support them even more than your direct sales team. Make sure to provide top-quality selling tools, such as competitive data sheets, sales scripts, testimonials, usual brochures, etc.
Your products should be convenient for them to sell. Let us understand it with an example. Suppose company A has two channel partners named B and C. A must go to 10 places to sell B’s product and only 2 places to sell C’s product. Which one would company A prefer? It would be C’s product.
It’s not about going to places, you just need to understand how a complex system can make the task difficult for your partners. Sales tools are necessary but not enough. You must also provide the necessary sales support to your partners. Make sure that they can contact your qualified staff whenever they have some technical or other issues. To get the most out of your channel partnership, you need to put in the maximum effort.
3. Education Programs and Certifications
Everyone loves to learn while earning and so do your channel partners. Education programs that provide theoretical knowledge and practical skills to your channel partners can be extremely motivating. You can design education programs that give your partners a thorough knowledge of your products/services.
These programs can include texts, videos, presentations, etc. To make these programs interesting, you can add challenging tests in between. This ensures that your partner is aware of your product’s features, and they can answer any question asked by the end customers. But how do you encourage your partners to enrol in these programs? Just add some relevant incentives to it. RewardPort can help you build an incentive program that rewards your partners for achieving different milestones under your education program.
Adding certifications to your program can make it more exciting for your channel partners. Just make sure that the certification is interesting, but also challenging at the same time. It is important to give your partners a sense of pride when they complete a certification. Many companies keep such certifications as one of the eligibility requirements for their channel partners.
4. Happy Customers
It makes your channel partners happiest when they get repeat customers because of your product. For this, you need to make sure that your end customers always love your products or services. Happy end user means happy channel partner and consequently, happy you. It can be one of the biggest motivating factors for your channel partners.
5. More Leads
Passing on qualified leads to your channel partners also acts as a great motivating factor in a channel partnership. You need to understand your customers first. Understanding the interests of your customers helps you devise a better marketing plan. When your partner gets more qualified leads from your business, they automatically are motivated to stay loyal to you.
Benefits of a Successful Channel Partner Program
A successful channel partner program ensures stronger partnerships, which further has several advantages as follows:
- Expand your brand’s reach as you also get access to your partner’s customer base.
- Generate more qualified leads.
- Reduce customer acquisition costs as your channel partner is also promoting your product.
- Boost your revenue with indirect sales.
- Strong relationships with customers you get through your channel partner.
Rewards for Your Channel Partner Program
It is completely sensible to incentivize your channel partners’ efforts toward your business growth. Appreciating your partners for their commitment encourages them to stay loyal to you and perform even better in the future.
RewardPort can help you build a channel partner loyalty program keeping in mind the best practices. RewardPort makes your channel partner programs more engaging with gamification. Additionally, your long-term channel partner programs need continuous monitoring to stay updated for new situations.
Continuous improvements allow your channel partner program to remain relevant and ahead of the competition.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
A channel partnership is an initiative where two businesses come together to sell each other’s products and services along with their own. There are many benefits of becoming a channel partner as listed below:
- Generate more qualified leads for your business and increase conversion rates.
- Reduce marketing costs.
- Reduce customer acquisition costs.
- Expand your market reach through channel partners.
The requirements for becoming a channel partner can vary for different companies. You can identify suitable companies and approach them to become their channel partner.
You can start by identifying the relevant brands/businesses and understanding their requirements for channel partners. Also, various brands often launch channel partner schemes you can participate in.
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7 Reasons to Have a Continuous Loyalty Program for Your Business
The most loyal customers of a brand are also its most profitable ones. Every business is building loyalty programs to turn its customers into brand loyalists. However, many of them misapply these reward programs. Common discount coupons and short-term loyalty campaigns are highly in trend to attract more and more customers.
Such an approach can bring one-time customers and encourage them to try your products/services. But they don’t add much value to your business. With a loyalty program, your focus should be more on retaining customers. The longer your relationship with your customers, the lower your need to spend on them.
What is a Loyalty Program?
A loyalty program is a well-structured strategy to encourage customers to stay loyal to a brand. Customers are incentivised to spend on a business. It makes them feel valued by the brand and motivates them to spend more on it. The more they spend, the more incentives they receive.
