The ever-expanding technological industry has brought a lot of options for the consumers. Which is a great development and a boon for the consumers but has made it increasingly difficult for individual brands to convert and sustain customers.
This is why converting your regular customer base into loyal customers has become more important than ever before.
We already know the importance of having a loyal clientele for successfully running any business. A loyal client is more likely to pay than a new client.
Without a strong clientele of loyal customers, it is extremely difficult for any business to survive and thrive in this cut-through competition.
However, it is a proven fact that the best way to win the loyalty of your customers is to reward and incentivize them. And this can very well be your unfair advantage against your business competitors.
By building loyalty mobile apps for your customers. This will not only boost your customers’ satisfaction rates for your brand but will also return to an ever-increasing customer base of loyal clients.
Mobile apps for improving loyalty can be developed for both an individual retail business and bigger brands.
In this post, we will be discussing these two types of loyalty apps and various loyalty reward programs for each, and also learn to build a loyalty app.
Loyalty apps for retailers
One of the most effective strategies to retain customers is in-app rewards. This not only motivates them to access your brand more frequently, thus, improving the customer returns but also helps convert them into more loyal clients.
You can introduce gamification or a simpler points-based rewards system that offers discounts and other lucrative deals on every purchase.
This will inspire your clientele to make more frequent returns and purchases.
If, for example, you are letting your customers earn points via an app, customer loyalty towards your product or service is encouraged. Points can then be used as in-app currency that can be collected and exchanged for rewards.
The design of your loyalty program in the loyalty app should be designed to keep your target audience in mind. Do not feel shy if you even have to reach out to them for feedback on the same.
However, we can also go over some of the many popular loyalty mobile apps.
1. Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A offers a loyalty membership program allowing customers to earn points with every purchase on their mobile app. Customers can further redeem these points for rewards such as free food and giveaways.
2. ASOS
ASOS focuses on rewarding their loyal customers via birthday discounts, early access to sales, special offers, and other events. The company uses a loyalty program with subscription-based Premier Delivery.
3. Starbucks
Starbucks rewards its customers with stars as in-app reward points.
When users earn enough stars, they get a free drink. To earn these stars, users need to pay with a registered Starbucks card or a card registered in the Starbucks mobile app.
Top features to include in your loyalty app for retailers
Let us go over some of the many effective features that you can include in your loyalty mobile app during the process of loyalty app development.
1. Cardless loyalty program
Mobile apps present a great opportunity for you by eliminating the dependency of the loyalty card. The mobile app itself can act as a physical loyalty card and can also act as an interface into the loyalty program to the consumers at the same time.
You can also make cards an optional requirement for customers that are habitual of the card system.
2. Optimized push messages
Push notifications can a lethal addition to your artillery in this game. Push notifications are usually used to communicate a message or to promote a product or a service.
Rather than randomly sending a push notification at any time without a thought, optimize it so that it gets the most number of engagements. A well-optimized push notification will always perform better than a vanilla message.
Some of the factors that can be used to optimize the push notification by time, geo-location, seasonality, trend, and much more.
3. Search
Include the geolocation-based search feature in the loyalty app so that your client can reach out to the closest store the offer that is active there.
This strategy is especially helpful for multi-retail chains or bigger brands that have multiple stores across the city.
Loyalty apps for customers
Launching a loyalty program drives a critical question, how exactly to reward your customers. Most of the rewards fall into one of three categories: points, tiers, and paid membership.
Let us discuss them in detail.
#1 – Points
This is the simplest kind of loyalty program and the one with which we all are most familiar with.
Here the consumer gets rewarded with points on every successful purchase and these points can later be redeemed against purchases for discounts.
#2 – Tiers
Here the brand segments its loyal customers into multiple tiers based on their loyalty level. This is a great way to introduce gamification into your loyalty program.
This motivates your customers to make more purchases at your outlet to climb up the ladder.
You can introduce milestones to progress from one level to another, from spending a certain amount in a month to making a certain number of purchases, these milestones can be about anything.
#3 – Paid loyalty programs
This is a loyalty program for the elite. Here the customers have to pay a small fee to enter the loyalty program.
While these programs do not witness a huge number of registrations but they also do not witness much more active participants and lower churns.
Different ways to reward your customers
There are multiple ways to reward your customers. Let us go over a few popular ones.
#1 – Milestones or targets
Set different milestones or targets for your loyalty program clients and subsequent rewards for reaching and crossing those milestones. This will motivate them to purchase more in order to achieve those targets.
#2 – Rewards over a threshold
Introduce discounts and deals only after a certain amount of purchases have been made by a consumer in a single visit.
For instance, a 10% discount or a free item on the purchase of worth $100 or more.
#3 – Rewards on referrals
You can earn many new customers by rewarding your existing customers for getting new customers. In return you can reward existing customers on every successful referral.
#4 – Rewards on feedback
This is especially helpful for those products or services that have launched recently. Reward your existing customers for rating your product on public platforms that promote your brand.
You can also reward customers for positive reviews on social media, which can bring a lot of eyeballs for your brand.
Apps build brand loyalty
Mobile apps not only help promote your brand but also brings convenience to your consumers’ hands. These apps enhance the customers’ experience with a brand. These applications result in greatly improving customer loyalty.
If you want to reap the benefits of having consumer-facing businesses, you must create a customer loyalty app to build a consistent experience with the brand that is tailored to suit their specific needs.
Regardless of the type of apps you already use, the benefits listed above will surely spur you to make your own app for iOS and Android with effective loyalty program features.
