How Grocers Can Win With Customer Loyalty Programs
Giving Customers a Reason to Connect online
While many independent grocers don’t have the infrastructure to compete for ecommerce dollars, they can compete for mindshare and brand engagement online.
The ability to earn exciting rewards will inspire customers to visit your loyalty program website, which can exist as a stand-alone digital hub, a mobile app or as an integrated part of your customer website. This gives you a platform to share more about what makes you unique, in a space where customers are already being rewarded for interacting with your brand. Adding elements of gamification, such as daily trivia or limited-time bonus point promotions, incentivizes customers to keep coming back to your site in between reward redemptions.
Collecting Relevant Customer Data
Finally, customer loyalty programs can be a rich source of customer data, which grocery retailers can use to inform their sales and marketing strategies. The same customers who are reluctant to share their email addresses or phone numbers with retailers won’t think twice about using that same contact information to redeem a reward.
Custom registration forms or customer surveys can be used to supply grocery retailers with relevant data, from lifestyle and demographic information to customer interests. Loyalty program software gives insight into customer engagement and buying habits. All of this data can be sorted by store, region or customer type and integrated into existing customer relationship management metrics, so that grocery retailers can easily access and act on this data.
Grocers can use this information to personalize their marketing, re-engage customers and provide relevant support to facilitate the journey from part-time shopper to brand enthusiast. Think of it as a funnel: Rewards pique customer interest and reinforce desired behaviors along the way, but the real benefits of a loyalty program are realized when you take that initial engagement and use it to personalize relationships with your shoppers through your loyalty program.