Loyalty Blogs

Season sales make a great profit, and both brands and customers benefit from the same. For the customers, it’s a superb option to shop for smart deals and discounts, and for the brand it’s a great chance to get their products sold in one go, catering to the highest footfall. Seasonal sales, offers, etc. play an imperative role as they offer items that will be used in the upcoming season, maximizing the on-season fashion options. But how to handle the off-season, where nothing will be used in the season?

Customer loyalty software or customer points system helps the brands in solving the seasonality and make the most of both on and off-season sales.

A report by State of Brand Loyalty 2022 states that customer loyalty programs make the majority of around 60 percent of global shoppers more loyal to a brand. A loyalty program platform helps in increasing customer lifetime value and lowers the churn rate in the long run. Let’s understand how customer loyalty programs can be an excellent resource in dealing with seasonality.

Loyalty for Off-Season Sales

Just like the phases of life, off-seasons come as a tough phase for every brand. There are fewer purchases leading to less customer engagement. Having a little time away from your brand also provides customers with some time to look out at other competitors offering options before the next season kicks in. using loyalty, a brand can engage with their customers no matter what season they’re in. the communication channel isn’t always the one-way option of calling, it can be the small gestures including SMS, push notifications, social media interactions, etc.

A brand can send out promotional messages with a help of a well-equipped loyalty program days before the launch of an on-season sales and discount trip. With the help of the data collected through your loyalty program, one can get started with targeted campaigns based on customers’ past purchases and behavior patterns. It can help in rewarding the loyal members with either existing points balance redemption or simply opting for every purchase reward.

Now let’s talk about the things to be done in the off-season, believe it or not, the off-season is the perfect time to educate customers on why choose your brand over the others in the competition. Right from the time pandemic has taken over, a survey by Mckinsey says that 65 percent of consumers are trying different shopping behaviors and intend to incorporate those behaviors in the long run.

Loyalty brings an exciting opportunity for the members to receive reward points, exclusive perks dedicated to the members, personalized offers and so much more to stay gripped! It particularly encourages the members to not just know about the brand but what benefits they will be getting on staying with the brand which can be all-inclusive of the discounts, deals, special rewards, sign-up benefits, etc. Promoting your own brand through the loyalty program’s excellent feature of loyalty campaign management can help you earn more customers till the time the next round of on-season sales comes up!

Stretching the horizons on-season with Loyalty

While we just discussed how customer loyalty programs can be bliss in the off-season, there’s a lot it can do while the season is on! It can help a brand to make the most of the peak season through letting with accompany season’s highest value shoppers who can later become loyal members. A stat says over 83 percent of global shoppers say belonging to a loyalty program influences their decision to buy again from a brand. and when it’s the peak season, your brand should be focusing on marketing even more aggressively than off-season.

Let’s discuss the major question, how? Your marketing preparation should be starting long before the sales are set to start! For a start, you can launch with on-site banners, dedicated social campaigns, targeted emailers, and SMS campaigns which can remind the non-loyalty members that they’re missing out on huge discounts, exclusive deals, and the products worth it just because they’re not a part of the loyalty program or haven’t signed up yet! You can run lucrative sign-up bonuses, VIP sale access notifications, and first purchase discounts to attract customers at first glance. Rewarding them with loyalty points or other monetary aspects is also a great idea to start your sales. Though the kind of marketing tactic you’re choosing depends on the budget and your long-term business goal.

One of the most followed ideas during on-season is to provide a members-only early sneak peak to the sales, this encourages members’ excitement and promotes your seasonal deals as well. It can later narrow down customers’ choices and highlight your brand so that no one moves an inch even with the edge-to-edge competition around.

Creating Engagement through Long-Term Loyalty Solutions

Though creating engagement is by far the only business goal to follow and yet the toughest part of the entire marketing journey!

· Focus on Value, Not Volume!

Loyalty programs are indeed for increasing customer base but is it a benefit if you are a dormant customer staying as a member but never making a purchase? Or someone who is never referring your brand to expand the customer lifecycle? That’s the reason it is imperative to focus on creating value with the customers rather than just focusing on the volume. Focus on increasing the average order value not the number of orders.

· Merge Offline and Online Data

Mostly the offline and online data stays in different verticals and some offline data which is filled up through handwritten forms stays just paper-intensive! It is crucial to merge the data along with their sources through a smart loyalty POS software which can create a data file when a customer visits offline stores, these files contain all basic information about the customers and this data can be later merged to the online subset which already stores customer details, their purchasing history, patterns and all that’s needed!

Final Thoughts

We hope this article serves the purpose of educating brands on how to solve the seasonality issues with the help of customer loyalty programs and what all can be done on-season with these programs in action!