Traditional loyalty: the marketing tool’s unpopular side, and what brands can do.
Traditional loyalty programs are no longer effective in today’s market. Customers have evolved, becoming more demanding and sophisticated, and businesses must adapt to meet their needs. While traditional loyalty programs were designed to incentivise customers to do business with a brand, true loyalty programs must help brands engage and understand their customers, create long-term relationships, and collaborate with other brands.
Unfortunately, traditional loyalty programs are plagued with problems. They can be complex and difficult to understand, which can be a barrier for customers. Additionally, they often charge high monthly or yearly fees, regardless of whether they are generating value or not. Implementing a traditional loyalty program can also take a long time, up to a year, to be fully integrated into a brand’s system.
In addition, traditional loyalty programs lack personalisation and offer rewards that aren’t relevant to individual customers’ interests or needs. This can make it less likely that customers will participate in the program or continue to do business with the company. Further, traditional loyalty programs often don’t offer rewards that customers find valuable enough to justify their continued business, leading to customers opting out of the program and doing business with competitors who offer more attractive rewards.
Another issue with traditional loyalty programs is that they often offer points and rewards that have a time limit for redeeming, forcing customers to consume when they don’t want or need to, or else they lose their points or status. This is conditioning, not loyalty. Traditional loyalty programs also don’t integrate with a customer’s entire “library of points and loyalty programs” from other brands, causing customers to forget about the programs they have signed up for or decide not to participate if it isn’t easily accessible or generates great value.
In fact, traditional loyalty programs can actually generate the opposite of loyalty by creating discount chasers instead of loyal customers. It’s important for businesses to create value for their customers by seeing them as a whole and understanding their entire lifestyle, not just their relationship with the brand. To truly build customer loyalty, engagement, drive sales, and turn customers into fans, businesses must offer a true loyalty program.
Superloyal is redefining loyalty - it is the first multi-brand loyalty platform. It enables brands to offer true loyalty programs to their customers at zero cost. Within the true loyalty platform, businesses can acquire new customers, expand into new markets, understand which other brands their customers really love aside from their own, collaborate with these brands in numerous ways, and control the narrative of acquisition and retention without “leasing it” from Meta or TikTok.
