Studies have found that 70% of online customers buy just once and never return. And who can blame them? There’s plenty of choice, product reviews abound and better prices are often only a click away. Customer loyalty is becoming more important than ever, and brands must work hard to win it.
That’s why we (the team at HTK) have built loyalty programme management into our Horizon Digital Marketing Hub. And this isn’t your average, run-of-the-mill loyalty solution, either – we’re strong believers in the power of personalisation and that’s what we’ve brought to the fore.
Making loyalty personal
One of the best ways to win loyalty is by delivering personalised customer experiences that make people feel like VIPs. Loyalty programmes that recognise who each member is and reward them accordingly can drive engagement and encourage repeat purchases.
Suppose when a member logs in to a brand’s online loyalty portal, they see a personalised page showing the relevant rewards for them – updated in real-time. If a customer logs in and sees rewards geared at families when they’re single, or lots of fitness-related rewards when their passion is fashion, they’re likely to disengage.
But if it’s easy to spot (and redeem) the rewards they’re interested in, their engagement, loyalty and value to the brand should all go up.
For example, here’s a personalised loyalty portal for a food-loving family man…
And here’s one for a female fitness lover with a birthday coming up…
Not only does the banner image change to reflect the member’s gender, the offers presented in the sidebar are tailored to their interests as well.
The Horizon Loyalty Toolkit enables businesses to manage a personalised loyalty programme that’s powered by customer insight - so rewards, offers and related comms can be hyper-personalised based on almost any information known about a customer.
Personalised, relevant offers for every customer
Even businesses not looking to personalise their loyalty programme can benefit from incorporating some personalisation into the offers they send their customers. In one survey, 86% of customers said that personalisation has a least some impact on what they purchase. And 55% of retailers that use personalisation have seen customer loyalty improve.
Offers can be personalised based on customers’ demographics, persona, purchase history and interests. And by integrating with micro-location technology, retailers can push these relevant offers to customers in just the right context – when they walk into a store, for example.
Horizon’s Offer Management features allow businesses to automatically match offers to customers based any of these criteria. The top offers for each customer can easily be inserted into any message in the same way their name or email address can, and Horizon will automatically calculate the best offers for each individual.
By presenting relevant offers to every customer, marketers can create more personalised campaigns that will increase engagement and drive purchases.
For consumers, the trouble with many loyalty programmes is that they don’t really offer much value. Earning enough points to actually do anything with takes a long time – and when you do get there, the rewards can be a bit…boring. Quite often, loyalty programmes just aren’t worth the effort – or the number of cards you have to fit in your wallet.
We’re changing that. Working with great new partners like Localz, we’re bringing you the ability to offer rewards to your loyalty members that are really worth something.
This guest blog post was written by Pete Thompson, Head of Product Management at HTK.
With a keen interest in marketing software technologies, Pete leads HTK's Product Strategy and oversees roadmap delivery for HTK's flagship Horizon platform.