Engaging and retaining customers with a loyalty programme

Loyalty programmes are far from a new concept in retailing. Despite the high levels of awareness amongst retailers, surprisingly many retailers still do not have one. In today’s omnichannel retailing world, the need to identify and track customers is imperative for many reasons.

Loyalty programmes have traditionally been a great way to convert a one-time shopper to a regular customer through incentive based initiatives. They can reward customers for loyalty with schemes such as points based rewards or currency based discounts tied to purchase activity. These programmes have traditionally been the most popular style of loyalty scheme.

With customers now mingling their interactions with retailers between online and instore, being able to recognise and track a customer’s transactions is extremely important.

Consider this. If a customer purchases a product online and selects to pick it up instore, how will you be able to identify that customer when they come to pick up the goods and verify the authenticity of their transaction? You could either lookup the transaction or scan the customer’s loyalty card to see all that individual’s customer’s transaction history.

Though the transaction occurred online you can treat the customer as an individual by acknowledging their customer loyalty status as well as view their transaction history. For that moment you are paying full attention to the individual in front of you. Your loyalty programme gives you an insight into that individual’s world. In that moment you are empowered to be there for your customer and serve them effectively.

This is the power of a modern loyalty programme. You are empowered to support your customer’s individual needs and whilst doing so capture the data that can help your business grow.

It goes without saying that for an effective loyalty programme to be implemented in an omnichannel retailing environment, the data needs to be everywhere. From shopping online to instore at one of many store locations across the country, a customer’s loyalty record must be instantly accessible. Your customer only views your business as one whether they are online or instore and your view of your customer needs to be exactly the same.

iVend Loyalty by CitiXsys is a solution that allows you to keep up with your customers across the omnichannel divides. It gives staff instant access across all sales nodes of that customer’s transactions. With the barriers of sharing loyalty data gone, your focus can now be on meeting the customer’s expectations and there is no better way to improve customer loyalty than by keeping them happy.

Give the team at CitiXsys a call to find out more about the iVend Loyalty solution.