Turn Customers into Advocates – Relationship One

April 27, 2021December 26, 2021 Stan

In a world where social media influencers dictate shopping patterns, maintaining a foothold in the marketplace has become increasingly difficult. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught marketers anything, it is that you have to be nimble and able to pivot quickly in an ever-changing market. With customers being mainly unable to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, online shopping has exploded. With that, loyalty programs have also needed to shift, providing a new value-add that encourages customers to keep coming back despite challenges to market like increased prices, a decrease in product availability, and the need to be contact-less.

There are three keys to follow when building out an omnichannel loyalty strategy:

MAKE IT EASY

No one wants to have to work for it. Customers expect brands to respect their time, or lack thereof, and make the process simple and convenient. Integrating payment options with rewards programs, mobile wallets, and apps removes the hurdle of needing a separate rewards card or multiple touchpoints, ultimately increasing usage.

MAKE IT SMART

Customer data should be retained, with permission, and used for personalization across platforms and communications. Order history, years of loyalty, messaging preferences, and location preferences can be used to make the customer feel that you know them and understand their needs.
MAKE IT FREE

Customers shouldn’t need to buy in to be a part of a loyalty program. Rather, encourage participation in surveys and events that provide you with rich data and perpetuate sales. Loyalty programs are the ultimate upsell opportunity.

Omnichannel loyalty programs challenge brands to go beyond the traditional, creating experiences specific to the customer across multiple channels and keeping long-lasting loyalty. From website to app to store – all experiences should work in tandem. In a survey conducted by IRi in 2017, 74% of customers said they would choose a retailer based on its strong loyalty or discount program (IRi Worldwide, 2017). Brands like Target, Nike, CVS, and Starbucks are examples of companies who use a strong emotional connection and streamlined, convenient programs to retain loyal customer advocates.

There are many options in the marketplace for technology to aide in streamlining messaging and CX across the channels. Influative is a leader in the customer-advocate space. They have a native integration with Salesforce.com as well as marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, and Salesforce Pardot, helping to create consistent messaging for invitations and messages, and capture real-time advocate activity.

Oracle CrowdTwist Loyalty and Engagement captures data every time customers engage with your brand, building a full 360-degree customer profile that can be used to personalize interactions and offerings (Oracle, 2021). CrowdTwist integrates with Oracle Responsys, helping to segment and personalize campaigns based on customer preferences in real-time.

AnnexCloud is a loyalty engine that uses intelligence and data management to help seamlessly connect, engage and grow customer relationships at scale. They integrate with many technology partners across eCommerce, marketing automation, CRM, POS, customer service, social, and advertising channels like Adobe Magento, Spryker, Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Acoustic, and Twilio.

By building out an omnichannel loyalty marketing strategy that creates a personalized, convenient, and consistent experience across all customer touchpoints, customers feel seen and empowered to purchase and become brand advocates.

If you are looking for more information on opportunities in loyalty marketing strategies, visit the R1 Blog or drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you!

Resources:

IRi Worldwide, 2017. IRI Consumer Connect Survey Finds Consumers Hesitant to Open Wallets Despite Optimistic Financial Outlook.

Oracle, 2021. The ultimate guide to omnichannel loyalty.

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