Over the past few years, we can witness how customer expectations towards the purchase process have changed. Offering the right product and service isn’t enough anymore to gain customer’s devotion, and it takes a lot more effort to encourage clients to stay loyal to your store. What matters most nowadays is the whole customer experience, because happy customers are more likely to come back. This is how loyalty programs have gained their popularity and became one of the most effective methods to maintain existing clients or acquire new ones. In this 5 minute read, we guide you through the core information about them. 

What is a Loyalty Program?

It’s a marketing strategy that uses various benefits for recurring purchases to encourage customers to come back to our store. There are different types of loyalty programs that reward clients for progressively spending money at our business, and each of them contributes to creating a stronger bond with the client. 

Why is it a must in modern e-commerce? 

As we mentioned before, the customer’s primary value doesn’t lay solely in the product – it’s the whole shopping experience that matters. Nowadays, companies should aim to build a valuable and long-lasting relationship with their customers and focus on the duration of the said bond rather than on the value of a single purchase. 

Customer Lifetime Value indicates how much revenue a single client generates for a company during the customer journey. The longer the relationship lasts, the more we can expect from a single client account.

Loyalty programs are one of the best tactics that help us accomplish this goal.

“The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20 percent.”
~Source: Altfeld

“Companies with strong loyalty marketing programs grow revenues 2.5 times faster than their competitors and generate 100-400% higher returns to shareholders.”
~Source: HBR

“Increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25% to 95%.”
~Source: Harvard Business School

“75% of customers report they are more likely to make another purchase after receiving a loyalty reward.”
~Source: Wirecard

Loyalty programs help provide a better customer experience to your clients, make them feel appreciated, and create a stronger bond between you two. When clients become devoted to a brand, they tend to spend more money on a product or service by this particular brand. Loyalty programs are also great marketing tools – they help track the purchasing trends of your customers, broaden your mailing list database, and enhance word-of-mouth advertising. 

Use cases

• Points Programs – for a certain amount of money, clients obtain points that they can later exchange for some kind of rewards.
• Spend Programs – customers get benefits for the definite amounts spent at your store.
• Tier Programs –  are based on loyalty levels. Customers get points for spending money in your store, and with more points, they reach the next milestone. That lets them enter a new level in which they can exchange their points for better benefits. 
• Paid Programs – customers pay a fee to join a loyalty club that gives them access to premium services, discounts, or unique opportunities, which are only available in the club.
• Value-Based Programs – when customers spend a certain amount of money at your store, some percentage of it will be donated to a charity.
• Partnered Programs – cooperation with other companies that sell complementary products or services to yours, offering members discounts on one another’s services.
• Game Programs – customer has to complete a specific task to obtain benefits. 

How does the Loyalty Program work in Sylius Plus?

Sylius Plus uses the most common e-commerce loyalty program – cards e-commerce Points Program. Customers earn a specific number of points for spending previously defined amounts of money at your store. These points can then be redeemed for coupons with the discount rules defined by you, f.ex. discount codes for the total order, free shipping, and many more. 

As an admin, you can define the point collecting rules that will apply at your store, and thanks to omnichannel loyalty, you can have different rules for each channel.

In the “Loyalty purchases” section, you can modify coupon distribution based on total points possession and assign any promotion to it. 

Are you keen on boosting your customers’ loyalty?

Don’t wait and see how you can provide a better customer experience today!

We will gladly advise you on the implementation of the Loyalty Program into your business.