Keeping your existing customers engaged with your brand is therefore vital to your company’s bottom line - and customer loyalty programmes are a key tool to keep your customers coming back.
But customers don’t want to mess around trying to find cards in their wallets or bags any more.
Today, more people than ever want mobile loyalty apps that allow access to their customer rewards and digital loyalty card at the tap of their phone - and increasingly, they want to do their shopping directly in their loyalty programme app, too.
Why is Customer Loyalty Important?
Building customer loyalty takes time and effort - but it significantly increases profits. In fact, increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost your brand’s revenue by 25-95%.
One of the best ways to do this is with a rewards programme - and this is true across many types of industries, including both B2C and B2B loyalty programmes.
That all sounds great - but you probably already know it. So here’s a real question - how can you make your customers more loyal?
What makes customers loyal?
First and foremost, you need great products and customer service. If what you’re offering is poor and your staff are rude, you will not keep customers.
But assuming you have a brilliant product and excellent customer service, then what? How can you keep your hard-won customers coming back?
In the surveys for its report, The Truth About Customer Loyalty, global services firm KPMG found a surprising answer.
One of the most important factors to keep customers loyal - and the only one that didn’t relate to the product, cost or staff - was an ‘easy shopping experience’, valued by 55% of respondents.
"And in the Google report, The Mobile Shopping App Landscape, the global search engine found that 51% of smartphone users are more likely to use a brand’s mobile app when shopping - if it means they will rewards or loyalty points."
That means that if you offer an e-commerce app with an excellent loyalty programme built in, customers are more likely to choose to shop with you.
Better still, if you design the app and customer engagement the right way, you can lower your marketing costs while increasing sales.
How Loyalty Apps Increase Sales
People are shopping in apps more than ever before, with a recent surge partly caused by the global pandemic. Customers hesitant to use shopping apps before took to them in record numbers last year.
According to research by Internet Retailing, time spent in shopping apps grew by 45% globally in 2020.
At ADAMAPP, we know how effective loyalty apps are at increasing profits. Our clients have achieved the following from the apps we have built for them:
Customers with the brand’s loyalty app on their phones spend 2.5 times across all shops and platforms as customers without the app.
Customers who shop in the app spend 3x as much as those who shop on the website.
Push notifications in the apps lead to a 25% conversion rate.
Brands with our loyalty apps have achieved a 50% reduction in marketing costs.
An increase in sales, decrease in marketing cost and more happy customers - loyalty apps are rewarding across the board.
Loyalty App Tips
Customer loyalty apps are no longer a novelty, which means you have to make them better to stand out from the crowd. As we’ve seen above, though, it’s not just about piling on points or rewards - although you certainly need those. You also need to ensure a smooth shopping experience and excellent customer service, all within the app.
❕✏️✏️ At ADAMAPP, we’ve built loyalty apps for numerous clients, reaching millions of customers. Our experiences has shown us that these are some of the key elements you should consider including in your own loyalty app:
Personalisation of the app’s homepage, content, offers and shopping suggestions.
Voucher creation that targets a customer’s interests, based on segmentation.
A digital loyalty card that’s available for both online and in-store use.
Linking bank details and storing credit card numbers securely to facilitate ease of future purposes.
Connecting your combined loyalty and e-commerce app seamlessly across all platforms so that a customer can browse on one device, then switch to another to find their same favourites, preferences and shopping basket items available.
Making points collection simple and the total amount earned clear in the app.
Offering bonus rewards for shopping in the app, which helps increase revenue by keeping customers without your ecosystem.
Targeting push-notifications appropriately, according to segmentation and target groups.
Utilising hologram push-notifications for special offers.
ADAMAPP Loyalty Apps
We’ve developed highly successful and award-winning loyalty apps for many clients, including Tesco, Mi9 and Portmonka (a multi-loyalty card platform).
For Tesco, for example, the combined e-commerce and loyalty apps we created for them in seven countries around the world have achieved some outstanding results, including reaching more than 12 million customers with push notifications. These led to 25% conversion into purchases, significantly boosting profits. The algorithm we use means the apps work perfectly across all types of devices and platforms, ensuring maximum reach of the company’s diverse customer base.
ADAMAPP has the expertise and insights to help you get the most out of your loyalty app, so if you’d like to discuss your plans for one, please get in touch.