Building an Online Loyalty Club for your business will help boost sales

30 April 2007

Loyalty programs are a great idea, but sometimes are a nightmare to administer and keep up to date (imagine all that data entry!).  Also people dislike filling out forms and equally dislike that they have to post or fax their information through.  But don't despair - there is a far better way!  The Online Loyalty Club!

The online loyalty club has all the benefits of its offline counterpart:

• Helps grow your database
• Gives rewards back to the customer
• Increases sales through customer loyalty

However the drawbacks are completely removed including:

• Data Entry (and maintaining the data!)
• Incorrect data being provided by customer
• The time taken by the customer to fill out the form and the time taken for them to post/fax the information back

Example
A customer (or even potential customer) is browsing your website - when they see a graphic / promotion : Join our loyalty club and get 10% of all your purchases. 

They can then fill out their details more quickly then an offline form and there is no need for posting or faxing.  The system also automatically checks for correct formatting of the data entered i.e. email address, mobile phone ensuring the information provided is as accurate as possible.  They can also get instant feedback (i.e. Congratulations John, thanks for joining our online club, your membership number is 12345 - please quote this in store for an instant 10% off your order!).

The third bonus (for you) is that customers/members will be able to maintain these details themselves via a username / password combination - eliminating the need for yourself (or your staff)  to do any further data entry when members change their details.  You could even take this a step further by allowing them to view previous orders, track loyalty points (if you have a system like this), as well as give them additional benefits while they are browsing your website (i.e. a further discount, free postage or even a free gift when they purchase).  This helps build your database, increase customer loyalty and boost sales.

Once a month (or maybe even more frequently dependant on your product) you should also run an email marketing, sms or postal campaign to your members informing them of sales or special offers that are only available to them.  You can also track vital statistics of your email campaigns such as open rates, click through rates and completion rates (i.e. how many people actually purchased a product through your website as a direct outcome from your last email campaign).  Also remember this direct style of marketing is more cost effective than some of the more traditional advertising options available.