Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on November 5, 2014 and was updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness on July 2, 2019.
When it comes to promoting a loyalty program, there are a few key goals you’re trying to achieve:
- Let new shoppers know you have a loyalty program
- Show future members how they can earn and spend points
- Showcase the value shoppers will be missing if they don’t shop with you
Each of these three things need to happen if you want your loyalty program to be effective.
Properly promoting your loyalty program on your site will not only increase visibility and enrolment, but will also supercharge it to be used as both an acquisition and retention tool. Here are the 5 places you need to be promoting a loyalty program.
Email marketing campaigns
Email is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers because it’s easy, cheap, and repeatable. It’s also a fantastic way to re-engage existing customers, making it one of your most powerful marketing tools.
Since customers are already accustomed to receiving emails from you, including your program in regular communications is the perfect way to get it in front of both new and returning customers. Take this email from Tattly, for example:
The temporary tattoo brand sent this email to all of their subscribers after launching their Tattly Family loyalty program inviting them to learn more about how to earn and spend points. While the email is very simple, it’s also very compelling. With short copy, engaging visuals, and an invitation to learn more, customers were given an easy way to discover their program and explore it at their own pace.
Program launch messages aren’t the only emails you can (or should!) be sending, though. There are tons of other fantastic opportunities to re-engage customers with your loyalty program through email, including:
- Account creation
- Points balance updates
- Bonus point campaign announcements
- Redemption reminders
- Post-purchase referral reminders
Introducing these messages into your ongoing email campaigns will give your program promotion a much-needed boost.
On your homepage
Your homepage has the highest exposure of any page. As a result, it’s the best place to be promoting your loyalty program! Letting shoppers know you have a program as soon as they enter your site helps set the tone for the rest of their visit.
Now, they have an immediate reason to choose you over another competitor or even Amazon. If they can earn points for future purchases with you and can’t with your competitor, you have given them a strong reason to choose you instead of them.
Algenist made it easy for customers to discover their Algenista Rewards program when it first launched with this eye-catching call-to-action on their homepage. As the first thing any customer would see, it helped establish their desire to give back to their customers and created a compelling reason to explore more of the program.
Even though this CTA is no longer active on their site, they still make it easy for customers to discover their loyalty program with a clear call to action in their navigation bar. By making their program so visible at the top of every page, Algenist has had phenomenal success promoting their loyalty program and gathering new members.
Showcasing your program on your homepage makes it easy for everyone to discover your loyalty program.
When you let potential customers see you have a loyalty program on your homepage, it becomes a marketing tool above and beyond its powers as a retention tool. Let your program help you both acquire, engage, and retain every customer by showcasing it before the fold.
On every page of your site
If promoting your loyalty program on your homepage is a great idea, making it visible on every page is an even better one! While a clear link in your navigation bar is a great start, you can make your program even more discoverable with a visible launcher and panel.
These features work together to build a program experience that is both highly interactive and also extremely enticing. When customers see your loyalty icon on the bottom of their screen, they’ll be prompted to explore it and learn everything there is to know about your program.
This excitement intensifies with the help of onsite reminders. In PureNature’s case, nudges help them draw attention to their launcher and make it easier for customers to join their loyalty program. Without disrupting their browsing experience, customers are able to explore their program and learn how to engage with the program in the future.
These types of visibility make customer engagement over time very easy, and perfectly complements your existing email and onsite strategies.
Social media
One of the best ways to increase your program’s exposure is to leverage social media. As such a big part of your customers’ day-to-day routines, it’s an incredible way to increase your loyalty program’s visibility without spending ridiculous amounts of money.
A logical place to start is by announcing when your program launches. Littlest Prince Couture took advantage of this strategy when they launched their Crown Club loyalty program. With many followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, they shared messages like this on every platform to increase the likelihood of every customer (new and returning) seeing it!
While these types of posts can motivate customers to engage on their own, you can also reward them for interacting with you on social media. If we use Littlest Prince Couture again as an example, you can see that they reward their customers for not only following them on Instagram and Facebook but also for sharing them on Facebook.
Encouraging your existing members to share your brand and products over social media is a fantastic way to extend your marketing reach without increasing your marketing spend. This tactic both increases the exposure of your loyalty program and improves customer engagement by making it easy to earn points.
Use your customers' social networks to increase your program's reach.
When you use social media as part of your promotion strategy, you are able to let your customers promote your loyalty program for you. All it takes is a little incentive!
A dedicated explainer page
When it comes to promoting a loyalty program, it’s important to remember that a big part of showcasing the benefits it explaining how it actually works. Your customers will want to know things like:
- How many points do I earn per dollar spent?
- How much are my points worth?
- How can I earn points?
You can quickly answer all of these questions by including a loyalty explainer page on your site.
A loyalty explainer page is a visual representation of all the ways a customer can interact with your program. This is vital when promoting a loyalty program because it tells a potential customer the exact benefits they will receive, making it easier for them to commit to creating an account.
This example explainer page from WelleCo shows potential members the different VIP tiers and all the ways they can earn and spend points in a visually appealing way. It’s quick to read, beautiful to look at, and even easier to understand, making it the perfect complement to their other program marketing strategies.
Other places you can promote your loyalty program
The five methods above are techniques that we have seen work extremely well over the years, but they are not the only places you can promote your program. Here are some additional places you may want to promote your program:
In-store
If you have a physical retail location, you can promote a loyalty program through both your physical and online channels.
Include info in packed orders
When a customer makes a purchase, try packing a loyalty reminder with their products. If they signed up, thank them for doing so! If they did not sign up, show them a friendly reminder of what their purchases could get them in the future.
Blog posts
If you have a company blog it is an amazing way to promote your program. You can publish a post about the average number of points a customer has on your site and what those points will earn them. This will encourage those who have less to keep earning and help tie your loyalty program into the rest of your value-add marketing strategy.
