A dizzying array of brand messaging clutters consumers’ daily lives. Even the biggest fans of your products and services might miss outreach that isn’t properly targeted and timed. Overcommunicate, and you risk losing them to “marketing fatigue.”
Optimizing communications is often a challenge for internal teams charged with juggling all the elements of a customer loyalty program. It requires extra effort to segment and tailor communications to specific audiences. That’s why the best customer loyalty programs leverage an end-to-end (E2E) customer loyalty provider that takes a comprehensive approach, handling all program components. This puts your most passionate, most valuable customers on a cohesive journey. Long-term customer loyalty starts with customer retention, and retention hinges on relevant communications.
Embracing an E2E approach ensures your brand gets the right message to the right customer at the right time to stand out from competitors’ loyalty programs. In this post, we'll share how integrated creative services contribute to the success of loyalty initiatives.
Match messaging and touchpoints to boost customer loyalty and retention
Each loyalty program touchpoint should resonate with the audience and align with the loyalty program’s strategic business objectives. The best loyalty programs use a mix of physical and digital tactics across the customer journey to gain attention and build engagement. They test and learn to get promotions just right. Establishing a feedback loop goes well beyond sending a survey.
- Use social listening to gauge impact
- Ask customer-facing teams what kind of response they heard
- Track actual behavior and spend changes over time
- Leverage learnings to inform future promotions
Related: Learn how a mature VoC program took action on feedback to spur continuous improvement.
Keeping the customer journey in mind, an E2E partner maps a plan across print collateral, digital content and social communications. They pay attention to frequency so someone isn’t getting three e-blasts a week, and a bunch of annoying texts, too.
As consumers, we’ve all been on the receiving side of misguided marketing attempts. After entering your email at checkout, your inbox starts flooding with “daily deals.” Too many brands are over-indexed on digital communications. What's worse: They probably can't even prove whether those emails are truly driving sales.
What we’ve seen work best is a mixed media, omnichannel approach to loyalty engagement. This takes the dedication of a creative team that knows your program and business inside and out and can deliver differentiated messages.
Do you ever get a mailing that shakes you from your own marketing fatigue? These breakthrough customer touchpoints create compelling experiences with customers during key steps in their journey. Impactful, beyond-digital moments amplify the value of your products and services, and keep customers highly engaged when it matters most.
E2E marketing tactics strategically blend:
- Clickable SMS
- Compelling consumer-facing communications
- Distinct dimensional displays
- Dynamic emails and print touchpoints
- Influential social channels
- “Surprise-and-delight” promotions
- Other communications as needed to reach multiple, segmented audiences
How do loyalty program leaders know what’s getting the most ROI? The best customer loyalty programs segment the target audience in advance to tie tactics to post-campaign tracking. For instance, a financial services client segmented their targeted customer lifecycle audience into eight distinct audiences, from account closing to call center through onboarding. This gave stakeholders useful insights into changes in net promoter score (NPS), customer and rep satisfaction, call resolution and other important metrics.
Related: Discover how a financial services company used customer feedback to earn a 25-point+ direct consumer-origination NPS gain.
The best E2E loyalty providers connect the dots between communications tactics and program performance by integrating platform analytics. Equipped with the ability to customize a user-friendly platform, an E2E partner moves customers from awareness to loyalty to advocacy.
Communicate better with customer loyalty program technology
Brands must reach customers during each stage of their buying journeys with personalized messages at exactly the right moment, no matter where they’re located. A responsive platform allows for quickly triggered communications. E2E providers take on the UX work to ensure the front-end ties to your brand experience and meets customer expectations.
Related: Replatforming a customer loyalty program can drive brand engagement and loyalty.
A partner with expertise, who pays special attention to personalization and customer activity, brings crafting and executing transactional communications to the next level. You can only get the right messages out to customers to build emotional connections if you know them and where they are in the journey.
Having an E2E partner with full creative capabilities, paired with a customer loyalty technology platform that boasts built-in and custom triggers, means you can execute and evaluate a full range of communications.
- Dynamic content: Launch segmented campaigns to maximize engagement.
- Multichannel content creation: Design enticing emails, push notifications and mailers all in one place.
- How? Enclose an unexpected freebee in the package.
- Multi-phase campaigns: Easily schedule and deploy messages in a series, as a time-bound campaign.
- How? Send a re-order or service reminder based on data that predicts when a customer might run out of a product or need a tune-up.
- Triggered messages: Send a hyper-personalized message to re-engage customers who are at-risk of stopping use of a product.
- How? Surprise a customer with a timely birthday message.
Flexibility is essential for loyalty program success. And both brand leaders and E2E partners can pinpoint what’s working when they have access to built-in analytics.
With a segmented, strategically targeted approach, every touchpoint and every message lands how you intend. An integrated team and the right technology can address and amplify personal moments that greatly matter to customers for ongoing engagement.
Need to build a results-oriented customer loyalty solution? Start with our E2E series post on navigating a strategic approach to deliver the best customer loyalty program.
Note: This article is part three in a six-part series on the key components of a successful customer loyalty program. We cover how an end-to-end (E2E) partner can deliver a cohesive customer experience by leveraging all six elements. Now that you've learned how creative services amplify your brand messaging so it’s meaningful for different audiences, check out the other five E2E components: