One of the biggest challenges for any business is getting customers to keep coming back. After all, customer loyalty is what keeps a business thriving. This is why brands offer customer loyalty programs — to maintain lasting relationships and convert them into repeat buyers.
However, many brands make a common mistake. They think traditional loyalty programs, like air miles or points cards, are enough. While these traditional programs worked in the past, modern consumers now expect much more from the companies they spend their money on.
A study found that 76% of customers are likely to disengage after just one bad experience. This illustrates the high standards of today’s consumers. They aren’t just looking for rewards — they want seamless, personalized, and engaging experiences that make them feel valued and understood.
That’s why more brands are opting for omnichannel loyalty programs. Unlike traditional loyalty programs, omnichannel loyalty programs create a seamless journey for customers, ensuring consistency and personalization at all touchpoints — online, in person, or mobile. This ensures you reinforce trust and satisfaction throughout your customer journey.
What Is Omnichannel Loyalty?
An omnichannel loyalty program goes beyond traditional single-channel strategies by connecting with customers across multiple touchpoints. It allows you to meet your customers wherever they are, ensuring a consistent and personalized experience on every platform.
This means your customers can easily access and benefit from your loyalty program whether they’re shopping in-store, browsing online, or using a mobile app, making their experience more engaging and rewarding.
Imagine a customer who frequently shops at a clothing retailer. They use the retailer’s mobile app to browse new arrivals, receive personalized offers via email, and occasionally visit the physical store to try on clothes.
With an omnichannel loyalty program, customers can earn points for every purchase, whether online or in-store. When they use the app to make a purchase, their points are updated in real time, and they receive a push notification about an exclusive in-store event. At the store, the sales associate can access the customer’s profile, see past purchases, and offer personalized recommendations. Customers can also redeem their points for rewards through any channel, ensuring a consistent and rewarding shopping experience wherever they engage with the brand.
Benefits of Omnichannel Loyalty Programs
Here are some of the many benefits of omnichannel loyalty programs:
Seamless Interactions
An omnichannel loyalty strategy will help you give customers a smooth and cohesive experience across all touchpoints. So, whether they’re shopping in-store, browsing online, or using a mobile app, customers receive consistent and personalized interactions.
For example, customers can receive special discount offers via SMS and easily register for a VIP program using an in-store QR code. This seamless integration enhances the customer journey, making it more engaging.
Personalization
Personalization is a key way to engage customers and boost loyalty. An omnichannel approach allows you to tailor content and offers to individual customer preferences, creating stronger emotional connections with your customers and making them feel valued and understood. Thus, omnichannel personalization enhances the customer experience and drives deeper brand loyalty.
Data-Driven Insights
Omnichannel loyalty programs provide you with a wealth of data. You can use it to learn more about customer behavior and preferences. And, by analyzing this data, you can make informed decisions and create targeted marketing strategies.
Did you know that 91% of customers are likelier to engage with brands offering relevant and customized recommendations? Additionally, 83% of customers are willing to share their data in exchange for personalized experiences, highlighting the importance of data-driven insights.
Higher Customer Lifetime Value
Omnichannel loyalty programs can boost customer lifetime value by rewarding customers throughout the shopping journey. This makes them feel appreciated and valued, which encourages repeat business and long-term loyalty. Additionally, implementing tiered rewards that increase with higher engagement levels further boosts customer retention, ensuring loyal customers are consistently recognized and rewarded.
Improved Customer Acquisition
Providing a seamless experience across all channels helps you attract new customers and retain existing ones. When customers have a positive and cohesive experience with your brand, they are more likely to engage and stay loyal. This consistency builds trust and reliability, making it easier for you to acquire new customers through word-of-mouth and positive referrals.
Operational Efficiency
As omnichannel loyalty programs streamline communication and operations across various channels, they also help make your workflows more efficient. By consolidating efforts into a single, cohesive strategy, you can reduce costs and improve your return on investment (ROI). This efficiency allows for better resource allocation and more effective marketing campaigns.
Cross-Channel Synergy
An omnichannel strategy ensures that your customers can move seamlessly between different channels without interruptions. For example, a customer might start researching a product on a mobile app, continue exploring it on a website, and finalize the purchase in-store, with all the information and progress synced seamlessly. This cross-channel synergy enhances the customer experience allowing you to promote your products and services across different touchpoints, driving higher engagement and sales.
Want to deliver consistent experiences, across channels, for profitable revenue growth? Explore Bloomreach’s omnichannel orchestration solution.
10 Steps To Set Up an Omnichannel Customer Loyalty Program
Wondering how to get started? Here are 10 simple steps to help you build an effective omnichannel loyalty program:
Define Program Objectives
Start by identifying the primary reasons for creating your omnichannel loyalty program. This step is crucial as it sets the direction for your entire program.
Do you want to retain customers, collect valuable data for personalized experiences, or gain a competitive edge? Knowing your goals will help you create a focused and effective loyalty program.
Here are some objectives to consider:
- Boosting customer loyalty and retention
- Increasing customer engagement and interaction
- Gathering data for insights and personalization
- Promoting cross-selling and upselling
- Encouraging specific customer behaviors (e.g., using a mobile app over in-store)
- Segmenting customers for targeted marketing
- Reducing operational costs
- Differentiating your brand in the market
Understand Your Audience
Before launching an omnichannel loyalty program, you first need to develop a comprehensive understanding of your target audience. Creating detailed user personas can help you:
- Identify reward structures that best motivate customer engagement
- Determine the types of content your users prefer
- Map out which channels to include in your loyalty program based on where your audience is most active
Choose the Right Loyalty Model
There are various types of loyalty programs, each with a different approach and purpose. In this step, we’ll go back to the first step in our process, which is figuring out our “why.”
