Top 10 Sales Promotion Trends for 2019
A company’s success or popularity is measured by several means but the way it performs in sales is one of the most important ways of gauging its success. Every brand’s value or rate of success is often dependent on its sales promotions and how they project themselves to their audiences and hence, it is an integral part of creating a successful brand. Sales promotions are the process through which a company or brand pitches their products or services to their target audience. This often consists of different promotional methods such as online marketing, direct sales, public relations, advertising, and several others. The use of media and non-media communications directed towards the audience for a pre-determined time frame helps generate customer demand and inquisitiveness amongst the people leading to an increase in their overall sales.
Sales trends are often fast-changing as the target audience and their taste keeps evolving with time. The strategies that worked wonders for a company at one point might stand null after a point and is highly dependent on the way or mode you choose to deploy for your product’s sales promotion. Some trends, however, have withstood the test of time and are a sure-shot sales promotion trend and the trends enlisted are ones that are likely to stay and emerge in the year 2019:
Buy One Get One Free
You may have heard plenty about this trend but the truth is that it is here to stay! Nothing sells better than another product of the same kind for free! It’s an easy but sure-shot way to engage and bring customers to buy your product. ‘Free’ is often an eye-wash but a powerful one as the strategy is to hike the price of the product and project it in a way that allows customers to believe that they are at a profitable position!
E-retailing
Gone are the days where you receive pamphlets of different brands selling customers their products at great offers as most of the buyers are now buying things virtually. So, it is imperative that you shift your sales tactics to the virtual sector as well. This gives brands a greater reach as the targeting can be narrowed further down which implies that sales are likely to increase automatically.
Social media influencers
The world is on the web now and so should you! Utilizing someone’s popularity to strengthen and sell your goods and services is likely to help both parties grow. Through promotions of your product on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, influencers are likely to generate a healthy, organic growth for both, your brand and theirs. A collaboration between the two parties helps enhance the overall traffic on the influencer’s account and the brand they are collaborating with.
Testers and Samples
Apart from allowing your customers try and sample your products and services for free, having your brand advertise and promote in cultural events, fests, and exhibitions, giving out free samples or freebies aid in enhancing your customer’s loyalty towards your brand. It gives them an assurance of the genuineness and authenticity of the products or services that you may be offering. This automatically builds a stronger base for your brand to remarket to these customers.
Sales promotion trends that have ruled the market and are likely to build more rage in the year 2019 are listed above. Many more trends are sure to emerge in the year to follow as the way customers perceive brands are ever-changing and are constantly evolving and to keep up with the fast-paced audience, the way a brand sells themselves will need to constantly upgrade.
Digital Sales promotions Ideas & trends 2019
The most crucial way of reaching out to the target audience for any brand or company is through advertising and promotions. Every company relies on promotional techniques of various kinds for the success of their services or products and marketing via digital media has become the most effective and efficient means of promotion for brands at this point of time. As buyers are frequently distrusting of advertising and marketing strategies, it has become all the more critical for brands to penetrate into their target audience.
The audience to which advertisements and commercials are directed to have become more aware of matters and inquisitive as well, which has further pushed the companies and brands to constantly keep creating and innovating in order to stay at pace with the fast-growing consumers whose taste change at a rapid pace.
We’ve curated a list of trends and ideas that are employed for digital sales promotion by different companies. These are trends and ideas that are likely to appear or have already helped brands in promoting their products and services:
1. Authentic and Real Content
It has become imperative to go in the path that supports and projects only authentic and real content. Consumers are no longer hooked onto things that appear pre-concocted, lack reality or are “clickbait” content. The more raw and real you keep your advertising or promotions, the easier it is likely to get through to your target audience. Influencer marketing is one of the trendiest ways to gather people’s attention towards a certain product or brand. The element of “human trust” adds to the brand value and a real testimony helps them connect to the brand better than a highly edited video made for the purpose of selling. The idea is to sell an emotion through pointing out to subsequent aspects of the product one wants to sell. This indirect approach seems to be working for several brands already and is set to be one of the biggest trends of 2019!
