After exploring innovative ideas that put a unique spin on your loyalty program in last week’s Mission: Loyalty episode, this week I’ll be investigating how you can create lasting loyalty through genuine customer connections.
Why are customer connections so important? We all know that keeping loyal customers costs far less than acquiring new customers. They come back more often, spend more, and they promote your brand by talking about their positive experiences. It’s essentially a form of free marketing. But customer loyalty is like air… you only notice how important it is once it’s gone. So how can you cultivate and maintain unwavering loyalty with your customers? Watch the video and read the article to see how some of the biggest brands have achieved lasting loyalty and find out what you can do to make a real connection with your customers — with the help of your rewards program.
Hi everyone, and welcome to Mission: Loyalty, your best connection for loyalty insights.
You know, one of my colleagues had an interesting thought about customer loyalty, he said: It’s like air – you only notice how important it is when it’s gone.
So we should appreciate it before it’s too late! But then I started thinking, what makes ME loyal to a brand?
And I’m talking “loyal” to the point that I post about a brand on social media, I tell my friends about it, or even consider getting a tattoo of their logo!
And the answer is: I’m loyal because that brand has made a real connection with me.
So here’s today’s mission: how can YOU make a genuine connection with YOUR customers through a loyalty program?
It seems like everyone is talking about authenticity. There are so many ads, emails, and offers around us that it’s getting easier to block out whatever feels well, generic.
No one wants to feel like a transaction! People want to feel like members of a community.
Authenticity helps build trust. So once customers truly love a brand, they aren’t even paying attention to your competitors.
People who love your brand SPEND more, RECOMMEND more, and become your advocates.
I could go on and on… but let’s talk about the challenging part: the “how.”
HOW can you CREATE a genuine customer experience?
In loyalty program speak, we call this genuine connection “emotional loyalty”.
As Mike Capizzi, Dean of the Loyalty Academy, who has trained hundreds of loyalty experts over the past 7 years, puts it:
“Emotional loyalty is when every communication and brand action makes customers feel recognized and important.”
In other words, emotional loyalty targets the customer’s heart, rather than their mind.
Here are three tactics you can use to make the shift toward emotional loyalty.
#1: Use personalized communication and relevant product recommendations. Customers have a sixth sense and can tell when you’ve made an effort to make the experience relevant.
So, make the effort to understand customers’ interests then ensure you can act on that information using segmentation both in your loyalty program and marketing automation.
It shows when you make the extra effort – even when customers know it’s all automated.
Tactic #2: Get passionate. Think about what your customers love. Do they simply adore fashion? Do they want to help others? Are they passionate about getting fit?
Based on what you know, create seasonal campaigns allowing your members to DO or BUY what they love and get rewarded for it.
Or let people spend their points on a charitable cause, something that they’re passionate about.
And tactic #3: Reward customers for engaging outside of the buying cycle. Thank your customers for doing things other than spending money… like writing reviews, answering survey questions, or other actions that drive your business forward.
To support the case for emotional loyalty, I have some special Loyalty Intel to share:
We recently produced the Global Customer Loyalty Report after analyzing 25 million loyalty program data points, and surveying hundreds of loyalty experts and execs. And when we asked people who ALREADY HAD A LOYALTY PROGRAM to classify their programs on a scale of “rational” to “emotional”, just 20.7% of respondents said their programs skewed more towards “emotional”.
Then, we asked THE SAME QUESTION to people who were planning to INTRODUCE a loyalty program in the next two years… What did we see? There was a big jump toward emotional loyalty. 54% of respondents say that their future program will be more emotional than rational.
So now is the time to get ahead of your competitors and focus on emotional loyalty.
As a loyalty technology provider, we’ve seen many great examples of emotional loyalty in action.
One of our clients is a mountaineering and outdoor supply company called Bergzeit. They’ve combined tactics 2 & 3: understanding their customers’ passion AND rewarding them outside of the buying cycle. Their loyalty program, Bergzeit Club, includes a Strava integration that allows their customers to earn extra points for hiking milestones.
So Bergzeit is rewarding customers for spending time in the great outdoors, which is something they are CLEARLY passionate about.
Their case study is in the description if you’d like to find out more about their program.
Thank you so much for watching today!
Eager to continue the investigation? You’ll find article suggestions in the description below. Check them out to learn more about building a genuine connection with your customers.
And if you’re ready to learn more about Antavo’s Enterprise Loyalty Cloud, visit antavo.com to see our product videos and documentation, or request a demo of our platform.
See you next time on Mission: Loyalty.
What Makes Customers Loyal to a Brand?
True loyalty goes beyond a rewards card or points system. Taking a transactional, non-personal approach just doesn’t cut it anymore. Today’s loyalty programs need to include emotional benefits, perks, and privileges that recognize members for their engagement. Examples of emotional benefits include letting customers into the store after-hours to have a private shopping experience, providing a concierge service, or 24/7 customer service.
To build a strong relationship with your customers, go beyond the power of your product or brand by fostering emotional loyalty. Don’t forget: an emotionally invested customer is a loyal customer. Find their emotional connection to your company and build the relationship around that connection point.
To help you work out the best incentives for your members and offer a reward for every customer segment check out our useful worksheet.
