In this cutting-edge competitive environment, no brand in any industry is safe. Customers are highly volatile and experimental in nature. Options and offers are abundant so also the flow of information. Retaining a customer has become more challenging than ever before. In fact, getting a new customer seems easier than retaining an existing customer. In this condition, customer lifetime value (LTV) is now the primary focus of marketers. It’s now one of the most important metrics for any business that wants to expand their market. Marketers trying and experimenting with every possible tool available to them to enhance the LTV of customers. The Customer Loyalty Program Software is an effective and much cheaper tool providing many advantages to the brands in boosting customer lifetime value.
Develop a Pool of Brand-Loyal Customers with Exclusive Loyalty Programs
Why will your customers spend more? You have to develop a reason. This is where your loyalty programs are relatable. Lifetime value and loyalty are two sides of the same coin. These two factors are inherently linked with one another. With an incentive-based loyalty program, you can induce your customers to spend more on your products. This incentive can be of different forms like special offers, discount coups, direct discounts, money back, and reward points.
Here are a few definite and proven programs that you can adopt anytime to boost your customer lifetime value:
Design a point-based loyalty program – This is one of the most used but most effective loyalty programs known to the business world. Points are added with each purchase and after adding some points customers can use the cash value of accumulated points for buying any product.
Scratch card system – This is another popular and proven loyalty program. Offer a scratch card for spending a certain minimum amount on your products or services. Keep a surprise gift with each scratch card. This works effectively when every scratch card carries at least a small gift or money back or anything attractive.
Tier system – This is one of the best loyalty programs for the long-term engagement of the customers. Customers are assigned tiers according to their monthly, half-yearly, or yearly buying amounts. A higher tier means higher discounts or rewards for a certain period. For example, a tier 1 customer can enjoy a 5% discount on any food item they purchase from your departmental store whereas a tier 2 customer can enjoy a 5% discount on any item they buy from your departmental store.
Discounts on purchase from a partner company – This is another way to enhance brand loyalty or lifetime value of customers. Partner with another company or companies whose products or services are someway related to your business. For spending, a certain minimum amount on your products or services offers customers discounted or free products or services of the partner company. For example, if you are a pharmacy, offer a free blood sugar check from a reputed diagnostic center in your city for spending a certain amount from your pharmacy.
VIP customer program – Let your customers spend on the subscription for obtaining a lifetime or yearly membership for availing certain exclusive benefits. For example, a member could get the order delivered to their address free while a non-member needs to spend a certain amount for getting the order delivered at the doorstep.
Each and every customer of your business are valuable. Not let them go easily. Pay attention to them because they are the backbone of your business. With simple but result-oriented loyalty programs enhance customer lifetime value. It will make your business relevant and profitable in the long-run.
The World is going digital with each passing day and technology is becoming exponentially more important to simplify life on our digital planet. We are producing 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day by 3.7 billion humans accessing internet. We have produced 90% of the data in the world over last two years and this pace is accelerating by each passing day.
This huge volume of data leads to user fatigue every time users are searching or accessing a useful information. Users often input via keyboard a website URL, a Code or text, messages, contact details etc. as a digital planet citizen in private or corporate life. Keyboard input often leads to following challenges for users –
Typing errors (more often with key boards getting shorter with display size of mobile devices)
Mental fatigue (remembering and typing)
Longer cycle times of input and transaction completion
Above challenges are further aggravated by Impatience and immediate response expectation habits of our digital generations checking their phones 150 times a day (every 5 minutes during day).
Do we have a better technological solution to avoid user attempts via keyboard?
Yes, you would have seen black & white colour barcode on newspapers, websites, magazines etc. QR code or Quick Response code is answer to all user problems for enabling just in time access to any URL, contact card,
This evolution started in year 1948, when Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph created first barcode (or unidirectional barcode) to cut human data entry errors and relieve the workers from pain of data entry. By late 1970s, Barcode were necessary part of inventory tracking especially in retail and automobile manufacturing. Unidirectional barcodes could store information up to 20 characters depending on length of barcode. This approach was further formalised via Universal Product Code (UPC) in 1980s. UPC offered benefit of managing common products easily to retailers. There were some limitations with unidirectional barcode technology like reading of barcode at a particular angle, maximum character storage limit, character type limit (alphanumeric only), requirement of a minimum space on label and vulnerability to dirt.
