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If you are in a business with short purchasing cycles or commodity products, you would understand retaining existing customers is so much easier and cheaper than acquiring new ones.
Once you have decided on the loyalty marketing details—program tiers, currency, loyalty rewards collection and redemption, and overall budget—you will almost certainly need customer loyalty software to manage it all. These tools are easy to integrate, don’t cost much, and can reap many long-term benefits by increasing your customer’s lifetime value (LTV).
In this article, we will discuss the top customer loyalty platforms to help with customer retention. Regardless of the size of your business and customer base, there is a solution for everyone.
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! 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 eGift Cards online.
Pros:
Cons:
Pricing: $29.95 to $299/mo per store.
Website: https://www.preferredpatron.com
P2P Rating: 4.8/5
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:
Website: smile.io
Pricing: $59-$299/month
P2P Rating: 4.5/5
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:
Website: https://www.candybar.co/
Pricing: 30-day free trial, then $45/month.
P2P Rating: 4/5
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:
Website: https://www.perkville.com/
Pricing: Starts at $99/month per location.
P2P Rating: 3.5/5
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:
Website: https://www.loyalzoo.com/
Pricing: Free trial, then $27-$7-/month per store.
P2P Rating: 4/5
Marsello is a very effective omnichannel marketing app, which focuses on turning promising shoppers into loyal customers. This Shopify 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:
Pricing: starts at $49 per month, with additional add ons.
P2P Rating: 4.5/5
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:
Pricing: $19.99 – $599.99/ month
P2P Rating: 3.5/5
For those of who are still unsure about which software to use, here are our picks:
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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