Building a loyal customer base isn’t just good for business—it’s essential for long-term growth.
The right customer loyalty software can help you reward repeat buyers, boost retention, and turn customers into brand advocates.
To help you find the best solution to build and manage your program, we have reviewed the best loyalty program software and apps to level up your program and fully realize the benefits of a great customer loyalty program!
Customer loyalty software allows businesses to design, manage, and measure loyalty programs that incentivize repeat purchases and long-term customer relationships.
It serves as the system of record for loyalty activity, tracking customer behavior, assigning rewards, and automating retention campaigns across channels such as e-commerce, POS, email, SMS, and mobile.
At a functional level, customer loyalty software enables a business to:
Loyalty software is the management platform a business uses to build and manage its loyalty program. Many loyalty programs operate entirely via web, email, or checkout integrations, without needing a customer-facing app.
Loyalty apps offer a way for your customers to engage with your program, track their points, redeem rewards, and discover new offers they can work towards.
Apps are particularly useful for e-commerce as they can integrate directly with your e-commerce platform, and many offer additional features to gather reviews and user-generated content (UGC) for your store.
These are the top solutions to create and run your customer loyalty program, for both online and brick and mortar stores:
Preferred Patron Loyalty is a private-label SaaS program for loyalty marketing, customer engagement, marketing automation and gift card processing.
They offer one of the most complete loyalty solutions available today, serving small, medium and large businesses across most industries since 2004, including B2C (business to consumer), B2B (business to business) and B2E (business to employee).
From incentive programs to VIP points, digital rewards, mobile wallet, cash back, referrals and gamification to SMS and Email Marketing, your loyalty management won’t go unnoticed!
You can supply your own rewards or offer digital rewards from major brands.
Preferred Patron Loyalty is best used by brick-and-mortar businesses, either standalone or within POS platforms such as Square, Clover and VendHQ Retail POS.
Additionally, clients with an online presence benefit from seamless integrations to e-commerce systems like Shopify, Pxier and Gloria Foods Online Ordering, as well as options for selling e-gift cards online.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 4.8/5
Website: preferredpatron.com
And, of course, our favorite loyalty software, Smile.io!
Smile.io allows you to launch a program with features such as VIP, points, and referrals. It currently serves over 50 million members and keeps growing.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 4.5/5
Website: smile.io
Candy Bar is a web-based loyalty software for brick-and-mortar stores. It aims to create reward programs for engaging repeat customers. With every visit, customers earn a stamp that resembles a digital version of a standard loyalty punch card.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 4/5
Website: candybar.co
Perkville is perfect for membership-based businesses that are looking to reward their customers. Perkville integrates with various industry-specific POS systems allowing you to give out rewards to those who complete certain actions.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 3.5/5
Website: https://www.perkville.com/
SpotOn is a loyal software best used by brick-and-mortar businesses that want to increase new foot traffic. It has various additional features such as online review access, marketing solutions, and an analytics dashboard. There is a mobile app for customers to find your business, search for deals, and track rewards from multiple businesses.
Pros:
Cons:
Website: https://www.spoton.com/
Pricing: $35-$195/month
P2P Rating: 3.5/5
Loyalzoo is a loyalty software that uses the gamification concept to help businesses improve their retention. Just like CandyBar and SpotOn, it works with digitized punch-cards. LoyalZoo strives to increase the interaction between the merchant and customers.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 4/5
Website: loyalzoo.com
Marsello is a very effective omnichannel marketing app, which focuses on turning promising shoppers into loyal customers.
This Shopify loyalty app offers a great customized rewards program, through targeted SMS and email marketing campaigns.
Marsello is a wonderful tool for assisting you in your business, particularly when it comes to understanding your marketing and reaching out to your customers in the most effective way.
Behind the scenes, the app will segment customers based on their shopping history, spend data and visit frequencies, and automatically send emails that encourage customer engagement, customer retention, and increased purchase frequency.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 4.5/5
Website: marsello.com
Rise.ai is a great, user friendly Shopify app, used to boost a business’s customer sales and loyalty through an automated credit store solution.
Customers who participate in the program receive a store-valued digital debit card and are able to top up and purchase items accordingly.
This app also allows businesses to customize their loyalty marketing through automated rule settings, based on order values, customer lifetime values and other customer segmentations. Customers are also able to follow an easy referral process through the app.
Pros:
Cons:
P2P Rating: 3.5/5
Website: rise.ai
If you’re using a platform like Shopify or Amazon, you can benefit from a purpose-built customer loyalty app that integrates directly with your e-commerce platform.
These apps offer a variety of features designed to retain and reward customers:
Growave is an all-in-one customer retention and engagement platform for Shopify merchants.
It helps online stores build and manage loyalty programs, referral marketing, customer reviews, and wishlists from a single integrated system.
Designed for both DTC and B2B brands, Growave supports loyalty and retention across the website, checkout, and POS, with flexible customization and integrations to help increase repeat purchases, customer engagement, and long-term growth.
P2P Score: 4.8/5
Website: https://www.growave.io/
Rivo Loyalty & Referrals is a customizable loyalty and rewards platform built for Shopify merchants.
It enables brands to create and manage loyalty programs, referral campaigns, VIP tiers, and rewards, all designed to increase customer engagement, repeat purchases, and lifetime value.
Rivo integrates with Shopify checkout, accounts, POS, and common marketing tools, with options for branding, analytics, and expanded functionality as merchants scale.