In 1987, David Allais developed first 2 D barcode (Code 49), a predecessor to popular PDF417. Soon market was flooded with proprietary 2 D codes as these codes were compact and store more data in multiple data formats.
Quest for quicker and error free assembly lines motivated Masahiro Hara from Denso Wave (a sister concern of Toyota) to develop first QR code as we know today. Denso wave made its patented QR code research and specifications public so that anyone was free to use it. This democratic decision helped in public use of QR code at a mass level. Initial use cases of QR code were automobile, pharmaceutical and retail industry as a replacement of prevalent unidirectional codes for inventory tracking due to advantages like higher storage capacity (7,089 numerical characters or 2,953 alphanumeric characters), compact size and space requirement, convenience of scanning (at any angle) and better readability despite wearing and damage ( up to 30% damage).
Businesses across the globe have started leveraging QR code technology to efficiently manage product (and service) life cycle beyond the supply chain till repeat purchase and end of product life.
Some of interesting use cases into customer loyalty and rewards program offer following benefits to business by utilizing and integrating versatile QR technology with business apps –
Capture performance of media promotions and campaigns based on actual sales
Capture customer information and preferences for products and services
Effectively segment customer based on preferences and design product and promotions
Enhance customer loyalty for business brand over competitors
Maximize customer visits and average spend per visit
Capture customer feedback about products and services
QR code technology enhances traditional approaches by better, authentic and real fact based data capturing in terms of data points like location, sales / service delivery centre, product information, customer information and multiple other points of business interest resulting in better rewards for customer and businesses.
Business team can further utilize customer and usage data can be further analyzed using IT applications for monitoring program performance against business KPIs in real time. Useful insights like unique customer identification, coupon redemption, product lifting performance, campaign performance, and average discount metrics. This business critical information can be very simply collected without any significant investments in additional hardware, complicated POS integrations but offers good customer and product insights to business team. This definitely helps in building better recall and relationship between consumers and marketers.
Some of the prominent business cases have been run across globe by global giants like DANONE in SPAIN by linking customer earnings up to $ 50 per month as discount coupons via scanning of QR code printed on products using customer mobile phone. McDonalds and Dominos have also launched innovative campaigns with IT solution partners to surprise customers by utilizing customer geo-locations.
Technical products have also leveraged QR code features of extensive data capturing for registration and warranty verification related processes. OEMs have started adding a QR code image to product and receipts and end user can easily register a product by scanning QR code image from his smart phone without going through extensive information (model number, serial number, manufacturing dates etc.) at product registration forms. QR code technology based approach has helped in improving data accuracy, compliance of product registration and reduces product support cost. Same QR code is scanned by service engineers at the time of product service and warranty support to end customers for capturing product related data. This data is used by engineering team to analyze product failure and support related calls for further improving products and end user experience.
Business across the globe has demonstrated confidence in QR code technology, acceptance and partner ecosystem. Organizations are engaging with right QR code technology partners for capturing data beyond inventory and addressing business challenges and reaping better benefits in asset tracking, social media, marketing & promotion, warranty services areas.
It’s a race every business is joining and early adopters have started reaping benefits due to low overhead cost, quick turnaround and direct impact on top and bottom line of business.
“It takes months to find a customer, years to build loyalty and seconds to lose it.”
Customer plays a central role as real source of money for any profitable business while organizations just manage the resources for customer in the process of making profits. Since customer is so much central and important for any profitable business, there is always a competition between businesses to acquire new customers.
Customers are loyal to a brand hence it is very important to understand and define a brand before understanding customer loyalty. Users and customers often use multiple words to describe different dimensions of brand i.e. experience, quality, cost and consistency. It is equally important for business team to focus on these brand dimensions as much it is for building brand loyalty.
What is Customer Loyalty?
Customer loyalty is the result of consistent positive emotional experience of customers via physical attributes or perceived value. Majority of scientific definition of customer loyalty fail to establish that loyalty is an emotional connect with customers. Customer loyalty acts as an insurance against competitive forces and yields regular dividends to business.
