After you’ve selected a technology provider and designed your rewards program, it’s time to get customers enrolled! At AppCard, our Customer Success Managers have launched thousands of rewards programs, and we’ve pulled together 4 major keys to ensuring your program’s success.
1. Train your cashiers
Take the time to make sure your cashiers know how to use your rewards program at the point of sale:
- How to enroll a new customer
- How to check customers in and view their rewards balance
- How to redeem rewards that the customer has earned
Also train cashiers on the ins-and-outs of the program so they can get customers excited about enrolling and redeeming points. Provide cashiers with simple scripts to:
- Greet customers and ask if they’re a member
- Explain the program’s benefits to non-members and encourage enrollment
- Greet existing rewards members after checking them in, and informing them of their rewards balance and status
2. Setup automated campaigns
Most of today’s loyalty and rewards technologies provide business owners with the opportunity to automatically deliver special offers via email or SMS. We usually recommend that before launching your rewards program, you consider setting up a few campaigns to get your customers earning rewards fast. Setting up these automated campaigns provides a great incentive to get customers to enroll and complete their profile with their email address and birthday.
- Registration Bonus: A campaign that automatically deposits a special reward into a new customer’s account.
- Email Association: A campaign that automatically rewards a customer for completing their AppCard profile.
- App Download Bonus: A campaign that automatically rewards a customer once they confirm their phone number using the app.
- Birthday Campaign: Automatically deliver a special reward that the customer can redeem during their birthday month.
3. Promote your program
In the weeks before your program is scheduled to launch, take some time to prepare marketing messaging and promotional campaigns to educate customers about your new program and get them excited about joining.
- Design in-store signage like posters or leaflets to place at the point of sale
- Write a blog about the program and share it via social media
- Add a page to your website that describes the membership benefits
- Send an email to your customers
4. Keep an eye on your metrics
Two important KPIs for your loyalty program are the Penetration Rate and the Engagement Rate.
- The Penetration Rate is the percentage of customers who are enrolled into the program. We typically like to see a minimum of 30% penetration within the first 30 days. Within 60 days, you should ideally see something like 50% penetration rate or higher.
- The Engagement Rate is the percentage of customers who have redeemed a reward. This is an important metric because we’ve found that customers who have redeemed one reward, are 86% less likely to churn. After 3 months, you should aim to have at least 20% of customers redeeming rewards.
