Top 4 Innovative Features to Add to Your Loyalty Management System

Loyalty programs are an integral part of the customer retail experience. This is why almost every major brand requires an innovative loyalty management system that is scalable across various digital channels.

In a fast-paced environment, where brands actively compete against one another to obtain and retain customers, scalable custom integrations become increasingly in demand to improve their existing platforms.

Innovation and creativity are must-have elements, as customers will stop engaging with loyalty programs if they're stagnant or outdated. In 2018, a Global Path to Purchase survey showed that 83% of shoppers worldwide consider loyalty programs when deciding where to shop.

Custom loyalty reward platforms empower businesses because the platform is customized based on their unique business needs. They're built to perform deeper insights & analysis, generate dashboards, and enable business owners/executives to make more informed decisions based on real-time data. A successful customized loyalty reward platform presents an endless stream of opportunities for both the customer and the organization utilizing the system as a whole.

In this article, we outline four must-have features to integrate with customer loyalty management software in order to be at the forefront of customer-orientated technology.

Reward-oriented CRM Systems

While modern Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are designed to create powerful marketing campaigns, such systems often fall short of expectations as customers become accustomed to targeted email campaigns. This is not surprising when you consider how the typical shopper is bombarded with hundreds of targeted emails daily.

Growing customer expectations is the primary reason why it's essential to offer shoppers an extra reason to shop. Therefore, when integrated with an existing CRM, a good customer loyalty software entices customers to make a purchase and return to make more purchases.

From a developer's perspective, customer loyalty app development must include a variety of rewards such as miles, cash-back, points, and virtual currency. Loyalty points let customers know that their consumerism is appreciated and that a business does value them.

A business can create a customized rewards program tailored towards a specific demographic with tier-specific rewards. Creating a feeling of exclusivity, businesses can offer special rewards to the varying tiers of customers.

This development should also allow the easy management of creating promotions based on these different tier levels. Similarly, real-time management of reward points and the creation of membership accounts should be a breeze.

By integrating a loyalty rewards program with a CRM, businesses can send customized emails to their users. These emails can include details of the rewards available and make sure each specific tier level receives information about what is available to them.

A survey by Accenture found that 75% of customers were more likely to buy from a business if it used personalized messages. This outreach can be reminders, offers, product updates, and welcome emails. Either way, they are proven to increase brand engagement and foster customer loyalty.

With a custom developer, businesses have the power to create custom rules and triggers and extend personalized offers to their loyalty program members. All of which is founded on relevant information from their customer program state, history, and interests. Such integration can expedite the growth of open rates and conversion rates.

An Intelligent Point-of-Sale (POS) System

Omnichannel loyalty management programs are becoming increasingly popular among retail chains and convenience stores. When integrated with an existing POS system, they allow businesses to reward their customers.

Sales associates trained to use the POS integrated loyalty system can offer quality customer service. For example, they can enter a customer's ID or swipe their loyalty card to add reward points to a membership account. Adding loyalty points and offering extra incentives during the checkout phase will enhance the shopping experience.

Integrating a loyalty management program with a POS system can also help retail outlets save on advertising and marketing costs. Instead of a sales pitch, the system can automatically scan a customer ID to present a list of existing promotions that the sales associate can then upsell.

With the ability to use their loyalty card/details anywhere, customers have the freedom to shop online, via apps, or in person. An integrated POS, paired with this multilocation use, will note all of this so a business can see which platforms and tactics incur higher volumes of purchases.

A POS-integrated loyalty program system can notify management of critical inventory levels so businesses never go out of stock during busy seasons. The system can also predict busy days by using customer behavioral analysis to let businesses streamline staff work hours to its results.

It is abundantly clear that if a business's loyalty program is not integrated with the POS, the ROI (Return On Investment) is limited. This is because a loyalty program's marketing and outreach capabilities are not being utilized.

Not only can this program be used to add a personal and rewarding touch to customer outreach, but POS also allows a business to view a program members' basic demographic information and even to evaluate the effectiveness of the loyalty program itself.

