Introduction
The shopping malls are a melting pot of customer experiences & for the past couple of years they are at the center-stage for yet another reason – being most affected by the pandemic. An industry which was already dumbstruck with the popularity of E-Commerce has lost the appeal of the brick-&-mortar retail experience because of the pandemic. With these adversities around the corner, the mall owners are forced to look for creative ways through which they can pull back customers to the shopping mall. Of course, that is possible once the pandemic is over but as the good news about it hits the market, owners are looking for innovative ways to welcome customers, retain them & increase their lifetime value. In this blog, we will provide you some hot tips on how to run customer loyalty management programs for your shopping malls. As we have introduced you to the blog, we will take this opportunity forward to list the points which will help you in winning the customer loyalty game. Here it goes –
How can you make loyal customers for your shopping malls?
Be customer centric
Many times, empathy simplifies things, when your marketing hacks are proving to be ineffective, try it, it may help. Look at the shopping mall loyalty program through the customers’ eyes. So, here you will have to consider numerous points. One, Analyse the joining – What are its benefits? Is the loyalty program easy to understand? Two, people are protective of their data, so, are you clear how you will use data to reward customers? Three, how will your program improve the customer experience? How will shopping be more enjoyable while offering value to customers? Four & final, how can you make their experience friction less? Smooth their way & they will love it. Can you do it? That’s the point.
Make reward points earning & redemption easy
Though spending patterns might be a demographic call, there are a few golden tips to remember. Don’t delay things – credit rewards points as soon as the people have earned them. This has many advantages for you – It makes customers happy. If they instantly earn the reward points they may soon visit your mall again to redeem it. Therefore, choose a software solution which credits rewards points in real time. Another point is exchange rate, keep it simple & lucrative, for example, 10 points = 1 USD. This way they will be able to realize that they are actually benefiting from the mall loyalty programs and they will like to join it.
Customer segmentation
You cannot drive all customers in the same bus, some will prefer to be in the super-expensive cars and you will care for that, why? Because not all customers spend equally. Some will spend more than the others. A recent study has found out that top 10% customers will account for the 25% of the sales. Love such customers, right?. Welcome them, their footfall means high value sales, the reverse will drain you out of cash. So, segment your customers, we are not saying customers with less purchasing power are not important, but then, one needs to have different ways to deal with different customer segments. Optimize your communication through best loyalty apps for each segment for the best result.
Reward social engagement
Social media is already making news everyday, they can act as a powerful influencer for many customer groups. The trick lies in letting people on social media who like your brand act as an extension of your marketing team. And you can do this by rewarding their certain actions. Which actions should you reward? – When someone is doing word-of-mouth marketing for you, as you already know how powerful it is. When someone is popularising your brand by sharing your posts. When people are taking time to give their honest feedback. All these actions should be rewarded through a loyalty program app & by how much that you decide. That’s where you need to get your data on your earning & spending together & work out mutually profitable reward programs for your social media evangelists.
Technological help
Nobody has made technological help compulsory but it has become customary with time. In this field, there is a lot of technology innovation that has taken place & you can rely on automation to provide a rich customer experience. Map customer journey & automate it as much as possible. Here are a few milestones which you can automate – welcome emails, rewarding first transaction, reaching spending milestones, surprising customers & many others. This will help the marketing team to focus on the more valuable tasks like generating insights & not on repetitive, manual tasks. If you want to win customers for your big loyalty programs you will have to ensure that it doesn’t fall in the trap of repetitiveness. For that you will have to send targeted, segmented content at the opportune time through retail loyalty solutions.
Surprises which make one happy
We all love surprises, don’t we? Therefore, the brands which create a very strong emotional connection with their customers through mixing rewards with signing up win many loyal customers. Surprises create powerful ‘whims’ for customers to re-visit their store & purchase more. With this, retailers will get engaged & we get the desired result – high-spending customers. Researches suggest that by using these tactics, shopping mall owners can expect up to 25% increase in customers turning in for loyalty programs. Most purchase decisions are emotionally motivated and surprise & delight tactics weigh up high on the gratification chart. This way you can keep customers interested & motivated.
This is an app-driven world
It’s needless to say that it’s a mobility-driven world. Mobile apps ensure that organization is always in the customers’ palm & it’s just a message away. As you can provide just one app for all your shopping malls, it’s easy to do branding with it. Businesses have always experimented with provisioning & this time around they are offering the shopping centre loyalty app in AaaS (App as a service) model so that customers can benefit from it & enjoy the new features by paying little fees. Apps have push notification & geo-location features through which you can personally welcome customers on arrival & provide them customized content while they are shopping. Also, instead of providing a physical loyalty card, providing the services through app make things more contemporary.
Strategizing business with data
Apart from the direct objectives of your loyalty programs they also prove to be helpful through the data which they generate. Customer data is precious, you get it in plenty through customer loyalty programs. This data can be used for multiple purposes. You can use such data for creating marketing strategy which includes advertising spend, channel performance, & marketing campaigns. Loyalty programs generate data to evaluate RoI of such programs. Mall owners can also use them for building better relations with tenants & compare their performances. They can also use it as a basis for lease agreement renewal.
Conclusion
Success of a loyalty program depends on the number of people joining it & then how such program fulfils your business objective. This blog is surely going to benefit the shopping mall owners who look for ways to create & manage a comprehensive loyalty program which encompasses their complete portfolio of malls & tenants. One more thing, WovVTech – a leading business productivity software company offers OKEN SaaS platform for mall management and loyalty program, powering a mobile app that can be easily configured, designed and launched in just within 3 to 4 weeks. Are you game for OKEN?! We look forward to serving you and your business needs.
