Research shows that loyalty program members generate 12 to 18% more revenue for their brands than the non-members of the program. This should come as no surprise, because loyal customers, with strong retention rates, are the best customers. That’s why it’s important to use loyalty program emails to increase customer engagement even more. Here are some top suggestions for writing exciting emails for your loyalty program.
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1. Use an Email Provider
You should have a similar look and brand to all your emails and channels, but for some reason sometimes companies don’t follow that with loyalty programs. This is because a lot of providers don’t have email functionality for certain events, like earning VIP status. If you can integrate your emails for your regular consumers and your loyalty program, that’s the best way to go.
Be Informative
It’s really important that in all your emails, especially your first email (which we’ll explain below), you’re proactive in making your email informative while explaining everything your reader needs to know about your loyalty program and why they should be a part of it. You need to make sure you’re hooking them and drawing them in.
Remember, the first email is going to be your make-or-break opportunity as to whether your customers want to sign on to your loyalty program, or will simply scan the email, delete it, and won’t consider you again. This is why you need to make it count!
There are two core attributes you should mention when it comes to explaining and describing your program; making your customers excited about your program, and clearly explaining how it works.
While we’re going to focus on the former in several different ways below, it’s crucial you don’t forget the latter. Of course, you’ll want to make sure you’re describing your program in such a way that everything seems effortless and simple, all while not taking up too much of your customer’s time.
As a rule of thumb, keep things simple and restricted to the most concise level of information possible. While you legally need to mention the terms and conditions of your program, try to keep these areas to the bare essentials, or clearly link out to them on a separate page.
Don’t forget to implement a clear call to action to start your customer off on their own loyalty journey with your business.
2. Introduce Loyalty from the Start
If someone signed up for your email list, it means they want to hear from you. Open rates for welcome emails are much higher than any other marketing emails. This means that your welcome email is the best place to showcase your brand values and why it stands out from competitors.
You should do the same with your loyalty program. Henry Klein, a marketer at Elite Assignment Help and State of Writing, says to “introduce people to your loyalty program as they discover about your brand as a whole. Identify the perks of the loyalty program, whether it’s free shipping or points-based or early access to products.”
By outlining this information as early as the new customer onboarding, you can engage customers early and increase your chances of creating loyal customers.
3. Bring Up Loyalty Frequently
In addition to welcome emails, you should bring up loyalty programs in your other emails, even if you’re just briefly alluding to it at the end of your email series. By mentioning your loyalty programs frequently, you’re creating awareness and increasing your chances of success. If people don’t know about your loyalty program or forget about it, there’s no chance that they will participate.
During your order confirmation emails, including the customer’s status and points balance, and when you follow up after the purchase, bring up the perks of the loyalty program to allude to the next sale and how close the client is to a reward.
Of course, we’re speaking about emails here, but don’t forget to mention your loyalty program across other platforms. You can mention it in-store or on your website, as well as share information about it on your social media pages.
A great way to approach this is to take case studies of customers who are already part of your loyalty program and see if they’re willing to share the exciting and beneficial experience they had while using it, providing you with shareable social proof that the loyalty program is worthwhile.
Additionally, you don’t even need to take this social proof yourself. Encourage your customers to share their own experiences with you, perhaps by creating a customized hashtag or trend that people can connect to with.
4. Be Clear and Engaging
Your loyalty program emails, like all your marketing emails, should be clear and engaging so your readers aren’t left confused and are actually intrigued to learn more about what you’re saying or make a purchase. To help you with the drafting and revising of your emails, use the online tools outlined below.
- Academic advisor and Study demic are some copywriting guides for all kinds of emails, including marketing emails like these.
- Big Assignments and Paper Fellows are editing tools that you should be using the review the content, structure, and flow of your emails.
- Simple Grad and My Writing Way are grammar checkers to have a second look for any typos and spelling mistakes.
- Essayroo is the top proofreading tool reviewed by Write My Australia.