The incentives can be monetary or non-monetary. You just need to ensure that your loyalty program excites your target audience. Along with encouraging your existing customers to stay loyal, these programs increase your brand awareness and attract new customers.
Why a Continuous Loyalty Program?
Loyalty programs, if planned and implemented well, can be very effective in increasing the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Studies suggest that most customers consider themselves loyal to a brand only after spending at least five times on it.
With short-term discount offers or one-time reward programs, you can catch the attention of new customers. But there is no guarantee that these new customers will purchase your products again. They may only make a one-time purchase to avail of the discounts.
It is essential to keep your customers loyal for a long time to maximise profits with a loyalty program. Here are some advantages of having a continuous loyalty program for your business:
1. Build shared Values
Continuous and focused Loyalty Programs are valuable for your business and the customers. About 64% of consumers are loyal to the brands because of shared values. You can create community-based loyalty programs where people from different backgrounds feel like a single unit.
Sephora’s Beauty Insider Program is a good example here. Along with offering a wide range of gift options to redeem loyalty points, the platform creates an online community. All beauty enthusiasts can share their looks and ideas and learn from each other.
2. Customers Remain Invested in the Value
Loyalty Programs are not always about offering monetary rewards to your customers. You can encourage them to stay loyal even by making them feel valued. When you value your customers’ feedback, suggestions, and thoughts, they are more likely to stick to your brand.
The best way to retain your customers is to make them invest value in your business. You can ask your customers for feedback on your latest launch via social media or a short survey. Take their responsibilities seriously and work on them. Also, let your customers know that you value their feedback.
A great example of this is the ‘Spin the Wheel’ program by a gold investment app. Under this, you get a chance to spin the wheel every time you invest in Gold. You earn some money after spinning the wheel and after accumulating a certain amount, you can invest this money to buy more gold. RewardPort is India’s leading rewards company and can help you run relevant loyalty programs for your business.
3. Increase Trust
Studies on e-commerce platforms suggest that around 94% of overall purchases are of products with 4–5-star reviews. It shows how important it is for a business to win customers’ trust. You can get good reviews only if your existing customers are happy and trust your brand.
When you have a continuous customer loyalty program that rewards your customers for every purchase, your customers feel appreciated for their purchase. As a result, they trust your business and become loyal.
4. Differentiate Your Brand from Competitors
A unique and continuous loyalty program sets your brand apart from its competitors. While others offer one-time discounts or short-term loyalty programs to attract new customers, you can focus on retaining your customers by following the concept for more value to more profitable customers.
Such programs can help you beat the competition in the market. Even if some other brand is offering similar products at less expensive prices, customers are more likely to prefer your brand if it has a better loyalty program.
5. Builds Sentimental Value
With a unique loyalty program that builds shared values, you can make your customers feel emotionally connected to your brand. Customers that have sentimental values attached to a brand are more likely to stay loyal for a longer period. When you gain the trust of your customers, they automatically start feeling an emotional connection with your company.
6. Increase Referral Business
Loyalty programs also encourage word-of-mouth marketing of your business. With great rewards/incentives, you make your customers feel good about your brand. These happy customers become your brand advocates and refer your brand to their friends. It is a great way to expand your referral business without any additional cost.
7. Lower Loyalty Costs
When you have a continuous loyalty program for your business, your major focus is on retaining your existing customers. Customers become more loyal with every additional year of relationship and these loyal customers are less costly to serve. Customer acquisition is much more expensive than customer retention.
However, that doesn’t mean you are not going to attract more audience. The trust and loyalty of your existing customers towards your brand play a significant role in gaining new customers.
Types of Continuous Loyalty Programs
Loyalty Programs can be of different types. Different brands build different reward programs that align with their customers’ interests and business requirements. However, these programs are generally based on one of the following concepts:
1. Points-Based Programs:
These programs offer some sort of rewards/loyalty points on every purchase that a customer makes. After accumulating a certain number of points, these can be redeemed to get free-gifts, coupons, or vouchers. Sometimes these points can also be used to get a discount on the next purchase.
2. Cashback Programs
Under these loyalty programs, customers get cashback on every purchase. This cashback can be used against future purchases. For example, credit card companies offer cashback to their customers,’ which is automatically adjusted against their billing amount.
