In-store loyalty programs have come a long way in the last decade.
They have become useful marketing tools that help merchants translate customer data from their stores into personalized, interactive campaigns that drive repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
To launch a successful loyalty program, you need to know what you want to achieve and how loyalty fits into your customer journey.
Two tips to strengthen the loyalty program in your store:
Use emails and SMS messages
Leverage your customer data
1. Use emails and SMS messages
75% of customers return to a retailer's store or website after receiving an offer. The real challenge, however, is getting customers to actually see those offers.
While it’s a necessary part of any retention campaign, you shouldn’t rely solely on email to send relevant offers to customers. Why? Email open rates are less than 25% . That means less than one in four people will qatar cell phone number open your email.
The most successful loyalty programs use both email and SMS to send offers to customers, maximizing the likelihood that the offer will be seen and that the offer will result in a sale.
It’s no surprise that people are glued to their phones. Studies show that people check their phones up to 80 times a day. Plus, SMS messages have an 82% open rate . The likelihood of a customer seeing your offer when sent via SMS is significantly higher than with emails.
How to Use Email and SMS Effectively
Plan your goals
Before launching a campaign, it’s important to work backwards. By this, we mean thinking about the actions you want people who receive the email or SMS message to take. Do you want to promote a specific offer, raise awareness of a new product, promote newsletter signups, generate sales for your new collection?
Clearly define your goals so that you can accurately measure the performance of your campaign once it is launched.
Avoid spamming
It’s never a good idea to bombard your customers with emails and SMS messages. Spamming can lead to them unsubscribing from your emails and/or SMS messages or uninstalling your loyalty app.
Be brief
Think about the last time you opened a long email. Did you read it all? Probably not. It’s important to keep your emails and text messages as brief as possible and focus your message on the benefits to the recipient.
A/B test
A/B testing involves testing two versions of the same email or SMS message to see which one is more effective. The goal is to determine which one produces the best results and which one drives the most conversions. You can test almost anything you want in an email:
Subject lines
Calls to Action (CTA)
Graphics (colors, images, etc.)
Content
With Lightspeed, you can easily compare the engagement of your previously sent emails and learn what type of emails work best with your customers.
Simply select an email template (or create your own) and try out different combinations of images, designs, or copy.