Being Brilliant:
Beyond the basic principles above, our digital world means higher expectations in loyalty marketing. Here in Liquid Barcodes, we’ve coined the term ‘live loyalty’ to summarize the three ‘E’s that great programs use to become truly a part of customers’ daily lives. By clearly understanding each party’s separate objectives in everyday terms, we have gamified the relationship between customers and convenience retailers in a way that also delights the C-Suite. We believe in setting a genuine intention for every program to make a difference for its members, so here are our top three tips to keep in mind if you’re setting your goal on ‘being brilliant’ at loyalty:
1. Easy: The original idea behind the convenience industry continues to dominate customer demands. Whether it’s enabling pre-order or pre-payment, customers love when a loyalty program makes their every day life easier. Can you eliminate the need to queue? The need to pay cash? The need to repeat yourself simply to enjoy your same order day in and day out? Customers love when you make their lives easy and your loyalty program is the perfect tool to use.
2. Empowering: As customers demand more valuable experiences, ‘live loyalty’ programs enable customers to create a connection with their friends and family by sharing every day moments as gifts or treats. Already successfully established in China, ‘Say it with Starbucks’ has enabled millions of Starbucks gifts to be shared online over the past year by leveraging partnerships on both Alibaba and WeChat. Does your loyalty program empower your customers to share and connect?
3. Engaging: Gamification is one of the most effective tools to drive consumer engagement, with over ninety compelling case studies quoted by the gamification expert Yu-kai Chou. Examples include Domino’s pizza who have seen over 30% of orders now placed on mobile since they gamified the platform. It’s also well known how effective the technique has proven to be in the fitness industry, with FitBit and Nike successfully using gamification to drive engagement in recent years. Nike alone quoted over 5 million people engaging! Gamification can be used for almost any marketing challenge in convenience retail, whether it’s to drive footfall, reduce waste, stimulate trial of new products or share a moment with friends and family. Using fun is a clear differentiator in a world of loyalty programs that can sometimes become very tired and dated.
There are plenty of detailed loyalty tactics and ideas available here on our website, which simply need to be approached with a loyalty mindset. JC Penney is quoted as saying that “Every great business is built on friendship” and I’m sure you’ll agree that every great friendship feels easy, empowering and engaging. Hopefully by using these principles, your loyalty program will too!