- Via Writing and Let’s Go and Learn are the resources that will help you generate catchy subject lines, headers, and keywords.
- Ox Essays and Australian Help will format your emails for you so everything is presented in the best way.
5. Personalize Your Emails
Your loyal customers, more than regular customers, give you a lot of useful information, like what promotions they like, their purchase history, their online patterns, and more. Use that data to personalize your messages so that your most valuable customers get the best user experience and recommend products based on their interests and more.
With statistics claiming around 72% of online customers will receive brand-related content in their emails, it’s rare that people are receiving successful loyalty brand information. This is mainly due to the lack of personalization.
If an email looks like it’s just been sent out on mass to a group of people, it’s common marketing knowledge that the email is going to get ignored.
However, one of the biggest programs you may come across is using outdated information.
Take a moment to think about how you work with all your customer information and the variety of platforms the data is spread across. You need to make sure you’re taking the time to compile your information, so you have access to the most up-to-date and correct information that has the most impact on your reader.
6. Drive Customers to Physical Stores
If you’ve got a brick-and-mortar location, you should use your loyalty program emails to drive clients to your stores. Many consumers still prefer in-person shopping to e-commerce and some like a mix of both.
In fact, research shows that one-third of Americans surveyed will visit a store because of an email received with an offer. For example, rewards members can be notified of the benefits of going to a store in person and redeeming an offer for a free product. The odds are good that when they go on-site to redeem the offer, they’ll also make more purchases.
7. Send Emails with Value to VIP Clients
Your top customers should receive the most value and reward for reaching the top level of your loyalty program. Spend some time to find the best way to reward top customers, like bonus points or free products, give them exclusive access to early sales, let them know where they are on the scale, and more.
Your top customers are by definition your more frequent purchasers so keeping them loyal has a big impact on your business’s bottom line.
Hand in hand with this point, letting your customers know that they’re part of the ‘inside group’ of your business, the most loyal of the loyal, is a fantastic way to make customers feel special, emotionally connect with your business, and to make them feel as though they’re part of something bigger.
8. Implement Referral Codes to Customers
If you have repeat customers who keep coming back and are properly using your loyalty program, it’s a great idea, and very exciting for both you and your customers, to start using referral codes.
You can send customized referral codes to your customers for them to give to their friends and family so they can enjoy the benefits and rewards you’re offering while being able to benefit from more rewards themselves.
There are plenty of platforms and software applications out there that can help you manage this side of things and can help you stay organized with your codes. Using this approach is fantastic because it allows you to open the door to easy affiliate and influencer marketing and helps to grow a community and network around your business that helps people to feel close and as they belong; which is a great way to encourage sales and to emotionally connect with your customers.
9. Let Customers Know About Incoming Rewards
Throughout a customer’s time in your loyalty program, they’re going to build up rewards as they make purchases and carry out certain actions. One really important way to build excitement about what is to come is to let people know when they are getting close to a reward.
Say you offer a policy in which for every ten purchases; a customer will receive a 20% discount code to use whenever they want. In this example, once your customers reach eight or nine purchases, you can let them know how close they are to their next reward and then include a call to action on how to get it.
This can be very encouraging to customers who will probably be making a purchase with you at some point but are excited to receive their discount to enjoy your shopping experience even more.
10. Get Customers Excited About Your Program
Hand in hand with what I was talking about above, it’s important to make sure you make your customers aware of what points and perks, or tiers, of your loyalty program they have access to, so they know what they’re spending, what they have access too, and so they have something to get excited about.
However, instead of sending a ton of emails displaying this balance, the best way to implement it is to simply include this information in every email you send. The more visibility you give to your loyalty program within your emails, the more likely people are to get involved and use it to both their and your benefit.
Following these tips for loyalty program emails should help you keep your customers engaged, especially your most loyal customers.
Ellie Coverdale is a career and marketing blogger with UK Writings and academized. She enjoys researching marketing trends and working with businesses to implement them and analyze results. She is a digital nomad who also teaches writing skills at Boom Essays and travels the world.
