Disclaimer: Nothing in this article should be construed as legal or financial advice. Please always consult a knowledgeable professional advisor.
Customer loyalty retention means earning and keeping a loyal base of customers. Having regular customers, faces and names you recognise makes work more fun (and rewarding). And it’s also good for business. For example, a study by Bain & Company found that repeat customers in the apparel industry spend roughly 67 percent more than first-time customers. And over their lifetime, loyal customers are worth 10 times as much as their first purchase. So it’s definitely worth learning the value of customer loyalty retention and finding ways to keep people coming back in.
One way to improve customer loyalty retention is by making your regulars feel special. Of consumers, 81 percent buy on trust, and rewarding your loyal customers can make them trust you more and it grows the relationship. Here are a few ways to create a special experience for people who frequent your business.
1. Keep their card on file
With Square’s Card on File feature, you can just say “the usual?”, and with their permission, securely charge a regular’s order to their card on file in your point of sale. This helps when building customer loyalty, as it allows you to spend more time connecting with the customer and less time processing their payment.
To do this effectively, you’ll want to give customers ensured security before saving their card information, whether you’re selling online or in-store. And if you’re setting up an online store or adding click-and-collect options, you can do this all in minutes through your Square POS Dashboard.
2. Start a loyalty scheme
Reward your loyal customers with perks. A loyalty programme is the easiest way to do this. Square Loyalty is a punch-card programme that automatically tracks customer loyalty points and rewards customers based on how many times they’ve come in and bought something. You can select how often you want to reward your customers (by the number of punches) and what they’ll get as a reward—a percentage or monetary amount off, or a free item.
And new research from The Wise Marketer in the UK found that rewards are important. What you offer your members matters a lot more than how you offer it. Nearly three-quarters of Brits (69 percent) think that benefits and rewards are important when choosing to become or stay a member of a loyalty scheme. And 83 percent want those rewards to save them money.
3. Invite them to exclusive events
Everyone loves to feel like they’re part of the VIP set, especially when in-person events feel so exciting again . So, when your business is marking the economy’s reopening by hosting an event, make sure you extend the invite to the customers who’ve stayed loyal throughout the pandemic. You might even host a special event just for your regulars—a seasonal party, or the opportunity to taste new menu items, for example.
Your regular customers are part of your community. They’re also crucial to the success of your business, so reward your customers and give them the A-list treatment. You can easily learn more about your customers by using Square Analytics or other tools that can help run your business and improve customer loyalty retention.
Remember when contacting customers to make sure you always adhere to the relevant rules around data protection, GDPR and ePrivacy.