3. Subscription-Based Programs
Subscription-based programs require a fee to be paid from the customer’s end to earn rewards or incentives. Once a customer buys a subscription, he/she is more likely to stay loyal for a longer period.
4. Spend-Based Programs
These programs offer rewards/gifts/incentives to the customers after achieving a particular spend slab within a pre-specified time. This encourages customers to spend more in a shorter period.
5. Referral Programs
Referral Programs offer rewards, cashback, or other sorts of benefits to existing customers for every successful referral. Even the referred friend gets the benefit along with the existing customer.
How To Create a Loyalty Program for Your Business?
Creating a loyalty program for your business should not be a random process. It requires you to take the following steps carefully:
1. Know Your Audience:
To achieve your goals with a loyalty program, it is extremely important to understand your customers. Try to identify your most loyal customers and their interests.
You can do this using customer data, surveys, social media platforms, or by taking customer interviews. Make sure that your customers love what you are offering under your loyalty program.
2. Prepare a Plan
Decide what type of loyalty program you are going to build for your business. A points-based reward program is preferred by most businesses, but it might not be the best for your business as well. RewardPort can help you build a loyalty program that aligns with your business needs.
3. Set Different Tiers
To make your loyalty program different from the competitors, you can add different tiers to it. The more loyal a customer is, the higher benefits he/she gets. This encourages your customers to spend more to get promoted upper tiers and receive higher incentives.
4. Add Personalization
Adding a personal touch to your loyalty program helps you establish an emotional connection with your customers. You can do this by encouraging your customers to spend on the categories they are more interested in.
Apart from these steps, you must focus on building shared values and making your customers invest time or effort in your brand. Moreover, regular communication with your customers also plays an important role in customer loyalty.
Build A Consumer-Centric Loyalty Program
It is important to listen to your customers to provide them with the best experience and encourage loyalty among them. RewardPort helps you build a loyalty program that suits your business needs and provides the best customer satisfaction.
Being a top loyalty rewards company, RewardPort makes sure that you achieve your business objectives faster with the most suitable loyalty rewards programs. RewardPort equips you with the latest and most inexpensive rewards based on your audience. You can monitor and modify the campaigns as per their performance and customer feedback.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
As a brand, you must build a loyalty program for your customers. Reward and loyalty solutions companies like RewardPort can help you create the best program for your business.
A well-structured loyalty program can reduce the marketing costs of a company to a great extent. Customers engaged with a loyalty program are more likely to respond to your advertisements and become brand advocates. It encourages word-of-mouth marketing, and your business reaches more audiences with less effort.
Here are the top metrics to measure the success of a loyalty program:
- Customer Enrolment Rate in the loyalty program
- Participation or Engagement Rate
- Rate of repeat purchases
- Average spends per customer vs the return on investment
- Customer lifetime value
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What Are Engagement Activities for Employees?
Engagement activities for employees aim to motivate them and make them feel comfortable in the office environment. Companies that have engaged employees are more likely to succeed compared to businesses with no employee engagement. This is why it becomes necessary for employers to put in every possible effort to boost engagement among their employees.
Employee engagement should not be considered a one-time thing. To keep your staff motivated for a longer period, it is essential to organize employee engagement activities regularly. These activities should align with your overall business strategy to get the best results.
It is essential to understand why you are planning a particular event or activity. Look at the ideas, people, accomplishments, and challenges within your organization. It helps you plan the most suitable activities to boost employee morale and productivity in your company.
Why is Employee Engagement Important?
Engaged Employees are more productive and loyal to the company. They consider company success as their success and work hard to help the business grow. This is why employee engagement matters for every business. There are several benefits of having engaged employees. Some most significant ones are listed below:
- Better attendance
- Increased employee productivity
- Reduced employee turnover
- Fewer workplace stresses
- Improved collaboration among team members
Globally, only 15% of employees are engaged at work as per some studies. It raises employee disengagement as a major issue for companies. Even the most dedicated employees tend to feel demotivated when not appreciated for their hard work. This is where employee engagement activities come into play.