P2P Score: 4.7/5
Website: https://www.rivo.io/
Yotpo: Loyalty Rewards Program is a customer loyalty and rewards platform for Shopify merchants that lets you create and manage customizable loyalty, referral, and VIP programs without coding.
It helps stores encourage repeat purchases, build long-term customer relationships, and gain insights into engagement and revenue through a variety of pre-built campaigns and analytics dashboards.
P2P Score: 4.8/5
Website: https://www.rivo.io/
All in all, loyalty marketing is perfect for increasing retention and customer lifetime value, ultimately leading to higher profitability. You will certainly need some software to support your program; these are the best we have encountered. We hope one of them will be a good fit for your business.
These are tools to help you manage your program by integrating into your customer database and POS, maintaining customer records and communication channels, allowing you to select a subset or all customers to extend rewards or incentives, and monitoring customer behavior over time.
It is important to assess the software based on the following criteria:
1. User reviews and word of mouth- what are people saying about the software? What are your competitors using?
2. Demo & trial availability- can you clearly see how the software is used, and can you access a free trial? Does it solve some of your typical use cases and provide capabilities for future expansion?
3. Pricing- does it fit within your budget? Does it allow future expansion should your business grow?
4. Product features—Do the features function within yourx program and business niche? Can the tool map out your customer journey so you can easily segment and message based on customer lifecycle, e.g., extend a deeper discount to lapsed customers?
5. Ease of use- Will there be a steep learning curve for who will be managing the program? What about your customers?
6. Customer insights- can you easily extract actionable insights from the software to better inform future marketing and business decisions?
7. Integration—Your loyalty platform will certainly have to connect to your customer database, POS system, and other platforms such as CRM and social media; can the software provide past examples?
8. Security- your software will house your most valuable customer information, and any security breach will be costly; what measures is the tool taking?
9. Product support- your customer loyalty program management is in for the long haul. So should your platform. Does the tool have a strong support team so you can get help from integration to future feature expansion?
Here is a guideline of key questions to consider:
1. Set your goals- what are you trying to achieve with the program? Example: to encourage brand engagement, drive footfall, enhance personalization, or incentivize repeat purchases.
2. Numbers- how will you measure results?
3. Focus—Who is your target audience, and what percentage of customers do you want to participate in the program?
4. Money- how much will you spend on your program?
5. Technology- how will you implement your program?
6. Actions- what customer actions are you trying to encourage?
7. Incentives- why customers will be drawn to your program?
8. API- how will you link your program to your online store or POS?
9. Promote- how can customers be kept engaged long term?
10. Adjust- how can you improve your program based on what you learn from your customer insights?
Here is a list of helpful tips to consider:
• Offer customers what's valuable to them-discounts? knowledge? customizable products? convenience?
• Make rewards redemption easy- do your customers understand your program and get value out of it? Does reward redemption create bigger baskets and additional trips?
• Socialize your program by using social media platforms, word of mouth, and traditional advertising tactics (e.g., brochure at checkout, email signup on homepage) to grow awareness
• Increase adoption by clearly communicating benefits to join; continue to educate your customers wherever possible so the message sticks
• Show appreciation - it could be as simple as saying "thank you"; it could also be monthly, quarterly, or annual additional rewards (e.g., birthday rewards)
• Listen to your customers- allow multiple routes for customer feedback to keep hearing where you can improve
• Use deep data analytics- apply machine learning and predictive modeling to uncover additional sales opportunities, reengage lapsed customers, identify product offering/ feature/ assortment gaps, etc.
• Use customer insights for continuous improvement
Harrah’s Entertainment Customer Loyalty Program, or formerly known as the “Total Rewards” program is considered as one of the leading, gold standards of programs today. This program operates as a tiered program, where gamblers can earn a combination of Tier Credits and Reward Credits. Harrah’s uses a combination of good customized messaging and is powered by Unica’s marketing management software, as well as by SAS’s predictive-analysis program.
1. Points as currency: Customers collect reward points either through purchases or completing certain activities (e.g., sign up for text); points are subsequently converted to cash vouchers towards future purchases (e.g., Bloomingdales), exchange for products or services (e.g., airline points), or gifts (e.g., Sephora).
2. Cash as currency: These programs are similar to points-based in that customers still need to redeem loyalty rewards on a different transaction, but it saves potential customer confusion from conversions. For example, CVS extracare.
3. Paid membership: These programs require customers to pay an upfront fee for added benefits in products and services. A great example is Amazon Prime.
4. Coalition: These are often additional incentives on top of individual programs. A good example is airline alliances, e.g., Star Alliance rewards United customers when they fly Lufthansa in continental Europe.
Yes. The goal is to engage and retain customers, incentivize them to purchase more, and keep them with the brand rather than go to a competitor. For example, tier-based programs encourage customers to buy more to advance to the next tier and reap more benefits. Starbucks is known for its gamification to increase engagement and trips, e.g., bonus points for a certain amount of beverages within a specified time period. Additionally, many loyalty programs issue credit cards such that customers continue to shop elsewhere and collect points, increasing their likelihood of a redemption trip, and hence retention.
There are two main benefits. 1. Loyalty increases customer retention, which leads to higher customer lifetime value and, ultimately, higher profits. 2. Loyalty programs allow businesses to retain customer data and the resulted insights enable businesses to make better decisions
No. A loyalty program is a marketing tool to increase customer retention. CRM is often a tactical component of it, where businesses store customer information and communicate to either a segment or all customers, e.g., push notification of a targeted coupon to high-value customers. However, CRM is also used for other purposes, e.g., order confirmation emails.
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