A Robust Omnichannel e-commerce Platform

An omnichannel e-commerce loyalty management system solution is a prerequisite to any successful online business because it covers the entire spectrum of sales, whether online or offline. Universal acceptance of reward cards, online gift vouchers, and promo codes are great examples of this.

The success of customer loyalty software mainly depends on the strength of the underlying e-commerce platform. Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify are great examples of powerful platforms which enable developers to deploy innovative features on the go. So clearly, it is essential to select a scalable e-commerce solution that is easy to deploy and offers omnichannel CRM loyalty management features.

While setting up a reliable e-commerce platform is a considerable undertaking, integrating it with a loyalty program software is no joke either. And this is where a custom developer should step in.

Often the profitability of many well-known and emerging online businesses depends on a harmonious synchronization of both platforms.

Successful businesses depend on this seamless and professional setup. Stats suggest that a 5% increase in customer loyalty increases average profit by 25% to 100%.

A case in point is the Starbucks app, which allows customers to earn Stars if they order through the app before reaching the physical outlet. It saves time, improves the brand image, and rewards customers for their actions. To compete with this trend, Costa and McDonald's developed their forms of this reward system.

Remember how smoothly an omnichannel platform should work, especially at the checkout stage. At checkout, a customer should be faced with all relevant information: their rewards (highlighting the value of them), what is in their basket, prices, what rewards can be applied, delivery time, etc. A successful e-commerce loyalty software integration should ensure that customers get everything they can out of the platform.

These rewards should always be available to loyal customers. It will reassure them that they are getting something out of the program and that their rewards are positively influenced by their dynamic consumer behavior.

Smart AI-based Marketing Automation Systems

Marketing automation is a great tool to retain customers who are likely to engage with the brand in the future. In addition, it helps decrease customer acquisition costs as stats suggest that more than 40% of loyal customers make at least three purchases every year.

Marketing automation leverages two essential tactics to get results: personalization and user loyalty.

Using AI and machine learning, automation help marketers understand the behavior of shoppers to send personalized ads. With these shopping traits, bots can send personal messages to customers based on different parameters such as geolocalization, segmentation, and content reaction. This AI solution is the utopian ideal of one-to-one selling processes in e-commerce.

An intelligent AI that nearly all businesses use is a triggered live chat message bot. Trending across B2B and B2C it adds a conversational aspect to e-commerce shopping. It can even retrieve customer feedback and responses, which a business can later review.

There are also AI solutions that work behind the scenes: Push notifications, and notices, that appear on a user's mobile screen are examples of targeted ads. Automation can retarget specific customers based on the response by delivering a streamlined product market experience.

Once shopping patterns are recognized, it's time to build brand loyalty by offering customer-specific products. Any customer loyalty app development can be tailored to meet the exact need of thousands of individual users.

Other behind the scene workings of AI can be label printing, packing slips, and invoice printing. All of this can be monitored, reviewed, and modified from a centralized platform allowing for ultimate practicality in AI-based marketing automation systems.

Overall, marketing automation creates a safe and healthy shopping experience built around effective customer outreach and rewarding said customers for their actions.

The Future Relies on Loyal Customers

Having happy and loyal customers is what can make or break a business.

As long as a business keeps the Pareto Principle in mind that 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of revenue, they will fully utilize a custom loyalty management system.

Ever evolving, the loyalty management system solution has much to offer. In the near future, we can see it featuring a more personalized approach with customers (on a one-to-one level) and saving time on marketing activities like A/B testing.

Machine learning will continue to develop when it comes to loyalty programs, which is something the e-commerce industry has to look forward to. Sooner rather than later, a business won't even have to think twice about its customers as AI will have beaten them to it.

The drastic increase in mobile usage has led to a higher demand for effective, multichannel platforms (apps, websites). Investing in this development is a safe bet as mobiles aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and having an app will improve your ROI and daily users/engagements.

Replicating your competitor's actions and expanding onto these platforms will deliver a powerful IoT solution that crosses many of the technological barriers businesses face today.

With these four features and a custom twist, your business can tailor its loyalty management system solution to be an effective and true-to-brand customer outreach solution. With loyal customers and an up-to-date and integrated system, there is nothing your business cannot do.