Solutions to Loyalty Challenges in Luxury: Your Loyalty Checklist

📋 Loyalty Checklist 📋

✅ 1. Analyze and understand your target segment

The first step in developing or maintaining a successful loyalty program, is understanding your audience. Start off by asking:

• What type of issues are my products/services solving?

• Who are my products/services appealing to?

Additionally, it is important to collect as much data regarding:

• What your customer purchasing behaviors are?

• What channels do they use most?

• What is their core motivation/incentive for the transaction?

Companies that actively gather data can develop more personalized rewards and experiences for each customer.

✅ 2. What technology are you using?

Will you use a mobile app designed specifically for your loyalty program or can users activate their loyalty points with a QR code on each transaction?

Are you going to keep it simple by sticking to stamps and traditional routes of loyalty or will you innovate and push the technological boundaries by adopting blockchain?

Regardless of your answer now, keep this question in the back of your head:

• What technological infrastructure can I use to support my program?

It is necessary to take different decisions on various levels, such as:

1. Do I build my loyalty program internally?

2. Is it worth outsourcing it?

3. Or maybe I should use a white label app?

Even consider what type of interface you will offer your customers for the program and what dashboard can be used internally to track all the loyalty insights previously discussed.

Remember that the development of a loyalty program occurs over several years, so the best option is to use state-of-the-art technology to be as efficient, fast, and secure in the long term.

✅ 3. What are your earn options?

Now that you are thinking about what technology infrastructure your program could be based on. Ask yourself what behaviors are you trying to incentivize. And how could your rewards incentivise these behaviours?

1. Example of how a customer can earn your points:

   1. Purchase your product: Increase purchase frequency and volume

   2. Sharing new content: boost social media awareness + reach

   3. Milestone points (time spent on the app): boost customer engagement

   4. Attending virtual exhibitions: boost brand awareness and engagement

Remember that all the decisions you are taking here are having an impact on your technological setup because every behavior you want to reward needs to be tracked so that you can award your customers with your points.

✅ 4. What are the burn options?

On the other side of it, burn options are also vital for the customer experience and are at the foundation of any loyalty program, like earn options. 77% of transaction-based loyalty programs fail within two years of starting (CGCR). In the world of luxury, the user does not want a simple discount code.

From the insight we gathered in blog posts #1 and #2, users prefer experiential rewards over transactional rewards.

Examples/Stats/Tips:

1. The customer wants to feel like a VIP. Try to use luxury gifts for their birthday, appreciate them for the valuable customer that they are.

2. Implement more experientially based rewards, Boost the brand-fan connection.

   Example Rewards and Point Cost:

   b. Free stay at Hyatt in Hawaii (1/2 nights -> 500/800 points)

   c. Neiman Marcus offers in-store dining, valet parking, free engraving, and much more for their loyal clients.

   d. First-look, behind the scenes at the new Alexander McQueen Collection (7500 points)

3. Tell stories with your rewards and experiences.

   a. Fans will share the experience with friends and family → boosting visibility and awareness of the brand.

✅ 5. Partner Integration

Joining a loyalty ecosystem rather than remaining a stand-alone program is the core motivation behind partner integration.

It is vital to integrate new partners or join a larger network of loyalty programs because with this, existing members can fully utilize the loyalty program to benefit from earn/burn options from your brand at no extra cost.

It was observed that 77% of stand-alone programs fail due to their lack of interconnectivity and low customer engagement rates.

Use-Case:

In our recent launch with Louis Erard, fans could now also earn miles through Miles & More and Etihad Guest Miles, instead of just loyalty points. This opens the doors for Louis Erard fans to spend their points for awesome rewards on the Louis Erard Loyalty app, or they can spend miles from the previously mentioned frequent flier giants.

✅ 6. Communication

Integrate your loyalty program everywhere (high-level)

Focus on what touchpoints you have: website, app, in-store, etc. And implement your loyalty program wherever it applies. Omnichannel loyalty strategies are the way to go, especially considering the digital shift in the shopping experience.

Luxury brands who integrate omnichannel loyalty strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers! In comparison to brands with weak omnichannel strategies, which only retain 33% of their customers. (Colloquy).

External Communication

Use social media channels and boost customer engagement with different touchpoints.

54% of loyalty program members are inactive, simply because users sign up once and then forget about the loyalty program 1 month later! (Colloquy)

Make the process interesting, stay engaged with your fans regarding new luxury collections and announcements for special limited-edition pieces.

Its factors like these that can make or break the success of your loyalty program, so keep them in mind when proceeding.

✅ 7. Analyze and Track your Success

The loyalty checklist and the factors above are the foundation for your loyalty database. With each user interaction, such as the purchase of a new luxury handbag or a fan viewing the newest 2021 collection, data is recorded.

This data can then be translated for further optimizations of your loyalty program. Also allowing your brand to better understand your customers and the target segment. Leading to a better, more personalized experience for your customer

Tips:

1. Develop more personalized rewards and experiences tailored to your customers, based off the data insights.

2. Base all your moves on the data collected. Are customers shifting to a more digital purchasing form instead of your in-store sites? Then try to focus more resources on digital assets (website/app).

   1. Improve the experience on the website/app by adding new features to your digital luxury touchpoints.

From this point on just adjust based on the needs of your customers and the data insights.

⭐ Key Takeaways (TL:DR) ⭐

Below are the 7 key items to cross off your loyalty checklist, remember these are questions and tips to help to guide you in your loyalty journey, each case is different, so treat it with passion:

1. Analyze and understand your target segment, define what your product or service is providing and what type of users desire it.

2. What technology are you using? Be ready to take decisions on various levels. Will you outsource the loyalty program development or produce it internally?

3. What are your earn options, are your users interested and what types of behaviours are you incentivizing with your earn options? → Increase purchasing behavior.

4. What are your burn options, experience-based rewards are the way to go! Giving fans a story to share with family and friends → boost visibility and awareness.

5. Communication and integration are key. Connect to your fans and make them feel like a part of the process.

6. Partner integration, expand to a larger network, join an ecosystem, and ditch the traditional stand-alone ways.

7. Analyze and track your success, continuously collect new data, and use these insights to optimize your loyalty program and keep goals on track.

Regardless of all the checklists and research in the world, nothing will compare to a loyalty program that puts fans first and truly tells a brand story. The first thing fans will notice when considering joining your loyalty program is the effort and the passion put into it. Is this just another way to make money or is this truly a channel in which brands can connect to fans and tell their brand stories?

Experiences and stories are important. We all have a story to tell, so tell us your story.
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