The 2014 Loyalty Guide is out and full of stats, insight and industry knowledge. One of the featured chapters this year is 60 "loyalty lessons." This is a retail focused look on how loyalty can affect your business and how your customers purchase your products. A strong loyalty program can boost your customer return rate and raise each consumer's life time value, while a bad loyalty program can be detrimental, even in the best economic climate.
Here are three of our favorites from the chapter but all 60 employee and customer loyalty lessons can be found here.
- Retail and brand choices are heavily influenced by loyalty rewards. The Loyalty Guide studies have shown that customers are highly motivated by the notion of redeeming loyalty rewards. This motivation peaks when a customer has the opportunity to redeem those loyalty rewards across their favorite brands. This concept can also work for employee rewards. Managing an internal point system and allowing employees to redeem their loyalty or engagement points for a reward can be equally motivating and effective.
- Loyalty data has saved retailers from the recession. The recession has made for some difficult times in the retail industry, but it has taught retailers an important lesson in priorities. Retailers learned that existing customer should always come first because they have shown loyalty and initiative towards the brand. If they have already purchased, it will cost a lot less to get them to purchase again. Loyalty is easier cultivated than created, so once you identify loyal customers, or employees, keep them around.
- Get it right, and social media drives loyalty. Get it wrong, and social media drives brand defection. Social media can kill your business or give it a big, viral boost. When done right social media can drive engagement and purchasing as well as build good will between your consumers and your company. When done poorly, social media can tear down good will and defect even your most loyal consumers to your competitors. Give those social media passwords out wisely.
