When talking to shop owners in the service sector, I often hear them say things like: “Rewarding my customers is unnecessary, as they are already loyal.” To some extent this is true as most of us don’t swap hairdressers, barbers, or dog groomers all that often.
So, this means that I don’t need a loyalty scheme…right? Wrong! Loyalty schemes are also very useful for upselling and spreading your clients more evenly, and this blog will explain how…
Consider this. If I get my hair cut once a month, at a cost of £15 per visit, my barber earns £180 a year from my custom. But say instead I had my haircut every three weeks, this would mean that my barber would earn £255 per year from me – which is an increase of over 40%!
Influencing these small changes in consumer behaviour can be achieved simply through a clever use of loyalty vouchers. For example, setting up the loyalty system to produce a £6 voucher for each £75 spent will trigger a voucher every 5th visit. Better still, if the voucher is made valid for only 3 weeks then the consumer will book earlier to use it and soon will come accustomed to this 3-week cycle as part of their routine. This is a very powerful way to change buying habits, all at an extremely low cost.
Another intelligent way to influence the behaviour of your consumers is to offer certain benefits for booking an appointment during a quiet time of day, i.e. ‘2-for-1 Tuesdays’, which in turn will free-up peak times for any new customers.
Any loyalty scheme worth its salt will include an online marketing suite to enable you to communicate with your clients by email, text or via an app (if you have one). Whenever you launch a new product or service, you can send an introductory offer to your client base in order to encourage sales. Similarly, if you’re looking to attract new customers then sending your existing database an offer for a free product or service for each referral that they bring is a simple and effective way to achieve this.
The beauty of a loyalty scheme is that it need not be expensive – our packages here at LoyaltyPro start for as little as £5 a week! Any well-thought out scheme with a careful marketing strategy behind it will easily pay for itself and ultimately bring an increase in your profits.
If you’re interested in hearing a little more about our loyalty packages, then feel free to pop a comment on our Facebook or drop us a Tweet.