Growth is always on the ambitious business radar and every business is aiming for the same pie for achieving business growth in a global, integrated, developed market.Customers have also become more demanding and business continuously keep exploring for opportunities to retain and keep them happy with every experience of product/ service. Business achieves growth in terms of customer count by adding new customers, activating old inactive customers or acquisition of competitor’s customers (new customers for business).
Customer loyalty makes business easy
Marketing and sales team should assign strategic priority to retain customers since it can consume approximately 5 X more resources to acquire a new customer as compared to retaining an existing customer. This further reinforces need of an active customer loyalty program that keeps customer engaged in frequent buying and attached to brand. Different customer surveys and study results have proved repeatedly proved importance and returns of a business appropriate customer retention and loyalty program. Majority of customers prefer to buy under guidance of referral according to survey by hubspot.
According to 2018 customer engagement & loyalty statistics –
77% of consumers acknowledge relationships with specific brands for 10 or more years. (Inmoment)
61% of loyal customers go out of their way to buy from them (Inmoment)
75% of loyal customers will recommend a brand to friends and family (Inmoment)
Customer loyalty: B2B scenario
Customer loyalty in a B2B product / service environment is different since customer sales cycle and touch points are different from direct sales cycles. B2B sales often involves consultants and channel partners and end consumer may or may not directly interact with OEM. Customer loyalty programs focus on following key stages to achieve desired customer engagement, retention and experience related results –
Channel / Influencer Transactions– Sales strategy for technical products employs influencers for most of sales transactions since end consumer or customer need knowledge to under product features and applications. Some of the prominent industries in domain of mass consumers is spares and accessories for white goods, real estate and technical products. It becomes important for business to employ, engage and interact with influencers since they further advocate products/services to end consumer.
Technology offers multiple solutions in this area by –
Discovering influencers over social media and other technical forums,
Recruit and Recording information related to basic and technical background of influencers,
Bi-directional communication and connection with influencers related to product features, market feedback and roadmap
Design, communicate and monitor incentive structures for influencers and performance
2. Social Media & Behaviour –With the advent of digital world, social media has become an integrated part of our life and purchase decisions. Social medial advocacy is believed by customers and marketers as a true measure of customer loyalty and reaps exponential growth benefits for products and brands from multiple categories. Social media advocacy offers an opportunity to connect and communicate brand message with millions at a very reasonable cost. This approach is very helpful for small businesses however 24X7 vigilance and professional guidance is required to address customer / competition over social media. Social media like WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook etc. helps in building customer connect and broadcasting messages of loyal customer.
3. Loyalty Redemption –Coupons and deals have been all time favorites of customers and influencer’s. Multiple studies and surveys have proved that customers look for deals, discounts before purchasing decision, and can alter purchase decision (quantity and brand) based on deals and discounts.
Discounts and coupons are top preference as 61% of consumers saying they use them (Expedia Network Affiliate)
50 percent of shoppers clip digital coupons while shopping in-store(Inmar)
39 percent bought a brand they otherwise would not have normally purchased because of a coupon and 18 percent switched back to another brand they have purchased previously because of a coupon(Inmar)
38 percent bought more than they would have otherwise because of a coupon(Inmar)
Loyalty redemption help monitor success and acceptability of loyalty programs across end consumers and influencer’s community. It is important to alter loyalty programs based on feedback with the help of technology partners to improve customer engagement and retention.
Digital customer loyalty: Use Case
Digital technologies have opened new opportunities for marketers to engage customers in a cost effective manner. You may choose right strategy by selecting anyone or multiple approaches from our suggestions.
Customer tiers –Customer segmentation is a low-cost way to provide delight to your customers, this tactic focuses on recognition that, not all customers are created equal. Different customers carry different motivations however for ease of strategic addressing as a critical mass business teams form customer segments based on qualification criteria. These segments help business in designing relevant campaigns, products/ services and channels for reaching out to customers to service their need.
Exclusive access- More than 51 percent customers prefer an exclusive offer based on their loyalty to a brand (Inmar).Customers desire exclusivity and exclusivity provides a sense of scarcity for some of product categories. Customers can be rewarded as exclusive products, service campaigns or benefits to motivate loyal customers.
