By Abhinav Girdhar
Every business out there firmly operates to go beyond their customers’ expectations, with an aim to widen their audience reach and generate greater sales and revenue. For years, thousands of marketing methods, including digital marketing, have been implemented by business owners to create brand awareness and increase their customer base. However, with the change in user behavior over the years, today entrepreneurs and small to medium business (SMBs) have to be a little more creative with their marketing strategy in order to gain an upper edge in today’s competitive landscape.
With the world going mobile, apps have undoubtedly prove to be a great tool for increasing brand visibility, and gaining new customers. Still, businesses need to put in extra effort to reach the top of the ladder. It’s become clear that in order to stay competitive and attract customers, brands need to revamp their existing strategies. Now more companies are widely inculcating app marketing to promote their client’s businesses to a large number of people, thereby gaining their attention and improving their growth. Loyalty programs are also one of the latest app promotion techniques that is being exercised greatly by many entrepreneurs to garner more business and gain a good chunk of revenue through it.
Almost every company is developing a mobile app these days and we’re starting to even more brands with in-app customer loyalty programs to reward their current customers and attract new customers. Be it a grocery store, a restaurant, or bar, entrepreneurs are leaving no stone unturned to reach the hearts and pockets of their customers. Looking to the enormous response of people for loyalty programs of market leaders, such as Starbucks, Amazon, etc., even SMBs are jumping in the race to implement loyalty programs for maintaining the retention of their existing customers, and gaining interest of the new customers. To help outline why your business should have an in-app customer loyalty program, here are five reasons why they will drive revenue and increase customer rentation.
Cost-Effective Marketing
One of the major benefits of having an in-app loyalty program is that it doesn’t cost a fortune. Pocket-friendly and result-oriented, loyalty programs can prove to be handy for SMBs in driving promising results and improving their growth. With app loyalty programs, businesses can provide amazing offers to their customers, allowing them to get cash discounts, and other rewards so that they keep on returning for more. A fruitful bet, digital loyalty programs can avoid the wastage of time and money involved in printing plastic and paper cards, proving to be beneficial in a long run. Most importantly, these digital cards are easy to store and can be used by the individuals instantly anywhere, and at any instant of time.
Repeat Business
It’s worth mentioning that loyalty cards to a greater extent can become a reliable source of repeat business. Almost every business owner is aware that acquiring a new customer costs five to ten times more than retaining an existing customer, and here is when loyalty programs prove to be the best investment. Not only do loyalty programs benefit existing customers with amazing offers and discounts, but also grabs the attention of the ones who always search for discounts before purchasing any product, helping entrepreneurs to turn them into potential customers.
Word of Mouth
An in-app customer loyalty program can also be the best bet in promoting your business for free. By providing numerous discounts, and offers to your existing customers, you can gain their trust and motivate them to be your brand ambassador. These exciting offers are sure to make your potential customers promote your business across their social, professional and personal network through word of mouth, thereby helping you increase your customer base at no extra cost. Moreover, you can also make use of social media platforms to reward your consumers for promoting your brand online.
Positive Customer Experience
Besides being a great way of retaining potential customers, loyalty programs also help businesses deliver a positive customer experience. Loyalty programs not only do invoke customers to return for more, but also help businesses improve their user experience by getting valuable feedbacks of the customers for their products and services. Through these feedbacks, one can consistently work to improve their services, and deliver much advanced user experience.
Refer and Earn
Including referral scheme in loyalty programs is one of the prominent ways of boosting customer base instantly. A refer and earn program allows existing customers to earn rewards for each of their references, which they can potentially use for making a purchase at your store. This can make your customers happy, and force them to refer more of their friends, thereby helping you increase your customer base, and boosting your ROI.
Loyalty programs are purposefully aimed at making more money by maintaining your existing customers. What makes them more important in today’s competitive mobile era is that they are cost-effective, easy to maintain, deliver optimum user experience, and the best is that they really do add value to your customers as well as your business.
— Abhinav Girdhar, CEO of Appy Pie, the leading cloud-based DIY mobile application builder software. @AppyPieInc.