2. Interactive Ads
Ads that do not sell products, sell the most number of products! The logic is strange but in reality, the lesser descriptive your promotion is, the higher the attention your audience would pay. Ads in the forms of interactive videos where the protagonist of the ad talks directly to you cause customers to believe that they are being made to be a part of the scenario. Ads that require customer responses or are in the form of a poll helps increase the interest and engagement of the audience resulting in a better sales scenario.
3. Voice Search is the thing!
With automated voice search devices such as Alexa and Google Assistant, people have become all the more dependent on these applications and gadgets to help them do tasks. The ability to make a device such as a phone or a tablet recognize and respond to your voice and help you with your browsing is incredible and can help marketers reach out to their audience by sectioning or categorizing them into specific keywords so that their ads appear on the top when a person voice searches for a product or service.
4. World of Social Media
A person’s presence is felt when they are doing things in different places and their information travels in the form of word-of-mouth and that’s exactly how brands aim to reach out to more and more audiences. They are keen on penetrating into the different outlets of social media based on their type of goods or services and after analyzing what is best for their brand image. Social media can help you brand become visible and highly approachable as it allows you to spread out and cater to different audiences based on which platform you use. Live streaming, contests, quizzes, giveaways, they’re all strategies to amplify your sales through digital media. For you, the choices are endless as you can promote your products and create brand loyalty on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn and several other platforms!
5. Visual Search
We all know that artificial intelligence and machine-learning is speeding up most technological processes with each day and brands and companies just have to hop onto that wagon to stay at pace with the fast evolving consumers! Visual search is helpful and is likely to boom in the coming years as it is the basic concept of converting visual information into text-based data. This will not only help marketers make their products more visible but also help people learn about different and new brands through the process.
Consumers and brands are always changing and all of it happens in tandem with the scientific advancements made by researchers. An amalgamation of technology, digital marketing ideas and brand positioning, sales of any goods and services is imperative! These trends and ideas are just a few ways of enhancing the sales promotion through the new media but there are plenty other interesting ways in which, brands and advertisers can make better sales!
Top 10 Loyalty Marketing Trends for 2019
The concept behind customer retention or having a customer’s loyalty towards your brand is simple – ‘there is only a tangible number of customers to any given business’! However, returning and loyal customers is not an easy goal to reach easily especially when you want to perpetually make it a profitable brand with a good amount of sales. A famous sales mantra is “80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers!” It was observed that 5% increase in customer loyalty increases the average profit per customer by 25%-100%. Customer loyalty programs are usually highly effective when it comes to maintaining existing customers. In a market as competitive as it is now where decisions made by customers can switch rapidly with regard to their choice of their service providers or suppliers, loyalty programs can make a great deal of impact.
Based on the aforementioned reasons, it is implied that every brand that wants to make an impact and measurable connection with their audience or customer must engage in great loyalty programs. The brands or companies that have already begun engaging in such loyalty programs must keep an open perspective and try to incorporate latest, successful loyalty marketing strategies to increase their brand value and customer engagement to a sizable amount. Here are the top 10 loyalty marketing trends that are going to take over the loyalty program sector by storm:
1. Modern customers are noticeably
Modern customers are noticeably bored and tired of typical messaging and flowery posts and ads trying to sell something! Trying to sell “The perfect life” is passe now and there is a legitimate crusade for authenticity and customers are likely to believe in real and raw videos testifying the same. Brands have found that the current audience or customers watch live streams for about 3x longer than pre-made, scripted video content. Live streams and unedited videos is what might drive the customers going forward!
2. Vertical channel integration through AR
The further the technologies advance, the quest for content via Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is likely to grow manifold. It will increase a productive conversation between vertical channel partners. Real estate companies are already implementing similar techniques to create interactive and interesting models for their customers to engage with. Introduction to such media can enhance the way customers react, respond and purchase completely.
3. Going local
Various programs have gone mobile which implies that the program reaches the customer wherever they go. A new class of technologies called ‘geofences’ is what is used to target audiences based on their location. Promotional messaging could penetrate into the customer’s mind with greater ease based on where and what they are doing! It also indicates that distinct sales and training data can be made available in specific areas for on-the-spot improved efficiency. Smart applications of geofencing are set to improve the member experience on the whole.
