Have you ever wanted to start an e-commerce loyalty program for your online store? Learn what it takes as well as best practice right here.
Did you know loyal customers spend 67% more on products and services than new customers?
And while there’s nothing wrong with the old fashioned punch card, technology has given us a sleeker, more modern solution for customer loyalty programs that directly caters to online shopping.
These days, customers would prefer scrolling through their phones over rifling through their bags for a piece of paper anyway.
SMS loyalty programs are known to help businesses:
It’s all thanks to SMS’s high open rates, high response rate, and general accessibility. These three ingredients are the perfect recipe for cooking up a little loyalty for your e-commerce store.
How do you get started? We’re glad you asked!
Before we get started, you’ll want to make sure you’re set up with a text marketing provider who can give you the features necessary to automate your loyalty program.
SMS software will allow you to send messages to large groups, schedule messages ahead, sort and prioritize your inbox, and more.
If you aren’t already set up, you can follow along with these steps by signing up for a free trial of SimpleTexting—no credit cards or commitment required!
Before you start sending out messages, the first thing your loyalty program needs is some subscribers, or contacts.
With text marketing, there are a few different ways you can do this. We suggest giving your customers more than one way to subscribe to capture as many people as possible.
Here are a few of your options:
Once you’ve determined how you’ll grow your list it’s time to set your autoresponders. Set up text messages that go out days, weeks, or months after someone has signed up for your program. Each of these messages should include a reason to come back to your website.
[Watch: How to Set Up Autoresponders for a Text Marketing Campaign]
The key to a successful customer loyalty program is to offer variation and frequency. For an e-commerce store, this could look like a rotation of coupon codes, giveaways, tips/tricks, and sales promotions.
The key is to pepper in those rewards around the promotions, so your customers derive value from staying involved.
The best way to know what works? Just ask! You can use our polling or text-to-vote features to ask your subscribers what they’d like to receive from you.
Visibility is key. Now that customers have a way to join your loyalty program and their first message is scheduled out, you need to share with them that you have one.
Some excellent ways to do this include:
Kidding with that last one, but you get the idea. The more you advertise it, the more subscribers you’ll have. And once word of mouth kicks in, the ball will start rolling.
You’ve done the leg work, and it’s time to see the results. You’re officially ready to start sending your messages! Some quick bits of housekeeping to remember:
In addition to the suggestions we made earlier for the types of rewards you can send, here are some more ideas on neat ways to engage with your customers via SMS:
Take your online store to the next level with an SMS loyalty program. You never know, you could join the ranks of stores like Eu Natural who earned a 563% ROI with just one text campaign to their loyalty club.
Or Baby Tula, who made enough sales to drive a 1,668% ROI with just one text message.
When it comes to what you can do with an SMS e-commerce loyalty program and your online store, the sky is the limit!
Start a text marketing campaign or have a 1-on-1 conversation today. It's risk free. Sign up for a 14-day trial and get access to all of our features.
