Companies must offer profitable benefits, encourage repeat purchases and keep customers from switching to competitors. To do this, all companies create reward systems - loyalty programs. 

A loyalty program is a system of rewards for regular customers: customers receive discounts and bonuses for their loyalty to the company. It increases attractiveness and helps to distinguish the company from competitors who do not offer discounts to loyal customers. Also popular are personalized loyalty cards that can be made for your company https://wallester.com/.

The history of customer loyalty goes back to the Middle Ages. Back then, merchants gave regular customers copper tokens, which were exchanged for certain goods "on sale" In the XX century, loyalty programs were a privilege: they were used mostly by premium hotels and airlines. Today, this tool is available to every business member: a multinational corporation and a small cozy coffee shop.

Loyalty programs come in different forms. Their conditions and reward mechanics depend on the objectives of the specific business. But the goal of any program is to arouse interest in the company, its products, or services, to retain the customer, and encourage repeat purchases.

Types of Loyalty Programs

As a rule, the development of a loyalty program begins with the choice of mechanics.

The choice of format depends on the goals and objectives of the business:

Provide a fixed discount to customers,

to accrue points for a purchase,

provide access to closed events and early sales.

The most common are discount and savings loyalty programs. Closed customer clubs, various co-branding, and umbrella programs are also popular.

Discount loyalty program

A discount loyalty program gives customers a fixed discount on goods or services. The retailer offers the customer a discount card or sells it for money.

Usually, such loyalty programs choose small retail stores or service organizations - for them, it is the easiest loyalty program mechanics from the point of view of implementation: all they need is to think up a design and print circulation of plastic cards. For example, clients of beauty salons often receive a plastic loyalty card and, with it - a fixed discount on all services.

How modern loyalty programs work

Regardless of the chosen mechanics, one of the main problems for retail chains is questioning the participants of loyalty programs. Not all retail chains verify customer data. But the verification of data allows them to influence their loyalty: to create personalized promotions and offers.