A good experience with a brand stays in the memory of each client. Personalization is valued and appreciated. In fact, it intervenes in the purchase decision. Empathy has become a requirement: knowing who the client is, his motivation, tastes, and interests is crucial. It’s essential to take care of the relationship with the client and have constant communication, listen, and deliver excellent customer service. 

A satisfied customer is the best advertisement, just as a dissatisfied one can significantly affect the image of a product or service. When a customer recommends a product, it automatically increases the value, profitability, and stability of the brand. According to statistics from the Nielsen Group, 90% of consumers trust more in their acquaintances’ recommendations, and 70% trust the comments of consumers online rather than in advertising. The objective is to obtain promoters who are satisfied customers. While fulfilling this, at the same time, you need to ensure these customers use the products for a long time. 

So you may wonder how do I turn my current clients into brand promoters? The answer is by obtaining a critical tool that allows you not only to approach, educate, influence, and reward customers, but also to develop, execute, and monitor strategies. This tool is a loyalty program as it is eye-catching, dynamic, and easy to use. 

Loyalty programs offer several solutions as they are flexible to your business needs. Some of the main points of a loyalty program are:

• Business consulting: Study and understanding of the business, its focus, organization priorities, and objectives for the implementation of action plans.
• Database construction: Recruitment, monitoring, and registry of potential users to participate in the loyalty program through electronic communications and telemarketing. Knowing the customers is necessary to obtain a personalized approach and a more accurate marketing analysis.
• Survey submissions: Implement electronic survey programs to identify trends, patterns, interests, and user feedback, to ensure you are providing customers with what they need. 
• Education: Educating your customers with designed training modules, online seminars, interactive games (gamification) will turn into a competitive advantage. Keeping the customer aware of services, benefits, updates, and improvements cultivates trust in the brand.
• Business intelligence: Use data visualization tools, dashboards with integrated analysis of current and historical data. The purpose is to offer performance benchmarks and detect market trends to increase sales or revenue. 
• Communication strategy: Analyze the situation and objectives to be achieved, effective communication is a pivotal point to carry out any marketing plan successfully. The marketing plan may include promotions and campaign announcements through HTML, banners, and interactive videos.
• Customer service: Provide support, guidance, and instructions on products, services, and program functionality. When a customer gets an extraordinary service demonstrates loyalty.
• Fulfillment of prizes: Organize shipping logistics to meet delivery times expectations and include catalogs with a variety of physical and digital rewards. Also, ensure you have a dashboard with user status visibility and prize tracking.         

In conclusion, if you want your company to move forward, manage to take care of the relationship with the client, and have constant communication, you have to invest in a loyalty program. 

Do not hesitate to review the loyalty program Optime Consulting offers and see how your company can improve!

Loyalty Program – Influencing human behavior
By: Claudia Montenegro – September 2020