Brand Loyalty - Through customer loyalty rewards

Back in the 1970s, airline executives came up with “frequent flyer miles” – one of the most successful loyalty-building schemes of all time. As soon as it became possible to collect free airline tickets by building up points, the sky was the limit – not only did travelers happily give up comparison shopping, they began to feel good about remaining loyal to – and spending lots of money on – a particular carrier, secure in the “payback” they’d get at a later date.

Customer loyalty is important to business success, and this is especially true online. Whatever you sell over the web – whether it’s a product, a service, or digital content – there are dozens, if not hundreds of other sites that offer pretty much the same thing. By creating a rewards program, you’ll encourage customers to choose your site, time after time.

Customer Loyalty Rewards

There’s nothing more exciting to a dedicated shopper than getting something at a discount. Businesses can leverage this emotional response by making sure that customers have the opportunity to earn access to “insider” deals.

For example, let’s compare two old mainstays of the print era – grocery coupons and cereal boxtops. If a local businessman designs a half-off coupon and has it published – along with a large number of competing offers – in a neighborhood paper, he might manage to pull in a couple of extra customers. But if, say, a cornflakes company wants their brand to be number one at the breakfast table, they can go further than that. They can build loyalty – and sell a lot of cereal at the same time – by designing a promotional giveaway, available only to customers who send in ten “proof of purchase” boxtops. This technique provides both the motivation to become a loyal customer, and the satisfaction that comes from completing a task in order to get the prize.

Building on a Good Thing

In most purchasing situations, customer activity decreases over time; once the initial need has been satisfied, they have no reason to come back. Rewards programs are a way to fight this downward curve, and motivate customers to maintain a steady spending level.

For example, let’s say you run a music website, dedicated to selling a single CD. Once you’ve sold the recording to a particular customer, that customer has no reason to return to your site, right? Wrong. You can reward your previous purchasers by offering them discounts on T-shirts and other tour memorabilia, or by giving them a “buy ahead” option on your next full-length studio effort. Not only will these loyal fans get a discount, you’ll have steady online income to help you complete the project.

Conduit – Tracking Customers, Managing Rewards

By creating a Conduit toolbar and offering it as a free download to site visitors, websites gain a powerful mechanism for generating customer loyalty. They can reward faithful customers for their patronage by offering VIP memberships, or subscriber-only discounts. Harnessing the power of the web to target specific users with specific messages, toolbars can also be configured to “remember” each subscriber’s purchasing patterns. This means you can let individual toolbar subscribers know that they’re only one action or purchase away from a new, exclusive customer status – one that will make them eligible for even more website goodies.

By making your customers feel valued, you’ll increase their site loyalty. Because as the publisher of a website, loyalty is its own reward.