Strengthen Emotional Bonds With a Loyalty Program
In 2022 and beyond, earn and burn loyalty programs are out. Instead, brands are shifting focus to build emotional loyalty — the deeper connections with their customers based on shared values.
The Retention Playbook
Emotional loyalty goes beyond earning points and moving up to higher VIP tiers; it means tapping into shoppers' genuine connection with their favorite brands. Brands need to work to gain shoppers’ emotional loyalty before they can engage them successfully.
What does emotional loyalty look like in action? Global survey respondents feel that being loyal to a brand means they recommend the brand to others (47%) and they’re proud to be associated with the brand (43%). Both of these behaviors reflect a deeply personal connection — consumers view the brands they love as an extension of themselves and their values.
Treat loyalty members differently with exclusive SMS experiences
Top-notch customer experiences are the backbone of a successful retention strategy, and a mobile-first loyalty program is an ideal experience a customer is looking for — it maximizes the most engaging content on the channel with the highest engagement.
To be most effective, a loyalty program needs to be tailored to fit every type of consumer, especially the majority of consumers who prefer mobile, with SMS marketing — over 76% of loyalty members prefer to engage with a brand via SMS.
Not only can brands segment customers based on loyalty data, like VIP tier or point balance, but you can motivate those mobile-first shoppers to engage at exactly the right moment with the right reward experiences, and you can do it all quickly and easily via text.
Leveraging a loyalty program and an SMS marketing strategy together is the ideal way enterprise brands can up-level their experiences to keep customers coming back.
Reward loyalty members for engaging with the brand
With a strategic loyalty program, your brand can reward customers for engaging with your brand on different channels in ways that don’t require purchases. This will keep your customers engaged and drive continued retention, even in times of low purchase frequency.
For example, with Yotpo Loyalty, your can reward shoppers for:
- Social follows
- Newsletter sign-ups
- Leaving reviews, via SMS, email, and onsite
- Content engagement, like reading a blog, watching a promotional video, or taking a quiz
- Referrals
- SMS marketing sign-ups
- Subscription program sign-ups
Ruohonjuuri sees 350% increase in reviews after launching loyalty
For a prime example of a brand leveraging loyalty to drive high-value behaviors from their customers, look no further than Ruohonjuuri.
An eCommerce store specializing in natural cosmetics, organic food, supplements, and other health products, the brand launched a loyalty program to replace their previous manual in-store loyalty stamp cards, which required shoppers to track loyalty rewards themselves.
To rectify this clumsy customer experience, Ruohonjuuri transformed their manual stamps into “cones,” or points, for writing reviews and submitting photos and videos within their reviews. After only a month of implementing these campaigns, the program saw a 350% increase in review collection.
With Yotpo Loyalty, the brand now has in-depth knowledge about shoppers; loyalty redeemers have a 175% higher repeat purchase rate than non-redeemers. Now, the brand can leverage that combined reviews and loyalty data as they continue to scale and predict purchase behaviors.
For enterprise brands, synergies like these enable businesses to collect reviews for website in new geos through loyalty perks, giving them legitimacy as they expand their online retail efforts.
Read the next lesson to learn more ways brands can drive higher value from loyal customers.