13 Unique Ways To Implement Loyalty Programs And Boost Shopping!

Loyalty Programs aren’t a new concept for business owners, so you should know their benefits. Your competitors have already implemented a loyalty program. Hence, the point of consideration is how you plan to launch your loyalty reward points program to address customers’ interests.

75% of consumers believe earning rewards and loyalty points is one of the most valued aspects of the shopping experience, and they will also favor that particular company. You must have also considered implementing the same, but with a twist of uniqueness!

This blog will further entertain you and help you understand how you can become more creative in allowing your customers to earn points and some alluring ways to redeem the rewards.

Why Are Customer Loyalty Programs Important?

Marketing is not just about buying and selling goods and services. Once you have introduced the product well in the market, and you have a strong customer base. The next and crucial step is to make optimum utilization of this base.

You can do this if you decide to implement a loyalty program. It does not matter which niche your business belongs to, you can easily find ways to reward your customers and provide them with additional benefits.

All of us are a part of some loyalty program or the other. Yes, it is that common. A customer loyalty system gives you a fair chance to differentiate your business from your competitors. Loyalty programs give your business that unique characteristic that adds to its credibility.

We have listed some of the many benefits of these loyalty programs –

• Get ahead of competitors
• Helps with retaining customers
• Cost-effectiveness
• Improves your brand’s credibility and reputation
• Builds strong customer relationships
• Heightens the company’s revenue
• More customer referrals
• Minimizes slow seasons
• Stimulates word-of-mouth marketing, and so on…

How To Implement A Loyalty Program For Customer Points?

Winning loyalty reward points enthralls customers and motivates them to interact with the website/brand/store more often. These interactions thus further improve the revenue rate and show an increase in customer satisfaction.

However, you need to be very strategic in your approach to avoid the firm’s over-expenditure cost while implementing a loyalty program for customers. Many websites and eCommerce platforms nowadays offer loyalty reward points.

In many ways, too frequently categorized into one of the three categories mentioned below-

1. On The Product Display Page

Marketers can implement a loyalty program on the product display page or the catalog page of their website, which accounts for the highest traffic pages. Allowing points to customers on various activities performed on this page leaves a high tendency to attract more customers to join your loyalty program.

2. On The Cart Page

After adding products to the cart page, customers usually look for offers and promo codes for extra discounts and savings options. Therefore, it is also an opportunity to attract your customers to join your loyalty reward points program.

3. On The Activity Page

Many eCommerce and non- eCommerce websites create activity pages like the spin wheel, morning quiz, etc. The intention behind creating these pages is to attract more engaging traffic. And, from the perspective of customers, if you implement a loyalty program on these pages, it allows them to earn coupons and gain additional benefits.

With our loyalty plugin, merchants can boost engagement in their online stores. The interactive gamification feature introduces a “win-wheel” experience that captivates customers and drives participation while rewarding points for engagement, fostering loyalty, and repeat visits.

Complete customization control, from wheel design to engagement frequency, ensures the experience aligns seamlessly with your brand. By offering a unique, memorable, and tailored engagement, merchants can keep customers on their websites for longer and benefit from word-of-mouth marketing as excited customers share their experiences, ultimately leading to increased sales opportunities and a stronger online presence. These are some of its benefits that will help merchants to make their online store engaging and interactive.

The methods/techniques/ways adopted by the businesses in the eCommerce industry do fall in the above categories, but what are they, and how can they help you build a successful membership program?

But before jumping into the next section, it is also important to understand why merchants implement loyalty programs in their strategies and the various benefits that come from these.

Checklist For A Kickass Customer Loyalty Solution

We are taking the liberty to assume that you are all set and convinced to adopt a loyalty program for the betterment of your enterprise. If you are still not convinced, we request you to keep reading this article because, by the end of it, you’ll be all set to start your unique program.

But yes, there’s a but here. Before starting anything, you must know the requirements. It is crucial for building an efficient and effective loyalty program. So, let’s dive right in without wasting any time!

1. Choose A Great Name

Consider this loyalty program to be your brain baby. Now, as a parent, it is a great responsibility for you to be choosing a name for the campaign. The name should be unique— one-of-a-kind, creative, and something that stands by the beliefs and values of the campaign.

When Amazon started its loyalty program in February 2005. It was entirely new and unique. They had the first mover’s advantage. Amazon did a brilliant job naming this program. It is concise, simple, and easy to remember. They have, in a very crafty way, included the word “Prime”. This makes the individuals joining your program feel important.

2. Create A Sense Of Belonging And Meaning

More than anything, there are times when the customers feel that brands are formulating these programs just to juice out money and nothing else. This makes it even more important for the brand to introduce a campaign that has a sense of belonging and meaning.

For example, The North Face is a brand that incentivizes loyal members and also offers them the flexibility of using these earned points. This flexibility shows that the brand cares about its customers ‘ requirements.

