To stay one step ahead of their competitors, convenience stores and restaurants are investing in brand loyalty programs—and it’s paying off. Consider these findings from the Paytronix 2023 Loyalty Report, which surveyed businesses on the impact of their brand loyalty programs:
Developing the right brand loyalty program can set your business apart from your local competitors if you nail the launch. Keep reading for tips and tactics to help you build and launch a successful loyalty program.
We can’t stress this enough: You must have clear goals for your loyalty program from the beginning.
Before you start planning rewards, functionality, or design, decide why you want to create the program and what you want the brand loyalty program to accomplish. Establishing clear loyalty program goals will provide you with focus and direction as you build out your loyalty program.
The best loyalty program goals are SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. For example, important goals for brand loyalty programs include increasing:
For each of your loyalty program goals, you’ll set a timeline for reaching the goal. Also crucial is establishing key metrics and KPIs that you will track and measure against initial benchmarks, including:
If you aren’t measuring your loyalty program’s performance, you’ll have no way of knowing if it’s worth your investment. Additionally, you’ll have no way of knowing if the rewards, discounts, and programs you’re offering resonate with customers.
The key to your success is being able to pivot as needed to keep customers satisfied, and that starts with an intuitive technology platform that makes the job simple. Paytronix offers a user-friendly dashboard that makes it easy to track key metrics and ensure your program aligns with your overall business objectives.
With your goals decided, your next step is to determine the structure of your program and to establish the loyalty program rewards you’ll offer. Common loyalty program structures include:
Once you have determined the structure of your program, you can establish your loyalty program rewards, which could include:
We recommend you offer a variety of options. While some customers love earning points, others appreciate coupons and discounts. Providing options will encourage more customers to join and continue to engage with your loyalty program.
That’s why segmentation capabilities are so integral to a successful brand loyalty program. When you can capture data and segment customers based on their purchase history and behavior, you can offer personalized rewards that resonate with different customer groups.
Our customers benefit from robust segmentation tools, which enable them to create highly targeted campaigns based on demographics, purchase history, behavioral patterns, and preferences. A perfect real-world example of this is Toastique, a growing QSR brand. After just four months, its revamped loyalty program grew by 87.5%.
A larger membership base has enabled the brand to leverage behavioral data and fine-tune their loyalty offers. That personalization is driving visit frequency too, as guests receive offers for what they want, when they want it.
After you’ve established the structure and rewards, you can begin working with designers and developers to provide an intuitive interface that enables customers to easily see offers and rewards and redeem them.
An early adoption program generates initial buzz around your brand loyalty program. Equally as important is the fact you can gain valuable feedback from customers about what is working and what needs improvement early in the process. With those insights, you can adjust your loyalty program.
A successful early adoption program at the highest level is two-fold. First, you need to give customers a reason to sign up early, engage, and refer your loyalty program to others. That requires offering them something of value for signing up (i.e., a free item) and points for answering surveys or providing feedback.
Second is spreading the word about your brand loyalty program, specifically the early adoption program. Highlight your loyalty program on your website. Hang promotional materials throughout your location so people can see them.
Market the early adoption aspect of your program across all your social channels, and email or text customers if you’ve captured that data through other opt-in forms and digital promotion efforts. Make sure you highlight the best parts of your brand loyalty program, being clear about the value customers receive when they sign up and become early adopters.
As you consider vendors to help you develop your loyalty program, find one that offers flexible tools for creating an early adoption program, including customizable sign-up bonuses, referral rewards, and exclusive offers to incentivize participation, like Paytronix.
You should think of your loyalty program as an extension of customer service because if done correctly, it can provide insights that enable you to better serve customers. It’s wise to choose a platform that integrates with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. When your CRM and loyalty program are connected, you can analyze data and uncover actionable insights to drive smarter marketing decisions.
When pulling data from your CRM and loyalty programs, you’re able to:
Fully integrating your CRM and loyalty program can help ensure the success of your program, providing you with the data and analytics required to make necessary improvements and keep customers happy.
Once you launch, the work has just begun. We must always be thinking about how to improve customer loyalty programs. It’s important to continuously analyze the data you are capturing to look for areas that are underperforming and make improvements.
Start tracking metrics right after you launch, because the sooner you have meaningful data, the sooner you can develop more effective marketing campaigns and sales forecasts. The loyalty program vendor you work with should play a role in helping you interpret the data and identify how you’re tracking against your goals.
They should also pinpoint issues and offer guidance for how to improve your customer loyalty program. As you analyze your key metrics, you’ll be able to make iterative updates.
Improving your customer loyalty program starts with the right technology platform. Paytronix's reporting tools empower you to identify challenges and opportunities—and act fast to keep loyalty members happy and engaged.
If you’re ready to launch a brand loyalty program or refresh an existing one, we can help. Not only can we provide you with a powerful platform to deliver loyalty solutions your customers love, but we are also available to help you set goals, measure KPIs, provide benchmarking, help with analytics, and uncover overlooked opportunities that increase your revenue.
Discover more about our loyalty programs for convenience stores and restaurants, or schedule a live demo.