How You Can Create a Genuine Customer Connection
In order to create an authentic customer connection with your loyalty program, members need to feel that they truly matter. Don’t just reach out to members of your loyalty program when you want their business. Find ways to continuously show them you care, listen to them, and develop a customer-oriented mindset. You need to know what motivates loyalty in your customers, because nowadays purchasing decisions often depend on whether or not customers share an emotional bond with your brand.
In order to make an impact, you must build a relationship with your customers and develop emotional loyalty. When you create a real connection with your customers, they will not only keep shopping with you when your competitors offer a better deal, but they’ll also post about your brand on social media and spread the word to friends and family, too. People who love your brand spend more, recommend more, and become your advocates.
As Mike Capizzi, Dean of the Loyalty Academy, put it “Emotional loyalty is when every communication and brand action makes customers feel recognized and important.”
Best practices to make a shift towards a deeper connection through emotional loyalty:
1. Get Personal – Like Sephora
Nowadays, people are so used to personalization that most of the time they don’t even bother to open welcome emails that don’t include their name or a product that they are interested in. That’s why using a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. You want your customers to feel special. Use personalized communication and relevant product recommendations so customers know you’ve made an effort to make their experience relevant.
For instance, Sephora’s mobile shopping app not only allows members to view and use their loyalty points and Beauty Insider Cash, but they also have unique offers available. Their in-app messaging is also personalized and is consistent with user profiles, which includes information such as hair and skin type. Their loyalty app also gives the brand an opportunity to use push notification communications about special bonuses, new rewards, and motivating messages about how close customers are to their next big milestone or reward in the program.
Tips to Try in Your Own Program
- Provide a great digital-to-store experience. Sephora does this by using digital channels to encourage customers to book makeovers and consultations.
- Ask for more than just the name and email information of your customers so that you can send special personalized surprise and delight offers on their birthdays and customer anniversaries. This will enable you to show them that — yes — it’s personal.
- Create tailored product recommendations based on customers’ past purchases to build a stronger bond and entice members to reengage.
2. Get Passionate – Like Rip Curl
Think about what your customers love and what they are passionate about. Is it going out for a run, a hike or going surfing? Or, is it living a more environmentally conscious lifestyle? Sharing the same values as your customers is crucial for companies, whether it’s working out, bringing back old clothes, or donating to charity. Rewarding members’ lifestyle choices is a great way to boost loyalty and connect with them even when shopping isn’t on their minds. Being part of your customers’ everyday lives strengthens the emotional bond with your brand and creates a genuine customer connection.
Rip Curl, the global sportswear brand, caters to their surfing-loving loyalty community by rewarding them not only for shopping but also for living their passion. Customers of their lifestyle membership program, Club Rip Curl, are rewarded for what they love, going surfing.
Tips to Try in Your Own Program
- Provide helpful content for members to access, such as advice on activities they can do to achieve their goals, or ways they can use your products to see better results. To make sure your customers consume your content, offer additional points for reading your articles.
- Reward customers for bringing old clothes back to your store. Making sustainable choices helps the environment and also provides increased traffic and brand loyalty for your company.
- Give members the opportunity to elect between using their points to treat themselves to their favorite products or donating to a charity of their choice.
3. Get Appreciative – Like Brewdog
To create a brilliant customer connection, it’s important to reward loyal customers outside of the buying cycle. Encourage them to write reviews, complete their profiles, answer survey questions, or refer their friends and family. This not only builds trust and authenticity, but also provides marketers extra collateral to work with. A truly engaging loyalty program should go beyond simply offering transactional rewards, and instead focus on the experience. Experiential benefits, VIP treatment, challenges, and gamification can all greatly enhance the member experience.
BrewDog, the Scottish craft beer company, went with a completely points-free concept for its loyalty program. Instead of points, Planet BrewDog members earn badges when they complete transactional and non-transactional activities. Their program lets members refer their friends using a referral link found in the member profile area of the company’s website. When members place orders using a referral link, both parties receive a discount. BrewDog’s loyalty program also rewards members for completing their profiles and for helping the company achieve its sustainability goals.
Tips to Try in Your Own Program
- Apply game-like elements that will hook your customers and keep them engaged. This can build a strong sense of community and provide your company with new opportunities to collect data about customers.
- Incentivize loyalty program members to share pictures and videos on social media, and give them extra points for doing so. UGC is a great strategy for building word-of-mouth and a great form of non-transactional engagement.
- Let customers participate in your company’s processes to help build an emotional connection. For instance, let them share their design ideas or artwork for future products, or offer top-tier members the chance to test certain features before launch as a reward.
Go the Extra Mile
Loyal customers are at the core of every successful brand. These customers are always ready to spend their money on your products and services as long as you keep delivering the quality they expect. Also, in spite of the fact that discounts will play a more important role in the age of inflation, companies that reward customers outside of the buying cycle, provide experiential rewards, and make the shift towards a more emotional loyalty model will be able to truly differentiate themselves from the competition.
So listen to your customers, respond to their needs, and continuously find ways to add value to their lives. Because loyalty achieved through an emotional bond is always stronger than financial incentives.
If you are interested in learning more about what Antavo’s technology has to offer, feel free to book a demo or include us in your RFP.
Jess is a Loyalty Program Analyst and a Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional - CLMP, helping companies learn more about customer retention strategies, so they can launch successful loyalty programs. She has been writing about loyalty since 2016. Jess also enjoys ballet, travel, learning languages, and carrying out secret missions for loyalty intel.
