Trends Driving the Loyalty Marketing Industry

Do you know who a loyal customer is? It’s those who circle back to your brand again and again and again. Loyalty marketing is when you give customers a strong reason to come back to you.

These customers never have enough of the different offers you put out, actively engaging with the brand on all fronts.

They trust the product and service and play a significant role in getting the word out and making it successful.

The customer may be a small group, but they make a sizeable impact on your business. They spend more on your products and are less likely to ask for returns, as well.

New trends are changing the face of the industry. If businesses expect to meet these changing needs, then they need to monitor industry trends and statistics for changes that may influence customer loyalty.

Consumers Expect Personalization

Customers know you’re gathering their data. Even without the EU regulations that stick it out on their faces, customers were always looped to the fact that the sites they’re visiting are collecting and using data.

The good news is they don’t mind. At least, most of your customers won’t mind.

People don’t have qualms about data IF that data is put to good use. Research reveals personalization and customer satisfaction are inextricably tied together. Nearly 80% of customers are satisfied with loyalty programs that offer a high level of customization. For them, personalization means the rewards will be attuned to their likes and dislikes.

Realizing its importance, more and more brands online are adding personalization as part of their overall campaigns.

Doing so has the effect of keeping customers engaged. There’s a lot of dissatisfaction in the air partly due to the spray and pray approach spearheaded by a lot of marketers. Many customers feel this is a danger to their security issues. With personalization, people don’t get irrelevant offers.

If you haven’t already, considering offering personalized rewards to your loyal customers.

Partnerships have increased

Brand partnerships are forming the centerpiece of the strategy for many brands. Brands are contacting and forging relationships with partners.

The contact helps you beat the competition out of the water.

Partnerships can make existing loyalty programs better. And it provides your customers with a lot of options to choose from.

Wyndham Rewards a excellent loyalty program by itself partnered with Caesar’s entertainment to form the Total Rewards Program something gigantically better. Together the combined program provides access to a lot of things. Travel experiences, discounts on hospitality experiences, and discounts on hospitality experiences and entertainment experiences.

By partnering, they brought a world of good that customers on each end of the spectrum can have access to.

People Love Socially Responsible Brands

Millennial minds are shifting in ways never seen before in history. A recent study found that 81 percent of millennials expect companies to forget their mad obsession with profits and become involved with their communities.

Ethically sourced products or green products aren’t a trend that would go away soon. Especially so, as the problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions lampoon the foreseeable future. Millennials are aware of it.

Knowing Millennials are aware of the ethically sourced products is evident in the fact that 66 percent of consumers will pay more for products from companies that are making a changing environmentally or socially.

This could very well form a core part of your loyalty programs and your branding.

Emotional Loyalty Is Key

Emotions are what drive decision making. The same holds true for loyalty.

By understanding emotions you’re able to elicit out of your customer,s you’ll be able to get loyalty from them.

A significant outcome of loyalty programs we wish to happen is getting buyers to buy again and again from us.

Motista’s research found that customers who connected emotionally with a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value. With CLV, you get to know how much revenue you can generate from that one customer over the course of the entire period he remains a customer.

Memorable events help forge an emotional bond with buyers becomes easy. They would turn into repeat customers. This helps have a higher CLV.

Meaning more revenue for you.

Customer Service Is Going To Take Center Stage

Especially since loyalty marketing is so important.

ThinkJar’s research shows that 67% of customer churn can be prevented if the issue is addressed in the first interaction. A good customer service team can help you from losing customers and reducing churn.

Not to mention the incremental impact it will have on customer loyalty.

For instance, I recently started using the Beato blood glucose monitor. Despite all the nicely laid out instructions, I was having trouble eking out one reading with the device.

Countless drops of blood and redundant slides later, I’d thrown in the towel and was mulling a return. It was then my phone beeped with a message and then a call from the support team who saw my troubles and reached out with a helping hand.

Minutes later, I was successfully able to get my first reading.

AI And Chatbots Are Improving Customer Engagement

Chatbots are one of the most revolutionary bits of technology we’ve seen so far in 2018-2019.

Plenty of companies are jumping on board. The benefits are worth the investment in time and money.

And if the trend continues, chatbots may hold out their own on the customer engagement front.

In fact, by 2020,  85 percent of customer relationships with enterprises will happen without interacting with a human. This comes with a caveat. Chatbots can mimic the entire range of human communication. But, you can’t just do away with a human. Not yet.

Their best applications are in templated responses that deal with everyday common issues. Things like—How to place an order? How to get a refund? How to talk to a human and so on.

Chatbots primary function is to free up human agents to apply their minds to tasking questions. You can even make your chatbot converse and enhance the experience. And Probably get people to sign up for your loyalty marketing program.

What’s Ahead

As a brand, you know the value of loyal customers and what they mean for your business. If you want to stay on the growth trajectory build loyalty.

It’s a field that sees new trends with each passing year. These trends reflect the changes you need to incorporate to make your program stand out, to add real value.

You have seen the stats and the examples. What are you waiting for?

With a loyalty program, you can identify loyal customers and do everything they like to retain them. Investment on this front means you get tons more referrals in the long term, positive reviews and higher customer satisfaction.