Customer Loyalty Management: Don’t Let Them Even Think of Shopping Anywhere Else

Airline miles, hotel rewards, grocery points – let’s face it, every company out there is fighting for customer loyalty in a marketplace that grows more crowded every day. Creating a customer loyalty management strategy that will successfully retain loyal customers and make them feel appreciated requires thoughtful planning as well as the right technology for insight into the data and the tools you need to deliver what customers want.

Successful Customer Loyalty Management Program Starts With a Digital Store Platform

Loyal customers are your best customers. It’s as simple as that. They do business with you more frequently and they tend to spend more money with you, too. Even better, because they’ve already decided that they enjoy shopping at your stores, you spend less money marketing to these customers.

To keep loyal customers happy takes more than a paper loyalty punch card. You need a comprehensive strategy that includes collecting data, tailoring customized offers and rewards, and personalizing shopping experiences for individual customers that makes them so pleased with your store that they won’t even think of shopping anywhere else.

Effective customer loyalty management would be a monumental task without a digital store platform. Integrated solutions for retailers such as point of sale (POS), customer relationship management (CRM), and loyalty/rewards solutions, will provide data  a single view into customers’ behaviors, preferences, and shopping history that will give you insights into how to best tailor offers, shopping experiences, and rewards.

For example, if you notice loyal customers are frequently buying a certain product, you can take steps to ensure that item is always in stock and add similar or complementary products to your assortment to capture additional sales. I have found that iVend Retail users see a gross margin improvement of more than 2% over five years with replenishment planning and save 4% of sales in inventory carrying costs. Without integrated solutions, you wouldn’t be able to access or act on such insights, which ultimately pad your bottom line.

Pass on Paper

Another advantage of integrated solutions for retailers is the ability to provide digital passes instead of paper coupons. Research for CitiXsys’ Great Omnichannel Expectations report found consumers prefer offers they can redeem with mobile devices over coupons they have to print and remember to bring to the store. Integrated solutions for retailers allow you to send offers to loyal customers’ mobile devices and allow you to track redemption rates of each promotion.

Customer Loyalty Management Helps You Leap Ahead

A customer loyalty management strategy built on a digital store platform will also provide insights you can use to steer your business toward profitability, enabling you to:

Serious businesses leverage their digital store platforms to get a leg up in a highly competitive market. Integrated solutions for retailers give you an edge by combining the power of all of your store systems to yield data that leads to actionable insights. A winning customer loyalty management program can be easier than you think. Lean on integrated retail systems to do the heavy lifting for you — and your customers will thank you for it with their repeat business.

For more information on the benefits of integrated solutions for retailers, download our e-book The Digital Store Platform: Better Data for Survival in a Customer-Centric World.

You can also join me for my webinar with the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) on October 5: The Digital Store Platform: Meeting Customer Expectations Today and Tomorrow.