Loyalty is one of biggest challenges in e-commerce today. Massive amounts of money and effort are spent on user acquisition, but the majority of first-time visitors never come back to the online stores and services. However, it’s not that simple to launch an effective loyalty program: “49% of internet users believe that all reward programs seem alike.” At Stampix, we believe Loyalty Programs should revolve around a lot more than earning points for purchases.
Here are 5 facts that may surprise you:
1. Brand loyals are worth 10x
It’s generally known that acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining existing ones. A recent study showed that 70% of companies actually confirm this for their business, and that the returning customers spend 67% more than new customers. This all adds to the fact that loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their initial purchase value.
One would expect marketeers to focus their brand efforts on customer retention, yet in reality we often see the opposite. When loyalty programs are done right, they can be very powerful and add tremendous value. So, how much of your marketing budget is currently spent on retention & loyalty?
2. Emotions have the strongest impact on loyalty
Emotional bonding with a brand has proven to be the main driver for true loyalty. To get there your brand has to foster positive emotions such as excitement, success, familiarity, and belonging. This can be achieved by a loyalty plan that rewards users for a wide variety of actions beyond purchases, such as visiting, reviewing products or sharing on social networks. These forms of engagement don’t deliver immediate business value (i.e. revenue) but provide your customers ample opportunity to discover your offerings and reinforce your value propositions. Additionally, establishing these valuable ongoing relationships converts regular customers into brand advocates and positive word-of-mouth, generally known as the most effective form of advertising.
It’s worth investing in communication that stimulates the emotional connection with customers
3. Your customers expect more
71% of consumers expects to be rewarded for their loyalty. In reality, only 36% consider they are.
64% of customers expect to be positively surprised by their current brands. In reality, only 40% consider they are.
These statistics are in line with what Gen Z marketing guru Connor Blakely claims, i.e. that there is a growing discrepancy between the expected effort from brands and the loyalty they expect from customers.
“It’s not brand loyalty that’s dead – it’s brand effort.” – Connor Blakley
4. Birthday is the time to score
If you are going to reward your customers and want to convert them into frequently returning customers, you have to impress them. One of most underestimated weapons of influence is the power of reciprocity. Simply put, by giving something first, you will end up receiving. A personal attention for ones birthday is by far the most relevant communication to focus on across all industries, as can be seen on the table below.
5. Attention moments matter
The hardest part is to incentivize shoppers to participate in your program at all. This can be achieved with rewards that surprise them, are useful, and most importantly motivate them to return. The study shows that women attach more importance to emotional drivers and are more open to so called attention moments than their male colleagues. When broken down by age, it turns out that millenials (aged 18-34 year) are also more susceptible to small perks and unexpected attention moments, that are easy to redeem, preferably online & instant.
At Stampix, one of the first exercises we do is map the brand’s customer journey on our calendar with popular Photo Moments. Around these moment we know consumers take substantially more photos, which hold a high emotional values to them.
Interested to learn how we add emotion to the loyalty programs of Orange, Luminus & Sunweb?
Contact anton@stampix.com to schedule a demo.
