Loyalty schemes facing up to a personalised future

It is a fact: consumers love loyalty schemes! Nevertheless, due to our society evolution, their expectations are changing for a personalised, flexible and digital approach. Let’s discover these new trends which will punctuate the daily life of loyalty schemes.

Customer loyalty has a bright future ahead of it. At least, this is what we can see according to a US study carried out last spring by CrowdTwist in partnership with Brand Innovators: over 234 respondents responsible for digital marketing within their companies, 57% plan to increase their investments in loyalty schemes this year. These future investments echo perfectly the profound change in the loyalty industry but mostly, the wish to respond to the new needs of consumers.

And to answer them, it is no longer possible to use the same strategies and loyalty schemes as before. Why? Simply because offering a system of points earned with each purchase and then reinvested in other products from the same brand is no longer enough to retain current customer’s expectations. At least, over the long term.

Personalisation at the heart of loyalty schemes

According to a secondary study, published by Nielsen last December and carried out among 30,000 consumers in 63 countries: “77% of them take part in at least one loyalty scheme offered by a brand or a retailer and 58% say they go shopping more often and spend more in stores offering a loyalty scheme”. The loyalty scheme concept is far from being over contrarily to the uniform customer approach for who the future isn’t clear.

According to this same survey, 77% of customers who hold a loyalty card expect personalised discounts or promotional offers that match their buying habits.

An observation which isn’t surprising because of younger generation, who are also naturally more interested in technological features such as their loyalty scheme being integrated into an app or a mobile payment system!

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