Infuse These 6 Tactics Into Your Loyalty Program Strategy to Boost Acquisition and Retention

81% of consumers agree that loyalty programs make them more likely to continue doing business with a brand. While your existing loyalty program tactics may be consistent, there are some easy ways to turbocharge your efforts. From our recent Loyalty How To Guide, here are three tactics to layer onto your loyalty member acquisition strategy, that will drive new-to-file member rates and referrals:

1. Turn every customer into a loyalty member

Enhance standard incentives used to convert current customers into loyalty members by utilizing psychological motivators. Adding elements of scarcity, anticipation, empowerment, and competition to your existing efforts will result in elevated conversion rates for your loyalty program.

2. Capture new customers into loyalty program at scale

Traditional methods for loyalty program acquisition such as promoting on social, email and mobile marketing, or invitation to sign-up at purchase are all adequate, but there’s an easy way to increase sign up conversion from these standard practices. Creating an experience that is exciting and engaging will spark action from potential loyalty members. Strategically applying limitations to offers creates a fear of missing out in the consumer, motivating them to act. Using this tactic, brands see a 30-70% decrease in CPA on new loyalty members.

3. Motivate current loyalty members to refer friends

Seamlessly incorporate a way for loyalty members to engage in the referral experience. Ease the sharing process of your referral messaging by tapping into the loyalty member’s preferred channel of outreach: social, email, or mobile communications. Brands can increase the opportunity for a member to refer a friend and boost participation incrementally compared to standard referral tactics. 

While new member acquisition is vital to any loyalty program, the cost of retaining an existing customer is 5X less expensive than acquiring a new one. Unfortunately, 54% of loyalty memberships are inactive. Many brands struggle to effectively wakeup sleeping loyalists, but these 3 tactics can easily be layered onto your loyalty efforts to give them a jolt and reactivate lapsed members.

4. Reactivate lapsed members 

Sparking engagement with lapsed loyalty members is a large hurdle to overcome. Using a segmented list to target this specific audience, try incorporating a promotion with a much larger reward and a limited quantity for those who are first to claim the offer. The limited quantity, time sensitivity and more enticing reward will create urgency and increase membership reactivation rates. Brands see a 15% increase in response rates from inactive customers when they infuse urgency into their offers and rewards.

5. Maintain customer engagement 

Similar to driving sales, brands can use surprise and delight to maintain engagement with existing loyalty members. Add promotions to your current outreach that leverage the consumer’s innate fear of missing out, anticipation, and thrill of the chase. With an added layer of urgency, these promotions will successfully excite members, all the while rewarding your biggest brand advocates.

6. Re-educate your members on program benefits

In a recent survey, 77% of all consumers admitted they now retract their loyalty more quickly than they did three years ago due to member fatigue, often caused by a lack of program knowledge. Incentivize the action for lapsed members to re-educate themselves on your loyalty program. You can engage members with your educational outreach by generating an emotional response through motivational messaging. For example, try offering a reward that incorporates a beat-the-clock mentality in exchange for watching an educational video. Not only will you strengthen member awareness of program benefits, but you will also reactivate them in your loyalty program.

Resources: Bond, Capgemini, HelloWorld

Read the full Loyalty How To Guide HERE