How important is it to reward employees and customers in a company? How can sales team leaders ensure that these rewards are beneficial and brings motivation amongst the team members? All this is possible by having loyalty programs in place.

Loyalty programs is a sales strategy which encourages the customers to continue to be loyal and return to a particular brand/company and even motivates its employees to be engaged and think of new sales strategies with the aim of getting the benefits at the end. The main goal of loyalty programs is to keep channel partners motivated by appreciating and rewarding them which in turn will lead to gaining new customers and better retention rates. This acts as a benefit for both the parties.

HOW ARE LOYALTY PROGRAMS OFFERED?

Loyalty programs offer rewards and incentives to the customers who are loyal to a one organization for a longer period of time. These can be given in the following ways:

• Star system
• Gift cards
• Coupons
• Discounts

A rewarded customer is one who is satisfied, happy and thus ready to promote a particular brand/organization. This in turn boosts the company sales and leads to increase in revenue. Loyalty programs are a great way of expanding to expand and get into new market areas to popularize the organization.

BENEFITS OF LOYALTY PROGRAMS:

The various benefits of loyalty programs are as follows:

• Better customer retention: A well-implemented and planned program will lead to the retention of existing customers and thus lead to an increase in overall company revenue.
• Higher customer traffic: Loyalty programs aid organizations to retain existing customers and gain access to new markets and thus new customers. This in turn drives a higher traffic towards their products, websites and applications giving a boost to revenue.
• Act as a measure for actual brand success.
• Creates better product awareness
• Higher number of customer referrals

PERSONALIZATION OF LOYALTY PROGRAMS:

Most companies these days are offering the same type of loyalty programs as a result of which it is getting more and more difficult to retain and engage customers. It is very important to understand that not all consumers have the same needs and expectations. As a result a one size fits all approach results into failure of most loyalty programs. In such situations personalization of loyalty programs is a important criteria which is useful for success of loyalty programs. Personalization is what can help many companies stand apart and gain better revenue boost. Personalization basically means how companies can gain knowledge about the preferences of their customers and use it further to engage and motivate them via the loyalty programs. The exclusivity of the loyalty programs through personalization is what will attract new customers towards the company.

CONCLUSION:

Loyalty programs can be very effective and a useful tool for the sales team in rewarding customers and boosting sales if and only if new strategies are devised to make the loyalty program unique and align it according to the market, brand and focus on the target customers. Apart from all this it is very important to shape and continuously bring changes to the loyalty programs with the changing needs of the consumer. This sometimes can become challenging and hectic. But utilization of innovative strategies such as personalization, gamification, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. can help companies to meet the dynamic and quickly changing needs of their consumers. In the end, loyalty programs should lead to happy and satisfied consumers with the motto of boosting sales and revenue while standing apart from other organizations.

Reference:

For the image