3 Ideas for Building a Better Loyalty Program (and 3 Tips for Getting There, Technically Speaking)

Building a better loyalty program is a goal that every organization should establish, whether you have an existing program or are looking to create one. There’s no one place where customers expect personalized and real-time engagement more than a loyalty program or subscription service. That’s because these customers consider themselves to be brand advocates and are committed to your organization. If they aren’t getting personalized customer experiences, like they will elsewhere from another company, they will take notice and you risk losing a valuable champion of your brand.

Understanding your customer base requires a deep knowledge of their first party data, and, more often than not, many martech tools integrated into your tech stack to support your acquisition of this knowledge. Here are a few ideas for how to show your most loyal customers that they are individually important and help you remain increasingly knowledgeable about your base. 

3 CX Ideas to Supercharge a Better Loyalty Program

1. Send out personalized notifications for when it’s time to update their subscription preferences, and subsequent reminders if they haven’t done so before the deadline 

Toeing the line between being informative rather than pushy is difficult, however, taking the time to personalize these messages to consumers’ interests, such as reminding them that they need to make purchasing decisions and highlighting products or services that match their profile, often helps make this distinction. Being a member of a loyalty program or subscription service and then not being properly notified of the program’s windows of opportunity discredits the program significantly in the customer’s eyes. Having a unified, automated customer journey allows you to navigate subscription preferences and reminders with ease and speed. 

2. Push out alerts for special offers related to their unique buying habits

Everybody loves a sale and receiving a personalized offer is even better. Make your loyal customers feel special by tracking their purchases and browsing habits and create custom offers that reflect their interests! Better yet, align their online behaviors to their in-person actions. This shows your customers that not only are they important, but they are worth putting in some extra effort. 

3. Remind customers of how many loyalty points they’ve collected, and ideas for how they can use them based on their preferences 

Demonstrating how your loyalty program subscribers can use their points to receive deals and products they actually want helps show that your organization cares about offering them the best deal, and that you’re aware of their preferences. Urging people to take advantage of points reminds your customers the value of your loyalty program and helps them feel good about their spending.

In Order to Create a Better Loyalty Program, Your Organization Will Need to:

1. Link customer profiles from separate systems 

Creating a unified customer view allows your company to better help  customers as well as identify your strong suits and areas of improvement. Learn about 5 unique ways a CDP helps you build out your customer profiles here.

2. Link online and offline data relating to the same customer

Integrate with a CDP so that even when your customers are engaging offline you are still able to measure their interests and create personalized experiences that match. Demonstrate  commitment to your customers by knowing who they are and what they want. Learn more about Powering Adwords with Online & Offline Data with Tealium and how it can help.

3. Append external identifiers to existing customer records

Providing an experience worthy of your most loyal customers means you have to know them no matter where they engage. “Knowing” them means being able to identify them in a variety of contexts AND being able to access deep intelligence about the customer relationship. By filling your view of the customer with external identifiers, you gain the ability to target your best customers with a consistent experience across a variety of channels. Getting good at managing identity across channels is the secret sauce to building a customer experience that truly stands out from the crowd. And, to top it off, by adding external identifiers not only can you target your best customers more effectively, but your view of the customer is able to inherit insights from that channel, meaning you also get deeper customer insights!

Ranging from small modifications to in-depth adjustments, these personalization efforts will show your commitment to your most loyal customers and encourage their continued loyalty. Tealium’s CDP will help your organization improve your CX loyalty program and subscription services. To learn more about integrations and other ways to focus on CX, try out a demo here!