4. Loyalty based on Accounts
Account Based Loyalty is all about moving a program’s focus from quantity over quality. Instead of concentrating on lots of prospects to highly targeted, high-value non-members to the top-of-the-pyramid, decisive non-member accounts who you require to be on top of your list.
5. A closer look at your data
Make sure to take a close look at your data because in order to make it big, you’ll have to analyze your customers, their pattern of shopping, customer shopping behaviors and current trends along with their approach towards the brand at large.
6. Loyalty Hacking
The time has come to start running interactive, small-scale operations that defines the works and doesn’t work for the program. Soon, programs will be examining different ways of phrasing a customer’s call to action. Loyalty hacking would assure of immediate delivery of results, and clear results along with providing a quick response to the requirements of the customer.
7. Artificial Intelligence accelerating attention
It is presumed that AI and machine-learning methods are likely to have an inexplicable impact on the way brands communicate with their loyalty program members. The actual success of deploying these Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms will be able to achieve a level of Attention and Interest (A&I) that gains the customer’s attention.
8. Enhancing influencer loyalty programs
The concept of an ‘influencer loyalty’ directs to be driven by people with fame or celebrities and trend-setters engaging on their respective Instagram feeds. Influencer loyalty works best through online testimonials, videos, and referrals from other loyalty members.
9. Security and Transparency
Transparency has become the most valuable aspect of social media and online activities these days. The prominent assurance of one’s security drives most customers to trust the brand or the reward program with their respective details and that’s the trust they have on you.
10. Focus on Return on Learning
Most B2B loyalty programs companies are evolving around re-engineering their loyalty through enablement. In other words, driving member engagement by the completion of education and learning contributions which help to increase their overall knowledge of the product and other services.
These are some of the most incredible trends that have already set foot in the loyalty program companies and others are estimated to set things in the right path in 2019 and change the way customers experience shopping and brand project themselves!
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
Help us create innovative programs for you
Get in touch with us
How to Prepare for a Successful Loyalty Program This Festive Season?
Once the festive season arrives, every company tries to amp up their game especially the commercial consumer brands. Each brand aims for higher engagement with their audience and customers in any form and medium. They plan events and programs that help in promoting their brand or products to their target group which in turn increase sales of their product. Festivities also mark a stark rise in the social media pages or websites of different companies which are often carried out with the end goal of reaching out to more favourable customers.
Most of the companies focus on collaborating with other brands in order to offer a combination of rewards and festive gifts that may be further booked in bulk by major corporates for festive gifting as well as in the form of loyalty programs that can be redeemed as per the receiver’s whim. Many corporate companies tie up with F&B companies to avail sweetmeats and decorative gifting options. Although corporate gifting is a major trend amongst big companies, it is also very common for them to offer their employees with attractive vouchers, gift cards and loyalty program offers that provide them with an opportunity to redeem them according to their preferred time and avail items that meet their requirements.
Below mentioned are a few ways in which companies can create a successful loyalty program for the festive season:
1. Cashback is in
It’s a natural psychology of people to get attracted to offers that allow them to get a percentage of their money back in the form of hard cash or even virtual money; that’s precisely how one can cash onto a large section of the working class people. It allows them to shop for a certain amount and receive a fraction of their expenditure in the form of cashback. Tieing up with clothing brands or restaurants that offer a cashback on purchase from them can prove to be a healthy collaboration for both the employer and the employee.
2. Discount Vouchers & Coupons
Everyone is in a festive mood when any of the big festivals arrive and shopping for their desired clothes, accessories and appliances become a must for many, which is particularly when a company must collaborate with electronic companies, clothing brands, etc as it is highly likely to pull crowd once they see a discount on their favourite item of choice! Coupons also work in a similar way as they help people get a discounted price when they apply a specific coupon applicable to their purchase. Rewarding employees with vouchers and coupons that enable customers to avail a certain discount based on the net purchase amount usually works great and even greater during the festive season!