Continuous customer engagement – It is possible to engage with customers via technology in a cost effective manner. Customer education helps to spread knowledge about product benefits / features, establish thought leadership and brand between customer and influencer network. An educated user is always a better advocate for your business.
Discounts& Points – Deals, discounts and coupons concept is borrowed from B2C but a straightforward way to engage customers and continue purchasing by influencers as well as end consumers.
39 percent bought a product sooner than planned because of a coupon(Inmar)
Discounts and coupons are top preference as 61% of consumers saying they use them (Expedia Network Affiliate)
50 percent of shoppers clip digital coupons while shopping in-store(Inmar)
Technology provides governance and effective delivery of deals and discounts to target user groups. It is advised that excessive reliance on deals and discounts affects brand and pricing hence this strategy shall be used with due caution.
Random surprises – We have learnt that emotions play a very central role in loyalty. A brand shall also show emotions of delight, positive surprise and care to customers via random apt offers. This helps in building a deep connect and recall with customers. It requires a great deal of customer and customer preference understanding to offer such a relish. Technology helps in capturing customer preferences and suggest business team to offer brownie points to customers.
Customer loyalty is essential for long term growth of any brand in product or service area and technology offers multiple solutions for further enhancing a warm and emotional connect with customers and channel partners by loyalty reward programs. Technology has a major intervention under SMS, mobile applications, social media, loyalty campaigns and customer profiling areas. By using barcodes and QR codes, loyalty campaigns become language agnostic and user friendly. A successful program offers following outcomes to business team –
Recognition for top influencers and differential rewards for consistent performers
Auniform and smooth experience of reward redemption and thereby increased
Improvement in “Top-of-Mind” re-call value and increased offtakes from influencers
It is often important to adopt an effective channel loyalty, influencer, sales agents and incentive program for sales of B2B products / services. Business should rely on an appropriate technology platforms and loyalty management software since right choice can greatly increase efficiencies in cost, time and reach of your channel loyalty programs.This combination of strategic expertise, technical capability, loyalty platforms and operational excellence has led to the execution of highly successful loyalty programs for some of the largest, most demanding businesses
RAZORSE
Our range of digital customer loyalty solutions for small and medium business offer enough choices to customise a catalogue to the exacting needs of your channel partners.
Contact us today. We are here to work with you to conceptualize, develop and manage channel loyalty programs specific to your business needs
Know the Role of Digital Marketing in Brand Building
Brand Building is a very important part of each and every business as this is the process by which a brand or a company is known by the people. It is very important for a company to build up repute in the markets these days as this is what helps the company to have a very good future and sustain itself in the markets worldwide. You might be surprised to know that a small organisation that was started in a rented garage in a backyard of a home is now a multimillion dollar company that has offices and production units all across the globe. All this happens because of proper Brand Building that the companies do in their initial stages and gain a good market step by step.
How can a Digital Marketing Agency help you out in the process of Brand Building?
This is definitely a very important question where a person has to know how and why a Digital Marketing Agency can help you out in the process of Brand Building. So in order to understand this thing you need to know the Role of Digital Marketing in Brand Buildingas this will help you a lot in your business as well.
We are living in a digitalized world where people are dependent on the digital mediums for each and everything starting from shopping to knowing people and places using social sites. So it is always good and advisable to get in touch with customers using the medium that they are comfortable in and as we are living in a digital age so advertising and marketing a product or a brand on digital medium will definitely bring in good results.
The stages of Brand Building :
So what happens in Brand Building using the Digital Marketing methods is that first your prospect customer gets to know your product in the initial stages and then comes to know about the benefits of using your product in comparison to other products. This is the place where the difference is created when your brand is compared with other brands the Digital Marketing agencies use the best examples to prove that your products are better compared to the products that your counterparts are selling in the markets.
Then comes the cost of the product as well where the cost of the product is clearly displayed and proper reasons are given for the cost of the product. Further which endorsement of the upcoming products is also done so that the customers are regularly in touch with the company and get interested in the products that the company is selling.So this is how the whole system of Brand Building works step by step and brings in profit in terms of sales for the organisation. So now you know the Role of Digital Marketing in Brand Buildingin detail.
How are the main challenges of Brand Building using Digital Marketing Methods Solved?