3. Allow Variations In Earning & Redeeming

The sole purpose of these loyalty programs is to motivate customers to be loyal to your brand and encourage them to keep using your products or services. For this to happen, you must provide them with that flexibility.

Keeping this concept in mind, American Express introduced its “Plenti Reward” program.

The customers earn rewards from the partner brands across different industries, from gas stations or grocery stores. They keep track of one loyalty card and use it across various retailers and other brands. Now, the earned points get pooled together, and the customer can redeem them from any partner whenever they like.

Implement Loyalty Program: Earn & Redeem Points

Implementing a loyalty program is a powerful way to reward your customers. You can boost engagement, increase repeat purchases, and foster long-term customer loyalty. Discover how to seamlessly integrate a loyalty program into your eCommerce website and watch your customer satisfaction soar.

This section will help you understand ways to allow points to customers as loyalty rewards via the eCommerce rewards program.

1. Sign Up for Loyalty Points or Login Points

Are you expecting your customers to create a profile by signing up on your website? But why would they do so? When they can proceed with the easy checkout via the guest checkout process, why would they create an account with your website?

However, if you show them the benefit of creating an account on your website, they’ll surely be doing it your way. Hence, allowing WooCommerce rewards on every new sign-up and thereafter for every login is an easy-to-go-with solution for motivating customers to create their profiles.

Learn more about the working of these features by incorporating Points and Rewards!

2. Referral Points

We all know the power of “Word Of Mouth” and referral marketing in spreading the word about your business and products. So imagine a case where you can improve your referral policy by introducing your customers to your loyalty points rewards program. 

You can plan how customers earn points via reward points for WooCommerce and also plan surprise points for achieving specific referral landmarks. 

Also, you can make further levels and tiers for assigning additional referral points when your customers share the referral link via various social platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or any other messenger chat that you want to include.

3. Referral Purchase Point

As we talked about above, referrals bring in massive business if done with all efforts. The only motivation for the customers to perform better in referral marketing is the benefits they earn in return.

Often, it is seen that once the customers share their referral code with the referred user, they stop bothering the referred user with their actions because they have already earned their points there. So to avoid such situations, you can allow loyalty reward points to your customers when their referred users purchase on your website.

4. Subscription Points

The subscription points program is usually preferred by content-oriented websites that roll out informational/entertaining content. Therefore, allowing points on subscriptions to your customers will make them think that only by sharing a few details like their email addresses, they’re able to earn more points and,  of course, access to a lot of informational resources.

For example, a points-based reward system can be allotted to the readers of newsletters, blogs, or viewers of video-streaming websites like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

5. Review/Comments/ Feedback Points

Allowing loyalty reward points to customers on activities like leaving a review on the product they purchased or sharing their feedback regarding their experience is also a way to hear your customer’s views.

How can you make this unique? Simple, allow different points for different activities like:

• 1 point = Reviewing the product on a  scale of stars
• 1 point = Leave a comment/feedback in one line
• 5 points = Leave feedback/comments for more than 50 words.
• 10 points = Share pictures/videos/testimonials of the user experience.

6. Assign Product Points

Every business keeps monetizing the high-demand products to pace up their sales while often neglecting the seasonal bump offer products or products with comparatively low demand. The ultimate intent of the business owner is to make a sale and earn a profit. And if you do it along with the satisfaction of your customers, you get the best results.

Therefore, you can assign points to products – different types of products with different points. This will act as a catalyst for your customers since when they see that they are earning points if they purchase the product, they’ll surely be moved and will take action in your favor while thinking of their benefits.

7. Participation Points

eCommerce businesses often roll out a set of activities to keep their customers engaged and interacting. You can assign participation points to your customers who take part in those activities and get involved.

For Example,

• Providing points to customers upon visiting any page or staying and doing the activity on a particular page for a specific duration.
• Earning points via participating in activities like a spin wheel, daily quizzes, etc.
• Rewarding loyalty points to customers based on their user roles.

8. Rewards Points via Payment Method

To implement an engaging loyalty program in your WooCommerce store, consider allowing customers to earn reward points based on their chosen payment methods. By default, WooCommerce includes payment options like cash on delivery, direct bank transfer, and check payments. You can easily extend this to include other payment methods you have integrated into your store, such as credit cards, digital wallets, or even cryptocurrency.

This strategy not only incentivizes customers to complete their purchases using the payment methods they prefer. It also enhances their overall shopping experience. Imagine a customer earning points every time they opt for a specific payment method – it creates a sense of achievement and encourages them to return for future purchases.

Implement Loyalty Reward Points: Ways To Redeem Points

The points earned are useless to the customers if they can’t be redeemed for added benefits. The ways you allow your customers to redeem those points make your loyalty reward points program more exclusive and happening. Listed below are a few suggested ways to redeem the points earned by the customers.

