Using a Rewards Program with Your Marketing Strategy

• Written by Michael Bass

Using a rewards program or loyalty program is a great way to attract customers as a part of your internet marketing strategy. They’ve been found to help build customer loyalty and increase sales. These programs show your customers that you care about them and that you value their business.

Unfortunately, if you don’t use your rewards program correctly, they can quickly become a marketing nightmare. The following tips will help you to use your rewards program to attract customers, gain brand recognition, and increase conversions.

Create an Opt-in Program

There’re many different ways to start a rewards program. You can use loyalty punch cards, membership cards, and other physical methods of tracking customer behavior. Though, these solutions won’t work with an online business. For this, you’ll need to create an opt-in program.

This works the same as any other opt-in program or mailing list. Create a sign-up form, a landing page, and then advertise the page through your social media platforms or with PPC advertising. This helps to ensure that the people that sign up really are interested in benefiting from the rewards program.

Integrate the Rewards Program with Your Payment Platform 

Depending on the payment platform that you use, you should find it relatively easy to integrate your rewards program. This will simplify the process of offering discounts or sales to your members. Not only will this be easier for the deployment of your rewards program, your customers will find it easier to use.

Choose Your Rewards Carefully

You should take the time to choose the right rewards or incentives for your customers. You don’t want to offer them too much of a discount or special offer. Though, it needs to have enough of a value to entice them into signing up for the rewards program.

One idea is to offer a small discount for all purchases. For example, offer members 5% off any purchase. On top of this, you could throw in some free goodies. This could include eBooks, PDFs, video content, and other exclusive content that is created solely for your members.

Create an Email Marketing Campaign 

You should include an email marketing campaign with your rewards program. Members that join the program should receive periodic emails with special offers or discounts. Even if these are the same deals being presented to non-members, you should create a separate email for rewards members.

This will increase engagement. As you begin to build trust and loyalty, you should find that you have higher conversion rates with emails sent to members than you do with emails sent to non-members.

A Few Words of Warning

If you choose to create a loyalty program, never sell the information that you gain to a third party. The goal of creating a loyalty program is gain the trust of your customers. By selling their information, you violate this pact — defeating the purpose of the rewards program.

Customer service should be a major part of any important business decision. Creating a rewards program isn’t something that you should rush into. Take your time to plan out your marketing campaign and how you intend to implement your rewards program.

A rewards program can be a powerful marketing tool, when it is used correctly. For decades, they’ve been a major part of many businesses’ key marketing strategies. When you provide your customers with something of real value, it shows them that you value their business and want to give back a little.

These programs can go a long way towards helping you establish a solid customer base. Consider setting up your own rewards program using the information provided.

For additional tips and suggestions, check out my lead generation system — done-for-you system.

 

Image Sources:
Admin. (Posted: March 23, 2016). Featured image: Rewards program. Retrieved from http://onehitwondereliquid.com/rewards-program/
Always Group. (n.d.). Image of email marketing: How to create an efficient email marketing campaign. Retrieved from http://www.alwaysports.com/how-to-create-an-efficient-email-marketing-campaign/
Robo Rewards. (2009-2017). Image of reward integration: API integration grows rewards. programs Retrieved from https://www.roborewards.com/features/api-integration-rewards/

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