3. Freebies & combos
Having a loyalty program that allows you to choose from a variety of products and then getting a free product along with it makes people extremely happy and allows the retailers to sell more items at a fairly good rate. Freebies also encourage people to share good reviews about their shopping experience and also helps in getting free PR from their customers! This can work particularly well if teamed up with restaurants as people are highly likely to eat out during that time and free meals or happy hours, etc. work great during this period.
4. E-commerce
The world is now run online and thus, it is imperative to be conscious and strategic in placing yourself with the right type of E-commerce website as it is likely to fetch great returns if done the right way. Companies can collaborate and offer their employees codes or referral links to avail a certain product or reward on their partner E-commerce website, which allows the employees to shop straight at their homes or desks without the hassle of travelling to brick and mortar shops to purchase festive articles. This technique projects the company associating with them in a good light along with their own brand which was chosen as their partners. It’s a win-win situation, most of the times!
Loyalty programs can be a great way to encourage people to buy from a particular brand or channel and it also helps in trust building factor or employees towards their company itself. This occurs due to the choice of loyalty program made and the offers made are generally very attractive. The festive season, in general, is a great time to pair up loyalty programs as they make everyone feel like they are getting something extra and are rewarded for the same!
5 Best Loyalty Schemes for this Diwali
Looking for supreme choices of loyalty programs for your customers, then you have arrived at the right platform. At Reward Port, we assist the businesses to offer the best loyalty programs which can sway away the customers and aid in strengthening the bond of trust between your brand and the customers. Festivities are a great time to express gratitude to your customers and acknowledge their contribution in the consistent growth of your brands in the form of rewards.
So, this Diwali delight your customers with any one of these five best loyalty programs :
1. Point based scheme
The quintessential type of the loyalty program, this scheme offers value points for every purchase executed by the customer. These points can be redeemed later for the subsequent transactions. Higher the points, higher the redeemable amount of money. The introduction of this program is definitely bound to foster the initial trust and worth of your brand in the minds of especially the new customers.
2. Tier scheme
The tier scheme is the excellent approach to reward the long term loyal customers of your brand. Upgradation to the higher tier provides greater incentives on product purchases. It requires the customers to accrue points through multiple purchases over a period of time and evidently, greater number of points shifts them to higher rewards tier.
3. Sweepstakes
Businesses can partner with our loyalty rewards platform and relax as we offer convenient and hassle free sweepstakes program for your customers. Sweepstakes is a straight-forward program for the customers to enter with a minimal to zero fees and there is every probability to take home a grand bumper prize along with them. Various other prizes offered to runner ups are also high- priced.
4. Partnership Program
Businesses can build partnership with various other firms such as those offering food products, beauty products or even various services based firms to delight the customers to the next level. Studies have shown that the flexibility in the choices available under the umbrella of a loyalty program is the main reason the customers find a loyalty program attractive. With the points accumulated, customer can log into their account and redeem their points by shopping from a plethora of products available.
5. Gamified Loyalty Program
If the businesses desire to acquire an edge over their competitors, it is indeed achievable by the creative gamification of a loyalty program that can be offered as a spellbinding reward program to the customers, for instance the Spin and Win Reward loyalty program.
It is essential to emphasize that any of the loyalty programs extended to your customers should be in a comprehensible format with terms and conditions mentioned, to ensure greater effectiveness of the program.
Why Understanding Customer Psychology is Important to Run a Successful Campaign?
We at RewardPort are determined to bring the best to the customers. Understanding consumer psychology is of prime significance. We ensure that we have a forward thinking vision and are up-to-date with the changing customer’s purchase behaviour. We are focussed to provide the best tailor-made services to the customers such as Customer Loyalty cards, Movie gift vouchers, Scratch and win rewards and various other sales vouchers. A customer is the King in the business. Reward port offers the platform which rightfully attracts and delights the King.
