If you have a food brand, have you thought about starting your own loyalty scheme?
The idea behind loyalty programs is quite simple – businesses implement them to understand, reward, engage and retain customers, which in turn, leads to frequent customer purchases and an increase in sales.
Take a look in your purse or wallet; how many loyalty programs do you belong to? Your own collection may range from big brand names to your local coffee shop, and yet, many smaller businesses are unsure about what they can offer when compared to bigger businesses. But loyalty programs are not limited to just big businesses. Even if your food brand or food business is ‘small’ a well devised loyalty program can work wonders for your food business and your overall food brand.
Here at Eat Marketing, we’re whizzes at creating the right loyalty programs for our clients as we believe that, by looking closely and individually at each and every food business we work with, we can identify what works and why.
Take a look at our top five tips to creating a successful loyalty program and feel inspired…
Keep it Simple
If customers find your loyalty scheme easy to follow, they’re more likely to sign up to it and understand it.
Do your Market Research
Talk to your regular customers, find out what they want from a loyalty program and look at what would work best for your food business… print or online? A simple card with a ‘collect stamps’ scheme could work really well for a small, local coffee shop. Even well known, nationwide coffee chains such as Café Nero still use printed and stamped cards alongside the option to have an app.
Whereas a takeaway with more than one business premises may benefit from an app that customers show and scan every time they buy something so they can collect ‘rewards’. Although online reward schemes cost more to implement, if they are researched and launched carefully, the flexibility of what they can offer in terms of features can prove very successful.
Reward types
Consider various rewards you could offer, and how each of these could be of benefit to your customers. One of the most popular loyalty programs is a ‘points’ program, where customers are rewarded based on how much they spend with you. These points are stored, on a card or an app, and can be redeemed in various ways such as against customer purchases or as a discount.
The Starbucks loyalty program, can be used via a card or app, is a great example of this type of reward. Customers can redeem their rewards in real time as well as benefit from other perks as it operates on a premium rewards level system. This means it uses different levels – or tiers – which encourages customers to shop and spend more to reach a higher level, and therefore reap more rewards. Customers can even use the app or card to pay!
A loyalty app can also incorporate marketing features such as allowing users to find your nearest store, order and pay for food in advance and skip the queue. Starbucks has a whole page dedicated to explaining how their app works, as well as a video. No wonder it’s one of the best loyalty programs in the food and beverage industry!
Do the Data
Customer loyalty programs offer more than just customer retention and interest, they can tell you a lot about customer behaviour. What makes your customers come back for more (different rewards or incentives will show this) as well as what they choose to buy.
Bakery brand Greggs have an app that is a great example of how a food business is using their loyalty program to track customer behaviour. By using Eagle Eye technology, Greggs tracks customer spending habits, which are then verified and used to push tailored offers to every individual customer. Greggs were also the first to market a digital loyalty scheme in the UK food-to-go sector and the customers can use this mobile app to pay for their Greggs goodies, as well as enjoy those personalised offers.
Focus
When it comes to customer loyalty programs, don’t aim to please everyone as the incentives will be lost. Instead, focus on who your most loyal customers are and target them.
Want to know more about loyalty programs and what could work for you? Don’t worry if apps aren’t your thing, there’s plenty of ways to get customers to sign up for your loyalty scheme. From simple stamp cards to email sign ups and exclusive clubs (check out Cheltenham based fish and chip shop Simpsons, who have an exclusive ‘Fry-yay’ club which gives customers all the latest news, special offers and discounts) we can help find the right loyalty scheme for your business.
Contact us today and let’s promote loyalty together!
