It’s no news that when done well, loyalty programs have a significant impact on sales and customer retention. However, evolving tech coupled with the addition of new solutions to a retailer’s tech stack cause programs to be disjointed.
The good news is that KWI’s unified commerce platform (Loyalty, mobile POS, Merchandising, eCommerce, OMS, CRM) enables retailers to create a loyalty program that’s cohesive for a seamless and exceptional customer experience.
Learn about the challenge and solutions to the evolving retail tech stack, and why a unified commerce platform is a must for seamless customers experiences in our “Think Beyond Omnichannel” eBook.
We all know the benefits of loyalty programs — now, how do we get them to work?
You already know that loyalty programs are essential for creating an emotional connection between your customer and your brand. Loyalty builds long-lasting customer relationships that lead to increased sales. In fact, 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers. Moreover, 56% of customers stay loyal to brands that “get them.” In addition, a 5% increase in customer retention correlates with at least a 25% increase in profit.
Typically in loyalty programs customers earn their points and leverage them for freebies, exclusive experiences, discounts, and more. Here’s what this interaction with the customer means for the brands:
- Competitive advantage: Loyalty programs incentivize customers to choose your brand over your competitors.
- Increased sales: Customers enrolled in a loyalty program tend to spend more money and make more frequent purchases than non-members.
- Enhanced customer engagement: A well-designed loyalty program allows customers to interact with your brand through exclusive experiences.
- Valuable customer insights: Loyalty programs provide valuable data about preferences, behaviors, and needs to better inform your marketing, sales, and customer satisfaction strategies.
Issues with disjointed loyalty programs
Retailers often have a mix of fragmented legacy systems, homegrown solutions, and modern cloud-based tools that don’t offer real-time data integration or speak well with each other. The resulting data silos lead to unsatisfactory customer experiences. Customers confused or frustrated by loyalty programs that don’t offer a cohesive online and in-store experience may choose to shop elsewhere. This not only impacts sales at that moment, but it leaves customers with a bad taste in their mouth about your brand — influencing future business, reviews, and reputation.
Here are some examples of disjointed loyalty program issues that customers may experience:
- Inconsistent reward structures: Frequently changing or inconsistencies between online and in-store reward structures may be difficult to understand, causing customers to disengage.
- Difficulty redeeming rewards: Rewards that are challenging or time-consuming to redeem can cause a lack of motivation to participate. Customers want to see and activate rewards right from the POS at checkout.
- Inaccurate customer data: Without integration, retailers have to rely on manual entry or data import/export between their loyalty solution and other systems, which leads to data inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Retailers may not have accurate insights into customer behavior, purchase patterns, and preferences, limiting their ability to make data-driven decisions.
- Difficulty in rewarding customers: Non-integrated loyalty programs may not be able to track customer purchase history in real-time, making it difficult for retailers to offer personalized rewards, promotions, and discounts while the shopper is right in front of them.
- Inefficient program management: Non-integrated loyalty programs require manual tracking and rewards management, promotions, and customer data, which are time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient.
Benefits of an omnichannel loyalty program
Merging disjointed customer loyalty data can be complex. Thankfully, KWI provides a unified commerce solution that offers built-in integrations for seamless shopper experiences. Here are some of the benefits from having fully integrated solutions.
- Frictionless POS experiences: In-store staff can enroll new members and redeem current loyalty information with the same POS app they already use.
- Cohesive digital experiences: Customers can see up-to-date loyalty points in-store and online, including credits for purchases, redemption history, and more.
- Beyond omnichannel experiences: You can create omnichannel customer journeys by seamlessly integrating online, and in-store experiences, such as BOPIS, BORIS, ROPIS.
- Consistent branding: A true omnichannel experience also creates a cohesive brand identity across all touchpoints. This includes consistent messaging, branding, user experience design, and seamless, intuitive navigation across channels.
- Accurate customer data: Integrated loyalty programs provide retailers with real-time, accurate, and consistent customer data, including purchase history, preferences, and behavior, allowing retailers to offer personalized rewards, promotions, and discounts, even on-the-spot.
- Efficient program management: Integrated loyalty programs automate the tracking and rewards management, promotions, and customer data, reducing the time, effort, and cost of managing a loyalty program manually. Retailers have real-time insights into customer behavior, purchase patterns, and preferences, enabling them to create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. A reporting and analytics engine enables your team to regularly measure the effectiveness of your loyalty program. You can then use this data to make smarter business decisions, optimize loyalty program strategies, identify areas for improvement, and create more targeted marketing campaigns.
- Increased sales and revenue: Integrated loyalty programs drive repeat purchases, increase customer lifetime value, and encourage customers to spend more by offering personalized rewards, promotions, and discounts.
With a truly omnichannel loyalty solution, retailers increase customer engagement and build stronger relationships, and ultimately drive sales growth and competitive advantage. KWI’s omnichannel loyalty solution is integrated with our unified commerce platform (Loyalty, mobile POS, Merchandising, eCommerce, OMS, CRM) to drive sales without the backend hassles slowing you down.