For instance, paid membership programs provide exclusive benefits for a fee, appealing to your most loyal customers. Value-based programs align rewards with customer’s values, such as sustainability initiatives.
It’s important to choose a rewards program that best fits your customer base and their behavior, as well as the nature of your business and what you’re selling. Watch our podcast episode exploring how you can tailor the best loyalty approach for your business:
Select Loyalty Program Features
Decide on the specific features of your loyalty program that will support your goals. These features might include loyalty points accumulation and redemption, tiered rewards, personalized offers, and special access to events or products.
For example, a points-based system could allow customers to earn points for every purchase, which they can redeem for discounts or free products. Personalized offers can be based on past purchase behavior, making customers feel valued and understood. Ensure these features are aligned with your customer’s preferences and enhance their overall experience, making the program appealing and worthwhile.
Integrate Channels and Systems
Ensure your loyalty program is seamlessly integrated across all touchpoints. This means customers should have a consistent experience whether they’re shopping in-store, online, or through a mobile app.
Integration includes linking your loyalty program with in-store systems, POS, mobile apps, online platforms, social media, email marketing, SMS, and chatbots.
For instance, customers should be able to earn and redeem points online and in-store without hassle.
Choose Loyalty Program Software
Choosing the right loyalty program software is crucial because you don’t want to complicate things with multiple apps and integrations. An ideal solution should allow you to manage your data and all your marketing channels using a single customer view.
At Bloomreach, we offer a unified platform that allows you to create email, SMS, mobile messages, and more. It also helps you design sophisticated omnichannel journeys using the easiest drag-and-drop orchestration tool on the market. Only Bloomreach can seamlessly execute any use case you dream up.
Launch and Promote the Program
Execute a well-planned launch strategy to introduce your loyalty program. Use a variety of promotional channels to maximize reach and impact.
Email newsletters can inform existing customers about the program, social media campaigns and ads can attract new customers, and in-store events and promotions can create excitement. Your website should prominently feature information about the loyalty program, and staff should be trained to assist customers with any questions or issues.
A successful launch generates awareness and enthusiasm, encouraging customers to sign up and start participating.
Monitor and Measure Performance
Regularly analyze the performance of your loyalty program to ensure it meets your objectives. Collect and study customer data to assess engagement, satisfaction, and the impact on sales and retention.
For example, you can track how many customers are participating, how often they redeem rewards, and how the program affects their purchasing behavior. Now, use this data to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance the program.
A centralized database, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) system, can help manage and integrate this data, providing valuable insights to optimize your loyalty program.
Provide Ongoing Support
Maintain continuous support for your loyalty program to keep it relevant and effective. This includes regularly updating the program based on customer feedback, promptly addressing inquiries and concerns, and offering your staff training and resources.
For instance, you might update the reward structure to include new and exciting rewards or enhance the user interface of your loyalty app for a better user experience.
Continuous promotion through various channels, such as email reminders and social media posts, keeps the program at the top of customers’ minds. Ongoing support ensures your program remains engaging and valuable, fostering long-term loyalty and satisfaction.
Omnichannel Loyalty Program Examples
It’s easy to talk about loyalty programs in the abstract, but it helps to see how other brands have successfully implemented their own programs.
Revolution Beauty Increases Loyalty Redemptions By 20%
Revolution Beauty, a UK-based company known for its cruelty-free beauty products across 13 brands, aimed to boost customer retention and engagement. Despite the initial success of its Rev Rewards loyalty program, the brand needed a more dynamic approach.
Partnering with Bloomreach, Revolution Beauty used Bloomreach Engagement to develop a data-driven omnichannel strategy. This strategy targeted loyal customers with a personalized direct mail campaign during the peak holiday season reminding them of their points balance.
Each promotion was tailored to the customer’s unique points total. When customers visited Revolution Beauty’s website after receiving the direct mail, they saw a personalized pop-up highlighting their rewards. This seamless integration provided a consistent and engaging experience.
The results were impressive. This loyalty campaign, which offered no additional discounts beyond the existing points, became the company’s best-performing direct mail campaign, resulting in a 20% increase in loyalty redemptions.
Popeyes UK Increased Repeat Visits by 3 Times
Popeyes UK, the fastest-growing quick-service restaurant in the UK, faced challenges in integrating offline data from kiosks, tills, and surveys into its loyalty program due to having separate systems for data management and customer communication. The company turned to Bloomreach Engagement for a solution. With its all-in-one data management, single customer view, and marketing automation capabilities, Bloomreach Engagement helped Popeyes UK unify its online and offline customer data.
The subsequent “Winner, Winner, Chicken Spinner” loyalty program allowed customers who ordered via kiosk, till (by scanning a QR code on their receipt), or online to participate. After purchase, customers could “spin the wheel” on Popeyes’ mobile website, with prizes including a chicken sandwich, an entire meal, and even free chicken sandwiches for a year.
By integrating 20% of its offline customer data into Bloomreach Engagement, Popeyes UK could tailor rewards, discounts, and other loyalty incentives more effectively. As a result, participants in the loyalty program were three times more likely to make a repeat visit within 30 days compared to non-participants.
Transform Your Customer Engagement With Bloomreach’s Omnichannel Orchestration
Omnichannel loyalty programs are essential in today’s business landscape. They go beyond traditional approaches to provide the seamless, personalized, and engaging experiences that modern consumers expect. These programs help you maintain lasting relationships, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive repeat business.
Bloomreach Engagement’s all-in-one platform gives you everything you need to deliver truly engaging loyalty programs. Powered by Loomi AI, Bloomreach’s solutions can deliver the exact right message to the right customers at the right time — every time.
Learn more about how you can use AI to power your own omnichannel loyalty campaigns. Or, see it in action for yourself by scheduling a personalized demo.