Better understanding of the consumers wants and desires helps to establish an invisible thread of trust and emotional connect with your brand. The following points explain the rationale behind understanding
Customer psychology:
1. Buying Behaviour is Usually Untold
Customers change their minds constantly. You need to listen to what is not been told directly. Customer behavioural insights help sales & revenue grow strong in the present and support stronger momentum for future gains by obtaining useful information on trends based on their rapidly changing demands.
2. One size doesn’t fit all.
To make sales campaign successful, the offerings have to be varied according to the customer’s age, sex, ethnicity, region, country etc. Understanding these variations is crucial.
3. Reasons for buying competitor products/services
Being informed of the qualities or features in the competitor products/services which are highly appreciated by the customers helps to get an insight into where we lack and what we need to do in order to improve sales promotion.
4. Buying Complementary products
Understanding consumer’s needs help in acknowledging their pain points. Bundling complementary products as they wish eases the purchase thereby increases the sales figure in the end.
5. Minor details
Minor details point to customers’ sentiments which are often overlooked. The feedback provided by the customers is priceless and when incorporated in the sales strategy, it helps to convert them into potential leads.
6. Reciprocity
Often people like to test samples of the products or want convenient shipping and delivery at their doorsteps. Businesses which take the first steps and reach out to their audience reciprocate the wishes of their customers. This facilitates buying decision.
7. Surprise and delight
Consumers wish to be surprised with attractive discounts along with a seamless flow of information regarding these discounts. So, it is significant to know what surprises them in order to increase sales.
8. Online vs. Offline Customers
As the purchase cycle varies for online Vs offline buyers, it is apt to appreciate those differences and subsume in the sales strategy.
9. Pricing options
While most customers prefer goods and services which are value for money, many are willing to spend a little more for the higher quality and the brand association of the product. It acts as a guide for businesses to alter pricing and discounts options for the products they offer.
10. Develop better Customer Engagement strategies
Customer engagement technique cannot be planted in the dark. Prioritizing customer psychology while preparing the sales strategy helps in engaging customers with your products/services. For example, the medium of interaction, tone of conveying message about your products/services/brand or type of information whether it is factual or generic. Also, this makes marketing strategy aligned to the target audience.
One can only beat the clock first in this competitive era by comprehending customer psychology, their wants and desires. This is why we at reward port provide the best flexible and fabulous loyalty programs for our customers.
Importance of Emotion Based Marketing Campaigns
Emotions prompt our actions according to the famous psychologist Daniel Goleman. The customer buying behaviour is too motivated by their emotions. Consumers no longer want products to be pushed upon them. Marketing campaigns have to be more humane and sensitive towards the sentiments of the people. Emotional appeal advertising aids in achieving the same. Marketing campaigns need to be redefined so that the customer’s heart meets his wallet and there is a synchronisation between the two. These emotions have to be tapped at the right time and rightly guided to the social media and other public visibility outlets to gain the movement of customers towards the brand.
1. Positive emotions
Positive emotions provoke good feelings about the brand in the minds of the customers. Mostly people associate themselves easily with high-value lifestyle products which increase their status in the society. Apple did a business storytelling around the iPhone before launching it. When they launched iPhone mobiles, it became a hallmark of style statement from teenagers to young adults to all age groups. Today, most Americans prefer buying iPhone over other mobiles. This is an example of emotional marketing campaign driven by positive emotions like joy & acceptance which are associated with the purchase of iPhone.
2. Negative emotions
Negative emotions on the advertisements display the harsh realities of life. An anger or disgust emotion is usually used to evoke thought provoking feelings in the minds of the consumers in order to spread awareness and encourage donations for those in need. ‘Save a child’ advert was used to display the effect of wars especially on the children.
3. Surprise emotions
Advertisements of Insurance companies tease the fear or surprise element in the lives of the people. The fear of the unknown and growing risks of deaths due to health ailments & accidents is strong enough to coerce people to buy life/health insurance to protect their dependants against difficult times. Instead of distracting customers from chief information, these emotional marketing campaigns should speak about the brand and attract the customers in order to boost quality leads.
