Loyalty Programs, Urgency Marketing, B2C Marketing
No matter what type of loyalty goal you're focused on, it’s safe to say that you want to meet your mark as soon as possible. In fact, the sooner the better. But you also realize loyalty isn’t something you can rush through. Building lasting relationships with customers takes time; your customers want to feel confident in their decisions, and once they do, you can trust they’ll stick with you for the long haul.
So, how can you get customers to trust you, move quickly and engage with your loyalty campaigns? Increase your loyalty conversions with urgency marketing.
The state of loyalty
Here’s some good news: Customers love loyalty just as much as you do.
Engaging with loyalty programs are a lot more attractive to consumers than other standard marketing channels like mobile apps, social media, SMS or email marketing. This is largely due to customer’s viewing loyalty programs as the least invasive option; instead of feeling overwhelmed by marketing messages, customers make an exception for loyalty programs.
Urgency marketing
Influencing your customers to engage with your loyalty program takes skill, no matter how much they enjoy it. It requires a conversion rate optimization tactic that influences fast movement. Urgency marketing is all about crafting your promotions (loyalty and otherwise) in a way that drives immediate response.
You can craft those promotions using consumer psychology. Urgency marketing is made up of four psychological principles: anticipation, scarcity/fear of missing out, social proof and competition. These concepts motivate consumers to participate in marketing promotions by catering to their psychological needs.
Here are a few specific ideas on how you can do that:
1. Offer surprise rewards
If a trusted friend were to tell you something great was coming your way soon, that’d certainly get your attention, right?
That’s the power of anticipation. Surprise rewards are a marketing strategy that can be used to inspire customer loyalty in your customer base - new, old, and soon-to-be.
You can implement surprise rewards in your loyalty program strategies to increase conversions in a variety of ways. It can include a surprise amount of rewards you’re offering customers, a designated amount that drops on a random day, or one special reward that customers receive for completing an activity.
Sending out notifications telling consumers about surprise rewards can increase the number of people who interact with your loyalty program and take action to use those rewards, helping to influence purchase decisions and increase sales.
2. Limited-time incentives
Consumers tend to move a lot faster when they know there’s only so much time left to do something. There isn’t any room to procrastinate; time is ticking and valuable incentives are slipping away — this is scarcity in full effect.
Now, you don’t want your customers to feel like they’re being backed into a corner. Incentives are meant to be a fun, rewarding experience. Offer your customers something that will truly enhance the value of their journey with you. This could be a limited-time retrieval of your best loyalty reward or exclusive access to a limited amount of products.
Knowing that they can only take advantage of the loyalty incentives during your promotions, consumers will have a fear of missing out (FOMO) and a heightened sense of urgency, both of which work to boost conversion rates.
3. Influencer collaborations
It’s human nature to want something just because someone else has it. You see it all the time in long lines and consumers supporting top brands. You also see it with influencer marketing.
In psychology, this human response is referred to as social proof, the idea that people are more likely to follow the lead of someone they know and trust. Influencers are often “followed” by thousands of people, interested in engaging with their content. When those influencers stand by your loyalty program and offer an exclusive discount code attached to their brand, potential customers may be more likely to engage with your content.
4. Competitive activities
You don’t have to be an athlete to know that most people have a competitive spirit.
And it isn’t a bad thing. Having an innate desire to win comes from our psychological need to feel engaged in something. Consumers want to belong and they want something to be loyal towards. Using competition in your loyalty program can help fulfill that need.
You can offer competitive activities by having your customers compete against themselves or a countdown timer. For instance, customers can “compete” to order a set amount of products within a certain time or race for a reward based on their speed of conversion.
Your loyalty goals are designed with your customers in mind and achieving them quickly means servicing your loyal customers even faster. Urgency marketing can help you increase your loyalty conversions, whether you’re looking to acquire new members or reactive lapsed ones.
