Introduction
Where does the inspiration of customer loyalty kick in? How do shopping malls generate & salvage customer loyalty? In this hypercompetitive world, to succeed, retailers including shopping malls need to have a three-pronged approach of appealing to customers’ heart, mind & wallet. KPMG in its survey of 18000+ customers in 20 countries found that around 75% of customers will switch brands for better loyalty programs. This emphasizes how critical it becomes to have a successful loyalty program probably with the help of a loyalty app for your shopping mall. Having decades of experience in this field & having initiated, run, & improvised many successful loyalty programs especially in the retail sector, we – a part of WovVTech – in this blog, will pull the strings on how to generate a successful loyalty program. Shopping mall owners, retailers, & other customer loyalty enthusiasts, here is the prize, don’t miss it.
Ideating & developing
When ideating the loyalty program always have the core of your business in mind. Your KPIs should be the cornerstone based on which the foundation of a long-haul loyalty program should be built. If a random idea crossing your mind or reflecting on competition is the basis of launching a loyalty program, then such a program will struggle to succeed. There are a few questions which you need to ask yourself when conceptualizing the program, here are they—
- What business objectives are going to drive this program launch?
- Is this program going to complement an existing program (if any) or is it going to be a new start?
- How can you make the loyalty program look like a natural offshoot of your brand identity?
- Are you partnering with any survey agencies or market research firms to determine what customers have in their mind?
- Are you going to use any loyalty app for shopping malls?
Finding genuine & thorough answers to these questions will lead you to develop a strong business case for your program. There are a few other pointers which you need to mull over right in the beginning of the initiation—
- The cost factor
- The time factor
- The human resource factor
- The technical limitations (Hardware & Software)
Though every implementation is different, we have observed there is a striking case of commonality across various implementations. Based on these insights which have been supplemented by digital disruptions right from the beginning, we have developed the following loyalty program implementation & management cycle.
Scheming & implementing
After you have ideated & conceptualized the shopping mall loyalty program it’s time to spring into action to take the program further head. There are a few approaches to implementation –
Do It Yourself (DIY):
If you are a small organization, you lack scale, if you are a big enterprise, your loyalty program has to be gigantic. Either way, the DIY route is going to be a nasty approach in the sense it will cost some serious amount of money & resources. You will have to indulge in basic research on customer behaviour & UX trends which will be like ‘reinventing the wheel’.
Hiring a company:
They have the expertise, experience, & the motivation to create an alluring & tailor-made loyalty program. They can give you a hand in every task right from beginning to the end & even look after the post launch communication & management strategy. However, there is one caveat – it comes with a too high sticker price.
Using an off-the-peg solution:
This is the trend these days. The solution providers have deep expertise for every industry niche; having run several implementations they can make your life simple & give you piece of mind both in terms of time & money. This is where our expertise at WovVTech lie. Our OKEN – a SaaS platform that can power a loyalty app both on android and iOS, is the solution out of the best loyalty apps for your exclusive requirements.
Initiating & promoting
Here are the guiding principles of initiating & promoting a customer loyalty program:
Have a plan
Have a clear roadmap how you would move ahead with the launch. Be clear in your mind what are the results which you want to achieve by the launch. Do you want to generate a big buzz on social media around the launch? Invite trend-setters & influencers to experience the program beforehand? Or do you want to proceed by making your room with word-of-mouth strategy & then drive enrollment by letting people pre-register before launch?
Start with a niche customer group
Going all the way right at the start might not always be a great idea. Sometimes you need to test the waters with a controlled, small-scale launch, & then go ahead & make it big as the program unfolds. So, start with a small group of trusted customers who are loyal to your brand.
Get the human resource ready
By getting ready we don’t mean just sending a company-wide intimation e-mail. You have got to be right at the top in terms of having your staff ready. One, give specific instructions to customer service. Two, train store assistants to handle customer queries. Finally, have the team ready to run the program.
Build a communication strategy
Create an omnichannel promotion communication strategy. So, how are you going to paint the town? Advertise on websites, promote in-store, send emails, and publish newsletters & social media ads. Keep personalization at the core of your message & then people will wholeheartedly participate in your launch.
Scrutinizing & improving
After the loyalty program is going ahead in full swing through your shopping centre loyalty app you need to find out how it affects the key metrics of your business. Here the three metrics which you need to focus on to:
Conversion:
It gives you an estimate of how many of your website visitors are enrolling for the program. Using analytics tools like Google Analytics you can find out which touch points or marketing methods are most effective in ensuring customer enrolment. Analyze the numbers, investigate ‘plateau performances’ & optimize your program accordingly.
Analyzing member engagement:
After the results of the conversion are in your hands, go after discovering the members behaviour with regard to your program. Try to find answers to questions like What actions are they taking within the program? What are their balance loyalty points? How many points have they redeemed? How many rewards have they received? Analyze these numbers, investigate churn, & do the necessary program optimization.
Revenue:
You will have to calculate how the program is affecting your revenue? Taking help of the embedded analytics, you can easily find out how much revenue has been generated on account of the program.
Building on the loyalty program
This is the final phase of the program cycle before again going onto the planning board. Here you will make decisions based on the past analysis which will drive future revenue. Our recommendation for most cases is to launch a program on the MVP model. It’s a vanilla program which can be further feature-enhanced & embellished based on the member feedback. Once the program is in full swing, you can improve it by adding features such as gamification, badges, hybridization, & others.
Conclusion
With retail facing seismic changes due to digital disruptions & changing customer behaviour, many organizations are investing hugely in technology & human resources to drive insight & innovation which helps in making better future strategy. Not going far, WovVTech is on the path of integrating disruptive & futuristic technologies like AI & ML to design future-ready solutions. We introduce our OKEN – a SaaS platform that powers both android and iOS app, custom made to suit your loyalty program. As consumer behaviour changes & business model evolves, creating a cutting-edge loyalty program will be a key strategy along with the business drivers to determine the market leaders of tomorrow. Partner with us to be the one.