 9. User Badges and Levels

Motivate your customers to earn reward points through various activities by awarding unique user badges. These badges represent different levels of achievement. This further creates a sense of accomplishment amongst your customers, and they are encouraged to buy from your store. 

But how will you do it? The Points and Rewards plugin is designed for customer engagement and loyalty! These badges represent different levels of achievement. The admins have full control over their position and level names. They can also set the milestone threshold for customers to reach their desired level with ease, and reward point values that the customers will get.

Plus, we understand the importance of aesthetics. Merchants can easily customize badge images to align with their brand. It’s a powerful, flexible, and visually appealing way to boost customer loyalty! 

Let’s quickly learn more about this, 

10. Coupon Vouchers

You can allow your customers to generate coupon vouchers to redeem the earned points. Simply mark a scale range of points; that is how many points account for what percent of coupon value.

For example-

• 5000 Points = $100Discount Coupon
• 10000 Points = $250Discount

And so on…

11. Discounts

The most preferred way to redeem points is to get an additional discount while they’re making purchases. Hence, you can add an option to use some points on your cart page to provide additional discounts for the loyalty of your customers by redeeming their earned points in exchange.

12. Gift Cards

Very few businesses offer this method to redeem points for customers. Believe me, it is an incredible way to attract new leads via existing loyal customers.

If you allow your customers to redeem their earned points and convert those points to a gift card, it’s obvious that they’ll share that gift card with their dear ones, who will have to shop with you to redeem the gift card value.

Also, allowing the customers to redeem points to generate gift cards with customized messages will motivate them to earn more points because they’ll be able to gift their loved ones without spending any extra penny.

13. Zero Payment Purchases

This is also a very less preferred method by the eCommerce community to allow customers to redeem points by purchasing products worth the points. However, it is of high benefit if implemented because the customer would know that after they pay you for a few purchases to earn points, they’ll be able to shop for a product for free by redeeming their earned points.

Earning and redeeming loyalty reward points are done in many ways, as seen in the article. However, a few businesses are not satisfied with transactions of points and rewards. They wish to build a whole community for their loyal customers and to appreciate their loyalty in every possible way. Hence, combining the point reward system with the membership program is immensely beneficial for the purpose. How?

Let’s see this in the next and last section of this article.

Membership: A New Take On Loyalty Rewards!

With the booming trends of customer loyalty programs in various businesses, many variants were carved out to earn the privileges of the loyalty program differently from other ventures.

The Membership Program is a similar example. Although any business can incorporate this program, IT industries and/or Hospitality industries are especially looking for such programs. Even a high-profile brand like Google has used the Membership and Points & Rewards Program to build a community of its loyal users via the Local Guide program.  Initiated for the contributors of Google Maps.

So, when such a big, tyrannical company can roll out such programs, why can’t you?

Build a Membership Program

The very first step is to design a membership program that earns you equal benefits to your customers. Keep in mind that you’re creating the membership program to appreciate your loyal customers and not to go bankrupt ( Haha! Just Kidding).

You may follow the following key points while designing the membership program-

1. Plan out the levels of membership – Basic, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, etc.
2. Define the terms for attaining each level
3. List the requirements to be fulfilled at each level to attain the next level
4. Partially disclose the rewards of the next level to build excitement among your customers.
5. Define perks/benefits to be rewarded to customers for progressing each landmark over the existing level.

And more and more…

Ready to Start Your Own Loyalty Reward Points Program?

What if we now say that all the mentioned features are part of a plugin that you can incorporate into your eCommerce Store?  Crazy, isn’t it? Points and Rewards for WooCommerce is a plugin that was made because utilizing loyalty programs was the need of the hour for both small and large-scale businesses. 

Loyalty programs are of immense help for an eCommerce business trying to build its own community of loyal customers. These programs help businesses increase customer retention and experience while cutting down the extra expenses on advertising. Also, starting a loyalty program and maintaining it for the long run will benefit you in holding your existing customers intact. 

And here we, the team of WP Swings, can help you automate the processes for your loyalty reward points program with our plugin “Points And Rewards for WooCommerce”. This plugin is designed keeping in view the multiple features demanded by the customers and is easy to install & use. 

Don’t trust us? Continue reading the next section, as we unwind the success stories of some of the online stores that incorporated this plugin…

Wrapping Up

To conclude, having a dedicated points and rewards system in place is essential, seeing the current competition, store owners must incorporate marketing strategies that are different and unique, like dynamic and interactive WooCommerce reward systems.

We are done discussing a tool for implementing the simplest, least complicated, and yet highly effective technique to gain loyal customers – a points reward system. It is time to stop reading and start incorporating.

Give you a chance to incentivize your customers and build a community of loyal customers.

Happy Rewarding 🙂