Café and restaurant owners know that a loyalty program is a great way to grow their business. It encourages customers to visit more, spend more and shout about how great you are. And it gives you amazing insights that help you get to really understand your customers.
We wrote about the benefits of loyalty in our article ‘8 ways that loyalty and online ordering help to grow your hospitality business’.
So now you’re convinced - but how exactly do you go about creating and marketing your loyalty program. Here’s our take on the four essential steps:
Step 1 - Name
Your program’s name is crucial to its success. If you simply offer a plan called ‘My reward plan’, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to tie your program to your brand and all that it stands for. A great brand evokes emotion and the most successful loyalty program names link to that feeling. So when coming up a program name, think first about how you want your customers to feel by being part of it.
A great example of a name is Boost Juice’s ‘Vibe club’. The name ‘Vibe’ implies a good feeling, intuition and energy and a ‘club’ is something everyone wants to be a part of. It’s young, energetic and fun. The points are ‘Boost points’, tying the loyalty program back to the brand.
Chatime, the Teahouse franchise has the ‘Loyal-tea’ program, another clever name that ties strongly back to the brand and the product.
Nandos, home of spicy peri-peri chicken has the ‘PERi-PERKS’ program - clever and alliterative!
Once you start looking, you’ll find examples of great loyalty program names everywhere, with the best being creative, strongly linked to the brand and with a strong emotional connection.
Step 2 - Explain
The best name in the world is going to be wasted if your program isn’t easy to understand. You’ll need to be able to explain it in plain, straightforward terms. Your customers need to very quickly and easily see what their reward will be, and what they have to do to earn it - not to feel like they need finance degree to work out when they’ll get their free coffee!
Again, the Vibe Club is a great example - their scheme couldn’t be simpler: “Buy one drink, get one point. Buy two drinks, get two points. Got 10 or more points? Then do a happy dance because you have a free Boost! You only need 10 points to get your freebie!”
The same applies if you have other rewards or benefits - online ordering and queue jumping, exclusive member events, discounts, competitions, offers - the list is almost endless, but in every case, make sure they are clear and simple to explain.
Chatime does a great job of explaining how to find their loyalty program app, showing the step by step process complete with screenshots.
If you make sure your program is easy to find, simple to join (no long forms asking for too much detail), and easy to use, you’ve nailed this step.
Step 3 Campaign
A good loyalty program is an intrinsic part of your brand, so you’ll market it the same way you market your brand, your venue and your products.
That could include:
- Staff promoting the program to customers in your venues - maybe including prompt messages to them in your point of sale application
- Details on your website - ideally an invitation to join up should be one of the first things your visitors see when they land on the site
- Social media -video content that aligns with the emotion you want to generate with your program
- Influencers - you might consider whether there are influencers of your target market that you could work with. An endorsement from an influencer can be way more powerful than anything you put out yourself
- Media advertising campaigns - some programs warrant full blown TV/billboard/radio coverage
The key here is to approach the marketing of your loyalty program the same way as everything else about your brand - the only limit is your creativity (and your budget!).
Step 4 - Retain
You’ve done a great job of creating the right program and got people to join up. Now you have to make them stay - that’s the measure of true loyalty. This stage is about keeping the rewards coming - making sure that your members feel special and simply don’t want to leave.
Great programs mix it up and might use a range of techniques
- Ongoing offers (think 10th one free) that encourage repeat business
- Exclusive member only deals, such as Nandos’ peri-peri cooking classes, to encourage a sense of being valued.
- Birthday gifts to make members feel known and loved
- Gamification to encourage greater interaction with your brand
Whilst the research shows that points are still the biggest incentive an interesting mix of benefits is also a great way to retain interest in your program.
Loyal customers are one of the best assets your business can have - they visit more often, spend more and tell others how good you are. So when you’re rewarding them for their loyalty, it’s important to get it right, and to build and promote a program that’s going to make them feel good about being part of your club.
