You may be unfamiliar with the term “Loyalty Program” but you are surrounded by them. One of the most recognized loyalty programs in the nation is Starbucks who uses a “star system”. Each time you make a Starbucks purchase, you earn a star. When you have accumulated ten stars, you get a free product. On some days, they offer “bonus stars” and this causes people to come in to buy coffee on a given day simply to double up on their stars and get to the reward faster.
Here’s where the loyalty part really plays in. Card-carrying Starbucks customers are not going to go to Peet’s Coffee or another competitor because they want to get something in return for being so loyal and buying ten cups of coffee to get something free. Everyone likes to be rewarded.
Simply awarding stars or points for spending money with your business isn’t the only way to increase sales. Because you control the data collected at enrollment time, you can glean birthdays, anniversary dates, cell phone numbers and email addresses at the time of enrollment. From that day forward, you will be able to track spending habits. You can see what a client likes, which location they go to most often, what their average sale total is, how many days they go without a purchase and many other details that help drive promotions geared specifically for an individual customer.
Speaking of obtaining a customer’s cell phone number, this tool may be the best target you have. During the enrollment process, ask the customer to approve getting SMS messaging from your with special offers just for them. If you use SMS messaging (and you should) you can send special offers that just might drive your customer to your business within the next hour.
California based Weinerschnitzel and Jack In-The-Box are pros at sending out messages to their customers that cause an immediate hunger attack and subsequent purchase. Sending an SMS message that says, “Come in for lunch today and enjoy a free beverage on us” or something similar can skyrocket sales for the day. Sending a message about food at 10:30am to someone working in an office can cause the whole office to decide that a chili-cheese dog is what they are having for lunch.
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