For many businesses, it’s not just about building a product that people actually want to use.
Of course that’s important, but if you’re part of a saturated market where customers have limited brand loyalty, how do you keep customers returning?
Companies like Fave partner with brands who want to offer loyalty programmes to their customers but don’t want to go through the hassle of starting member card programmes and so forth. FavePay’s model is fairly simple—offer cashback rewards on the spot, or on their next visit. This encourages repeat visits and rewards loyal customers too.
Then there’s platforms like CheQQme, which use gamification to draw users’ attention and allow the brand more chances to engage with and convert customers into a fans.
Other companies may opt for more personalised and tailor-made solutions for their customer loyalty programmes. That’s where businesses like Capillary Technologies (who specialise in omnichannel engagement and commerce solutions) come in.
So far, they’ve worked with 14 million customers and 14 hundred stores in Southeast Asia, and believe that “every company has got different marketing goals and customer segmentation that they are looking at”.
They’ve helped brands like Bata increase engagement by over 34 percent through integrated Facebook campaigns, and secure over 57 times higher in return of investment (ROI) from its targeted ladies wear campaign on Facebook.
According to Abhijeet Vijayvergiya, their Vice President of APAC, “In today’s customer-centric world, it is vital for brands to devise a CRM strategy and implement a sophisticated loyalty programme. Not only this will help them gather invaluable customer insights, a loyalty programme will help foster positive word-of-mouth, improve brand image and in turn, the company’s bottom line.”
He shared 4 quick pointers that brands can consider when looking to develop their CRM strategy.
1. Be Aware Of Organisation Readiness
Brands need to ensure that their CRM strategies are part of the overall organisational objective. Often, a CRM programme fails to meet its objectives or to fulfil its potential, simply due to a lack of budget allocation, resources and lack of seriousness from the top.
2. Understand Your Consumers
One of the most important aspects of any CRM programme is to know who your consumers are. And, along those lines, brands should also be clear on which pieces of information they would need to have on their consumer.
A loyalty programme should be able to collect the right data from customers.
“With information on your customers’ preferences and demographics, brands will need to translate these into actionable insights: around their shopping habits, preferences, and which touchpoint matters the most to them,” said Abhijeet.
3. Check Your Analytics Maturity
“Analytics is hard.”
Brands will need to have the right resources, the right tools, and the eye to analyse their customers’ behaviours. This allows them to predict what customers are most likely to do in the future so the brands can make the right execution choices.
4. Engage With Your Customers In Real-Time
Real-time customer engagement means reaching out to them with a communication that is relevant to them, at a time that is good for them and through a channel that they prefer.
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So for brands that have decided to go down the route of looking at customised loyalty programmes, Abhijeet also has the following tips to share.
1. Deliver A High Quality Experience
Customers today seek for greater personalisation, so brands should work to deliver a higher quality experience. These include better differentiation of products and services, which leads to positive word-of-mouth, an improved brand image and in turn, higher revenues.
2. Give Exclusive Perks
According to a 2016 report by PwC, loyalty programmes delivering exclusive offers (75 percent), reward points (74 percent), free shipping (47 percent) and access to special events (27 percent) appeal most to Malaysian shoppers.
“With a better understanding of what their customers want, at what point in time, and through what channel, brands are better positioned to develop and implement loyalty programme that improve retention, engagement, loyalty.”
3. Keep Things Easy And Seamless
Customers tend to reward companies that create an easy experience for them. They also expect a personalised experience; that is an integral part of an easy experience.
And finally, customers expect a connected and easy experience no matter which channel they choose to access the brand from.
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To simplify all the information above, what it boils down to is this: brands that want to build customer loyalty should stay focused on delivering excellent customer experiences.
“Today, there are three big tech trends driving evolution and customer experience—these are mobile, big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI),” said Abhijeet. “All of these have led to increased expectations where [customers] expect what they want, when they want and where they want it.”
“More customers now expect everything to be easy and seamless.”
- You can find out more about Capillary Tech here. Or you can also read about Fave’s approach to building customer loyalty here, and CheQQme’s gamification approach here.
