Do you know how to create a customer loyalty cards and use it to your business’ advantage?
Nowadays, business climates all around the world have become a constant stream of innovation and change. The old saying ‘one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out’ has never been more fitting to describe the everyday life of modern business owners.
To top it all off, modern times have brought new milestones that we need to reach in order to stay in the game.
The one thing that has remained a constant in every business climate is the fact that customers are and should always be the focal point of every business.
The formula of sustainability seems pretty simple – every business strives to get as many customers to purchase their products or services as they can. But what many businesses often fail to do is transform these buyers into loyal customers.
Loyalty cards have been the gateway to achieving this challenge.
Before we dive into how to create a digital loyalty card, let’s look at the bigger picture.
What Are Digital Loyalty Cards?
Loyalty cards have been deemed the number-one marketing strategy and are a key part of traditional customer loyalty program for small businesses. Since retained customers buy more frequently than new customers, loyalty is a crucial part of sustaining a business.
Although loyalty cards have been an effective way of achieving this, the world has made a shift towards full digitalization. Therefore, businesses rushed to update their loyalty programs and the world was introduced to digital loyalty cards.
One of the obstacles that most business owners face today is learning how to create a digital loyalty card and use it correctly.
A digital loyalty card is an incredible marketing tool used to transform ordinary customers into returning ones. Most businesses achieve this by awarding customers after they’ve purchased their products or services while using their cards.
Think of loyalty punch cards you’ve received from coffee shop loyalty or markets.
Why not get your latte from the place that’ll give you the next one for free, right?
If so, wouldn’t it be easier to have it all on a single phone app instead of digging through your wallet?
The fact is, making the shift to the virtual has made marketing more effective, and given digital loyalty programs a plethora of opportunities.
How to Create a Digital Loyalty Card?
While many owners wonder how to create a digital loyalty card, there are multiple aspects to consider first.
Set Your Goals
The goal is the same with traditional customer cards – increase the number of customers and encourage them to come back.
For the most part, this goal should apply while you’re thinking of how to create a digital loyalty card, but you can’t be thinking of just that. The virtual environment grants more opportunities for your loyalty program to help with other marketing or operational strategies. Think of your general business goals and how you can make other programs benefit them.
Traditional loyalty punch cards can’t track the success of the programs or engage your customers, but going digital can make that happen for you. KPIs have an important role in businesses achieving their key objectives, and digital loyalty cards can be a perfect tool in the process.
So before moving forward, set your goals in the most effective way possible and think about which goals will benefit your business the most.
Know Your Customers
No, really – know your customers!
Knowing your customers does not only include their age, gender, and residence, but also their behaviour. Implementing loyalty cards means building a new habit for your customers. The more you know about them, the easier you’ll learn how to create a digital loyalty card they’ll actually use.
By the time you reach the last step and have a functioning loyalty program, getting to know your customers will be a breeze. Digital cards are a practical approach to finding out how your customers interact with your business. In turn, this will give you a better insight on how to craft effective engagement and reward plans.
Build Your Digital Loyalty Card
Got your goals in place and a clear picture of who you’ll target? Now it’s time to build the actual loyalty card.
There are many ways to execute this, but the most efficient one is to find a company that creates loyalty programs.
You’ll get the best of both worlds when you have someone who knows exactly how to turn your idea into reality. Today, there are many companies that offer loyalty softwares and know exactly how to create a digital loyalty card that best suits your business.
Instead of having one more thing to worry about, you can outsource your loyalty solution. Today you have a handful of options to choose from, all due to the growing number of companies providing these particular services.
Make sure to choose someone that will truly care for your customers’ loyalty!
Distribute Your Digital Loyalty Card
At this point, you already have your card, but now you must plan how to distribute it in the most effective way possible.
From a business perspective, this is where you can best see the difference between a traditional loyalty punch card and a digital one.
With the traditional paper loyalty cards, you have to come face-to-face with your customers and find the most suitable engagement to make them your users.
Thanks to digital cards, there are many other ways of achieving this.
For instance, you can use QR codes, emails, SMS, social media promotions, and other appealing tactics to get your customers to use your digital loyalty card. This is also where you have to get creative and go back to step two – using your knowledge on how your customers behave and crafting the most efficient distribution business plan.
Make sure to remember that innovation is the unrelenting drive to break the status quo!
What To Expect Once You Implement Digital Loyalty Cards
Now that you have a better understanding of how to create a digital loyalty card, it’s important to know what to expect once it’s successfully implemented as part of your business.
Increase in sales
The end-goal of loyalty programs is to create returning customers. Numbers show that if businesses reach a 5% increase in customer retention, they can achieve an increase in profits by up to 90%.
With this, the worries of constantly attracting new customers and making enough profit to stay sustainable will fade.
Better relationship with customers
People want to feel valued, especially when it comes to using brands.
Once customers start using your loyalty cards and see the rewards come rolling in, it’s more than likely that their trust and positive experience levels will grow.
This will ultimately lead to your business building a strong and trusting relationship with its customers – something you should always strive to achieve and maintain.
New Customers
Don’t underestimate the power of word-to-mouth promotion. Once you have loyal customers, the chances that they’ll bring new ones are high as well. People prefer to make choices based on someone else’s experience, so every satisfied customer can result in scoring a new one.
Why GlueLoyalty?
Now that we’ve helped you understand how to create a digital loyalty card, we want to help you further and become part of your loyalty-experience.
With Glue, you get the privilege of choosing one of our programs and letting us take it from there. We will effortlessly help you understand all kinds of loyalty programs and which are best suited for your business and your customers’ needs.
So the next time you’re thinking about creating a digital loyalty card, just visit our website for some expert guidance – we got you!