4. Emotional Content Marketing
The CSR activities are an excellent example of emotional branding. It increases the customer participation by involving them along with the brands to carry these activities. Stories connected with the event when told reflect on the values business stands for, such as fighting for a social cause or combating environmental issues. This emotional storytelling about the event or activity helps to evoke empathy for the brand. Moreover, this reaches still larger audience especially middle class buyers.
5. Run time for these marketing campaigns
The run time for the emotional marketing campaigns has to be optimum. While it achieves its desired purpose, one cannot overlook the fact that people start to construe a different meaning when the same campaign is running for too long. They either get overwhelmed or bored. Similarly running it for too short time will not make enough time available to let them associate with the emotions exhibited through the message of the advertisement.
Sweepstakes Ideas to Increase Your Sales
Do you want to boost your sales and reach out to larger audience by increasing sales promotion?
We at RewardPort offer a wonderful reward matrix for initiating Sweepstakes marketing campaign.
Key Features Reward Port Sweepstakes
- It requires low cost for initial investment with as low as Rs 5 for initiating promotions of product or services
- There are over 100 plus Categories of tangible grand products to offer as instant win sweepstakes
- Provides experiential rewards which are over 50 plus. These awards are evolutionary as they go beyond just being customer reward program and rather try to establish an emotional connect between the brand and the winners of the rewards. Example: ‘Scratch and Win’ a vacation to international destination.
- The set up for the campaign is hassle free and involves zero cost. It starts from filling up the Google form.
- It is easy to sync with your Social Media Properties
- Receive the best customer support as we believe in providing delightful service to the customer till the last mile.
How to improve your business sales through sweepstakes?
The planning stage is crucial for the sweepstake campaign. The strategy building is undoubtedly the first step. Initially, establish the smart and realistic goals desired to be achieved from the sweepstakes. Mostly sweepstakes are offered for no purchase or very low cost and a winner is picked randomly. The online website of the business needs to have an alert for the ongoing sweepstakes offer followed by sending email newsletter to the target customers conveying the message to contest to win prizes. Once placed, Sweepstakes campaign needs to be tracked and monitored at every step to check for the performance and make the sweepstake marketing campaign a success. You can sit back and relax as we at RewardPort will manage the online sweepstakes campaign for you. You need to share your budget and the target audience with us. Also, do keep in mind that people are mostly on the lookout for grand prices worth high value which can encourage them to sign up for the sweepstake campaign.
Post the ongoing campaign on the various social media platforms to connect with the audience. Promote it on these platforms using suitable formats specific to each platform. It is easy to check the likes and comments by the participants to get their feedback. A campaign which is both transactional and social helps in multiplication of reach of your audience. For instance, encourage the customers to share their winning moments or their purchases on the Facebook platform and share it with their friends.
Utilize PR for announcing Bumper prize winners. Also, videos are a very good option for reaching out to larger number of customers as its click through rate is usually higher and you can expect more number of participants entering the sweepstake contest.
Lastly, incentivize your customers by providing gifts for referring to a friend to accelerate the performance of the free giveaways online. This proves to be beneficial as these participants are more likely to develop into strong brand ambassadors of your brand.
How to make your Loyalty program addictive
Today Loyalty programs form a major component of engagement with all the stakeholders in business. Their significance is of prime in retaining existing customers and thus reducing higher cost inputs. Similarly, improving the B2B partner relations or motivating employees is crucial and is made easy with Loyalty programs.
B2C
Giving Rewards while empowering the customers
For any business, empowering customers helps developing confidence in them about the business. Customer should be given a platform to review the products/services. This should be achieved actively by offering loyalty points to the customer for a single review that they provide for the product or service received. This eases feedback taking and incentivizes the customers to review.
Special occasion rewards
The loyalty programs can be offered at special occasions for the existing group of customers with higher discounts or amplified rewards than on the regular days. For instance, a gift card and 10% cash-back or an online shopping coupon & 100$ cash-back on minimum purchases. Reminders go a long way in keeping the customers hooked especially on the special events in their life such as birthdays or anniversaries
Bundled offerings
Businesses can bundle their products into a packaged offerings to the customers such as Amazon Prime. It offers unlimited free delivery of products coupled with free music & movie streaming on Prime Music and Prime Video respectively and numerous flash deals.