The first and foremost challenge that comes when a brand is trying to build itself up using Digital Marketing methods is that the brands representatives do not get in touch with the customers face to face which is one of the easiest way to convince a customer about a brand. So what they do is endorse the product in such a way that all the questions of the customer about the brand are answered without even the company getting in touch with the customers. But still in case if the customer has a query he or she can get in touch with the organization using the contact details in the advertisement of the product on the Digital Medium.
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Why every Website Owner needs a Digital Marketing Agencies help?
Digital marketing has so far proved to be the best and the most widespread form of marketing a product or brand to an extremely huge audience. You might for once think digital marketing is just limited to some social sites and some websites but then that is just a part of Digital Marketing as this whole thing is pretty huge and there are a lot of things related to it. As a business owner you must have come up with this question a lot of times where you think as to what will be the best way to endorse your brand or product to more and more people right. The answer to it you need to take the help of a digital marketing agency in order to get known by a lot of people.
Why is digital marketing necessary these days?
The first thing that you as an entrepreneur need to understand is that you need to reach out to people in the way they feel most comfortable in. Using social sites as a medium to endorse your product will help you 60% but if you want to do your best then you need to start sending mass mailers to your customers as well as prospect customers and also reach out to them through text messages.
The digital marketing agency that you will hire for this purpose will take care of the whole thing as they have both manpower and systems in order to do this and will make sure that they target the most appropriate customers who may come back to you and become your permanent customer. This also is one of the main reasons why every website owner needs a digital marketing agencies helpThis is a whole chain of events that happen one after another that finally result in profits for the owner of the business that is being endorsed and revenue for the agency that is working hard to help out its customers to get more and more sales.
The Digital Marketing Chain
The Digital Marketing Chain starts with the owner of a business getting in touch with the Digital Marketing agency and conveying each and everything fact about the product and the business that is to be marketed by the agency. Then the next level is for the Digital Marketing agency to decide what type of Digital Marketing will be the most suitable one for the customer and also tell the customers about the charges of the same. Once the customer agrees the next level starts where the Digital Marketing agency executes the plan wherein they do each and everything that is necessary for the business to gain customers within a stipulated time.
On an average at least 3-4 modes of Digital Communication are used to get in touch with the probable customers that include sending texts to customers as well a mailing them about the products and other important details of the business. The customer who finds the subject matter interesting will obviously respond and if they like the services of the company that is being endorsed then they will obviously come back for more.
So these are the most appropriate reasons as to why every website owner needs a digital marketing agencies help at any given time in order to succeed in the race of businesses.
Hire Digital Marketing Agency to become online leader in your Industry.
The most important question that most of the business owner is going through is that should their website should be mobile friendly as the majority of the people who are using internet are using mobile. You cannot ignore the importance of mobile friendly website. There are some reasons you should connect to mobile users are mentioned below.
Top Reasons why your website should be mobile friendly
1.Improved users experience- The best thing about mobile friendly website is that it has more users experience and the simple reason behind is that mobile can easily open a website whether in laptop you have to spend some time and wait for the website to open which is not the desire of the internet users. Mobile friendly website manage to display the pictures and content of the website on the screen of the mobile and it simple lead to users experience by providing less demand for navigating the website.
2.Mobile friendly website increases the Google ranking- As per MENA, the 96% of the internet users search on the Google for any product and service. Thus all websites owner wish to do SEO effort to bring their website on the first few results of the Google. For the simple reason, as your website is mobile friendly, they engage more users and it simply lead to Google ranking.
3.Mobile friendly websites increases sales- Sales is the main motivational factor of the business person. Mobile friendly websites have better response in terms of sales as the people love to use mobile for their online purchases. Due to the immense increase in smart phone usage, the companies with mobile friendly websites are making great sales than ever before.
4.Blogging and social media interaction brings mobile visitors- For the simple reason, to increase sales, you need better awareness of your website in the market and mobile is the best medium of it and you can engage more and more users to your website if it is mobile friendly and involved in blogging and using social media platforms.
5.Responsive website adapts to future devices- As you know the most of the current and future communication devices are being made with view of mobile. This is the change that will lead the future generations. If you are running a mobile friendly website, you are preparing the users to engage with your business and can have good business through it.