Most Effective Engagement Activities for Employees
Though there are lots of employee engagement activities that you can include in your organization, the following are the most effective ones:
Involve Employees in Your Business Planning
Employees play a vital role in the success of an organization. You should share the most important issues of the company with all your employees. Not every day, but you can keep such team meetings quarterly or half-yearly. Share your company’s success and challenges and discuss what actions you can take to improve.
When making business decisions, try to involve HR managers and other team leaders. It promotes transparency in your organization and builds trust among your employees. When employees are involved in important business decisions, they feel valued and become loyal.
Recognize Your Employees
Studies suggest that the primary reason behind employees leaving their jobs is a lack of appreciation. Businesses must appreciate and recognize their employees. It makes them feel valued and motivates them to perform even better in the future.
Different types of employee recognition programs help you boost employee engagement in your company. The following recognition programs can be very effective:
- The Employee of the Month programs
- Work Anniversary Celebrations
- Weekly social media shoutouts for excellent performance
- Award for achieving any specific milestone
RewardPort can help you build the best recognition programs, making sure that every employee feels appreciated.
Gamify Daily Achievements
Including gamification in your organization promotes healthy competition among your employees. It encourages them to perform their daily tasks better to get incentives. You can offer rewards for reaching the office on time, completing tasks within deadlines, working extra hours, etc. Instead of making task completion a boring task for your workers, try to make it interesting for them.
RewardPort, being a top rewards and loyalty solutions company, can help you include gamification in the best way possible. RewardPort can build employee reward programs that align with your business goals and help you achieve them faster.
Organize Team-Building Activities
Employees love team-building activities, especially the ones outside the office. You can organize team lunches, office trips, or in-office competitive games. These activities make communication better and easier among the team members. If some or all of your employees work remotely, you can organize virtual activities through Zoom meetings.
Encourage Knowledge Sharing
Employees are often busy with their teams with no idea of what other teams are doing. To avoid this, you can organize meetings for all the employees. Every team can share its projects and accomplishments in such meetings and other teams can relate it to their projects. It helps your employees understand the entire workflow of the organization and they perform better with a larger vision.
You can also create learning programs for your employees. Everyone loves to learn while earning. Build learning platforms where your employees can also check their progress by taking regular tests. Make it interesting by offering some amazing rewards on completion of a learning program.
Build a Mentorship Program
A mentorship program is a must-have in every organization. When new employees join your company, they might need guidance and help with small things. They might feel lost when there is no one to communicate with. So, provide every employee with a mentor. The mentor can be your HR manager, their team leader, or any senior employee.
Many employees leave their jobs due to a lack of guidance. To ensure this doesn’t happen in your company, encourage mentorship programs. You can offer incentives to your experienced employees for volunteering as a mentor and assign a few junior employees to every mentor.
Encourage Employee Feedback
Most companies do give regular feedback to their employees but don’t consider it important to take feedback from them. You can organize one-to-one sessions between the HR managers and all the employees to receive their feedback. Appreciate positive feedback, take the negative ones seriously, and try to improve. When employee feedback is considered, they feel valued and are more likely to stay loyal.
Employee Engagement for Business Growth
An engaged workforce is easier to handle as employees perform their tasks with full dedication. They are more productive and remain loyal to their employer. With so many advantages of employee engagement, it is evident that engaged employees play an important role in business growth.
To ensure maximum employee engagement in an organization, employers need to come up with relevant ideas and engagement activities. RewardPort can help you plan and execute the most suitable employee engagement activities for your company. Gamification is one of the best ways to have highly engaging activities for the workforce.
Gamification brings the element of surprise and makes your activities more effective even on a budget. You can choose from thousands of rewards at RewardPort with a starting price as low as Rs 10. This allows you to do more with less.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Employee engagement activities are the initiatives by employers to motivate their employees to perform to their best and stay loyal to the company. These activities can be of different types, such as recognition programs, team lunches, knowledge-sharing meetups, and many more.
There is no number of activities that an employer can organize to boost employee engagement. However, some most effective ones are listed here:
- Employee Recognition Programs.
- Mentorship Programs
- Involving employees in business planning
- Including gamification
- Team Building Activities
The HR managers or other team managers should organize engagement activities for their team members. However, managers should also be rewarded by the company owners as they are an integral part of an organization.