B2B
Successful businesses today rely on cordial relations with the existing trade partners/ clients. It takes a great amount of effort in building the relation and trust and even greater to maintain it. The partner loyalty program ensures that the partners are engaged in work with the businesses for long run. The best strategy to develop client relations through loyalty programs is to start organising business conferences, meet-ups or other similar events and offering VIP passes.
Once the ground of trust is laid along the way, businesses can offer their partner hotel bookings & trips to various destinations for profits realized together, as part of the Loyalty program.
Employees
Digital endorsement
This programme will make an employee feel a pat on his back by way of being endorsed online. For every achievement the employee can be given digital pat on the back. This means the employee is rewarded by the addition of credit points into his account which can be redeemed later on and any product worth those points can be obtained.
Ultimately, all stakeholders desire to get tangible rewards by getting a free service/product or a cash-back. Whether rewards are given digitally or by manual methods, the loyalty programs dispense interface has to be simple and comprehensible such as the one created by Sephora beauty brand for their customers. And lastly the terms and conditions should be part of the loyalty program which could be in the form of FAQs to make it self-explanatory for the customers.
5 Reasons Why Customers Losing Interest on your Loyalty Program
Most of loyalty programs are created by highly competent business owners. But still why it’s getting harder to retain an old customer than win a new? You can plan to kill off the existing one and introduce a new but how many loyalty programs do you think the average customer belongs to? Not less than 9! Introducing a new one would act like a burden for them for sure. Now the question is, why some loyalty programs become obsolete and fail to collect any new lead? It’s natural for you to get confused since you have taken plethora of feedback from experts before launching it but there are reasons that you may have ignored while planning! We have tried to churn out a few, take a look
Offers are Repetitive
With every religious and national event, there comes the horde of offers and promotions. If your company is product based then you should always look at your competitors and see what are they offering. Sometime many companies of the same product-line offers similar loyalty program and it becomes confusing for customers to choose the right one. And before you introduce your offer to them, they are already exhausted by seeing similar offers again and again! Do a proper research on your competitors before turning over confident!
Your Presence is Weak on Digital Media
The decision making process of human minds has been changing drastically. It has become very instantaneous since brands are offering something new everyday and targeting customers personally through different digital mediums. Think about your presence on digital media. Hit them through your social presence, take help from Google adwords, launch an app and cover all kinds of digital mediums which you think can help you reach your target audience.
You are Ignoring Retention Policies
Have you ever given a thought why Amazon gives more preference to prime members than new ones? That’s because they understand the importance of loyal customers and always gives more preference to retain them. Your loyal bunch of customers would always want to try something new introduced by your company but the new ones may hesitate since they don’t know much about you. Give special discount, send personalized mails, give them seasonal offers and don’t think it twice to make them feel special!
Your Offers are not Relevant and Real
Always think of offering something that becomes useful for your customers in their daily lives. For example, loyalty points won’t make much difference but some discount on their daily grocery needs would do. Make your offers more realistic by relating them to the daily needs of your targeted audience. Don’t make long running offers but keep it short and practical. Give them a chance to use them on their hobbies and entertainment.
You are not Integrating your Loyalty Program with Overall Customer Experience
A loyalty successful loyalty program depends on three important things,
1) Accurate brand communication,
2) Excellent service and
3) create real value and meaning for your customers.
Don’t ignore your customers in the long run. Make them feel like a part of your company, personalize special offers in festivals, build your own community by inviting them to special events and interact with them on social media.
In the end, your customers build your business and it depends upon you how you make them feel special. Don’t take loyalty programs as a separate add-on but make it a part of your actual business through which you can build a community of people to participate in your business offerings.
5 Ways To Drive Sales Promotion Through Social Media
Sales promotion aims to increase the sales of the products or services to customers or clients. Routinely it targets at the low moving products or high consumption products/services. The process initiation utilizes distinct media and non-media methods.
Social media is very effective in reaching larger audience and there are 5 key methods by which social media can drive sales promotions for your business.
