Ask any successful business leader and they will tell you how important loyal customers are to their operations. During uncertain economic times, customer engagement and loyalty become the lifeline that keeps businesses afloat. If you’re looking to weather the inflationary storm without cutting into the meat of your business, you need to rethink your approach to customer loyalty.
Saving on Costs to Survive a Looming Recession
Building loyal relationships with customers is one of the smartest ways to keep costs down. Multiple consumer studies have found that courting a new customer can be anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive than serving a long-standing one. But, if your brand is able to improve its customer retention rates by just 5 percent, you could see profits jump by as much as 95 percent. It’s clear that even the slightest growth in loyalty can have a monumental impact on your profits.
The time-tested 80/20 rule, conceptualized by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, affirms this fact. According to the Pareto principle, only 20% of customers drive 80% of business revenue. Advisors at the management consultancy firm Strategex say they have seen this principle play out hundreds of times, wherein the entire bottom half of the customer base generates less than 5% of the revenue.
The lesson here is that instead of draining your resources across the board, you need to invest time and marketing dollars in solutions that target your best, most loyal customers and help you accomplish your goals.
Loyal Customers Matter More than You Think
Done right, customer engagement and loyalty can become the biggest driving force for a brand. When loyalty is built on positive customer experiences, not only can it help a business sell more but it can also create entirely new revenue streams.
In a global survey of more than 25,000 consumers, 57 percent of all respondents agreed that they spend more on brands to which they are loyal. What’s even more interesting is that more than half of these loyal customers actively recommend the brands they love to others.
And people love referrals. A Nielsen study found that 92% of consumers would trust recommendations from people they know over any other form of advertising. So, word-of-mouth advertising can help a business grab new customers without spending a single penny on customer acquisition costs.
An engaged and loyal customer also makes the business immune to competitive forces in an uncertain economic environment. For instance, research has found that 39 percent of loyal customers are willing to spend more on a product, even if there are other less expensive options available on the market.
Cultivating Brand Loyalty With Personalization
So, how do you build engaging relationships with customers who are being flooded by as many as 10,000 brand messages a day? By using a true omnichannel strategy and effective engagement tools such as those that Nayax offers.
Forbes calls personalization the holy grail of loyalty. When a business engages with a buyer using a more personalized, customer-centric touch that is relevant to their needs and desires, it makes a meaningful difference. PwC’s 2022 Customer Loyalty Survey reveals that four out of five consumers would share some type of personal data with a business for a better buying experience.
It should also be highlighted that the rewards for personalization go beyond the cultivation of brand loyalty. In a survey conducted by Dynata, 64 percent of consumers said they would rather purchase a product from a brand that knows them. And the most effective way brands can make consumers feel “understood” is by offering product and service recommendations that are highly relevant to them. For instance, data-driven personalization ensured by Nayax’s Weezmo platform can boost customer engagement by sharing new products at the optimal time and by offering tailored reward redemption possibilities.
Customer Engagement And Loyalty Marketing Platforms
Whether your business falls in the attended or unattended retail category, there are various customer engagement solutions available today that can help you improve customer loyalty and increase revenue.
For Attended Retail
The integration of grocery chain Kroger’s brick-and-mortar, digital, and mobile offerings is so seamless that 90% of delivery and pickup customers also shop in-store. This same kind of visibility into a customer’s journey is made possible through Weezmo which specializes in maximizing your in-store revenue using digital campaigns. The marketing tool follows a customer’s journey to engage with them in-store, post-purchase, and online. It turns every touchpoint into an opportunity that maximizes conversions, boosts revenue, and increases the number of repeat customers.
Similarly, Nayax’s Retail Management Cloud streamlines all data and information flow from your enterprise software to your point-of-sale (POS), facilitating sales and customer service on the spot. If you’re a multi-branch retailer, you can gain additional benefits from dynamic pricing tools such as multiple price lists, currencies, and special prices to service loyal customers better.
For Unattended Retail
Let’s face it. Without an attractive loyalty program, there is no reason for a customer to stick to one particular brand if the product they want is available through multiple vending operators. This is why you need NayaxVend Management Suite which empowers unattended, automated businesses to create loyalty programs and offer discounts that drive repeat purchases. The platform empowers you to easily generate reports that help you better understand your operations and see your customers’ spending habits. Once you know what your customers are looking for, you can use NayaxVend’s built-in marketing tools such as loyalty cards, happy hours, sales, promotions, and branded top-up websites, to engage them directly through the Monyx Wallet app.
When you set up campaigns through NayaxVend, they show up in the Monyx Wallet platform and payment app to facilitate relationship-building with customers. Monyx is a powerful engagement tool that allows you to create easy-to-track marketing campaigns such as punch cards, happy hours, or employee discounts for closed-loop environments. Customers can use the app to track their purchases and pay with their preferred method via their phones. The app’s gamification features also motivate them to buy more.
To Sum it Up
No organization is immune to the pressures of market uncertainty. But a brand that focuses on loyalty marketing can keep customer acquisition costs to a minimum and continue to grow their business. Digital engagement platforms provide unique and valuable data about customers. The right technology tool can help a business create meaningful reward campaigns and maximize the lifetime value of its customers.
Ready to engage your customers? Contact us today.