1. Understand the audience
As a rule of the thumb, understanding the buyer persona is imperative to gain insights into what the customers are searching for. Social media offers interactive platform where millions of users share their opinions. An informal approach sought after increasing the scope of trust building within the customers. The click through rate increases and hence greater conversions as users now wish to seek brands who have gained there trust and they now want to visit the business website again and again. Besides, being well informed about the customers’ buying behaviour prevents the businesses from getting tempted to bombard wrong advertisements at the wrong occasions.
Once you know the buyer behaviour, the next step is to approach the audience through targeted advertisements on product promotions.
2. Target the audience
Advertisements on social media suggest discounts and offers on the products or services. It conveys the offers to a substantial number of customers in a jiffy. However, not every customer bears similar interests. The social media is inundated with various advertisements every single day and directing the business advertisements to the right audience is essential. Targeting the right audience based on various parameters like demographic, region, ethnicity etc. keeps the sales promotion strategy on the right track.
3. Choose the right platform
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms have varied features and each can be used to drive promotions. Linkedin is a professional development platform and mainly limited to professional communication. It is less likely to be effective for product discounts for customers, albeit it is constructive for B2B promotions .The Dynamic ad option particularly is a direct way of actively seeking engagements from individuals as well as businesses. Pinterest is well accepted among women groups. The sales promotion strategy should be aligned with the basic offerings of the platform and the sort of audience virtually active on it.
4. Perform Competitor analysis
As almost all businesses reach out to their customers through social media, it is easier to understand the competitors to ensure that the business does not lag behind the competition. This creates awareness of the opponent’s approach. While keeping this in mind, businesses can devise better creative methods. Additionally, one can track the seasonal and off-season trends for introducing the promotions on social media to prevent the clash of offers.
5. Schedule the promotions
Social media monitoring tools help to monitor and control the response to the promotion ads. This was never achievable with offline marketing methods. Advertisement posts have to be timed according to the peak usage hours to ensure maximum returns on the social media promotional efforts. The seasonal promotions have to be in congruence with the real trends which can be tapped online through social media.
The Inevitable Bond Between Social Media and Loyalty Programs
Social media has become one of the most important aspects of digital marketing today as it has been influencing all of our lives in one or the other way. If you are not using it to promote your brand, then you have been missing a lot of easy and affordable marketing opportunities. It is one of the most easiest and useful digital platforms to increase business visibility.
Loyalty programmes have started using this platform to leverage their customers since most of communications happen over mobile phones these days. The response and actions have become faster than earlier since it’s a direct approach to hit the right customer at the right time. People receive offers as pop-ups right on their phone screens that allows them to send a response quickly. According to a consumer survey done by Deloitte Consultancy, 61% per cent of participants checks their mobile phones first after 5 minutes of waking up every morning. This is isn’t surprising since more than 31% of the global population are connected to each other through social media. No matter where you are, thousands of people are right there for you to hear what you say on your social media pages.
As social media continues to permeate every aspect of the shopping experience, it’s quickly developing into a tool that is all about building relationships with your customers. Each time your customers check their social media profiles, they get the opportunity to communicate directly with your brand. Count it from direct messages, reviews to refer a friend, your customers can interact with your brand 24/7 through a variety of social media platforms.
This proves that social media plays a huge role in reviving your customer retention policies. So what better way to engage your target audience than by integrating your social media strategy with your rewards program? Customer loyalty solutions allows customers to connect to you easily and also rewards customers who buy from you frequently. It encourages customers to buy your products or use your service regularly. The encouragement comes in the form of discounts,free products, rebates or any other form of appreciation .
Brands use loyalty programs to strengthen their relationships with customers, increase in sales numbers and most importantly turning a prospective customer into a frequent buyer. A loyalty management program must ensure that the services meet the needs of the customers.
With so many users all over the world, social media is the ultimate resource to help you create curiosity about your rewards program on a global scale. You just need to determine on which platform your target is most likely o interact. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and Snapchat are adding new features to their platforms everyday and these changes bring countless number of ways to communicate and express the value of your loyalty program through an amalgamation of creative and visual content.