It goes without saying that customers are the lifeline of any organization and loyal customers define its bottom line. Retailers are aware that shoppers like to feel appreciated by brands and know their patronage is valued. Those that understand their customers and treat them as individuals are more likely to see increases in purchases and achieve profitable growth.
Personalization and loyalty programs do go hand in hand, and this is confirmed by a recent study conducted by SAS, a business analytics vendor, and a global retail research company, Conlumino. According to the study, almost 95 percent of U.K. consumers like loyalty programs and have at least one loyalty card that they use regularly.
The study, “Retail, Loyalty and the Consumer” highlighted the importance of loyalty programs and those retailers that lacked an emotional connection with consumers didn’t appear to find favor with them. Engagement in brand emotionally obviously played a big part in consumer buying and those that invested in customer loyalty programs came out on top.
Neil Saunders, managing director at Conlumino, noted that such an investment created a massive opportunity for retailers.
It’s not hard to see why loyalty programs are valuable. They help gather information about customers and this data when transformed into valuable insights allow organizations to deliver the “right product at the right price at the right time to the right person and through the right channel.” That’s good for the company and good for the buyer.
SAS, touted to be the leader in business analytics, advocates the use of high-performance analytics to help retailers increase their profit margins by personalizing offers for their customers. The fact that almost a third of consumers surveyed are actively opting into marketing material show that they believe they do benefit from relevant offers by allowing retailers to market directly to them.
And with mobile devices exponentially increasing, Alex Fovargue, SAS U.K. and Ireland retail specialist, observed that helping even a fraction of mobile phone subscribers to accept offers would significantly boost retail profit margins.
Loyal customers drive profitable growth. On the face of it, although this does seem very true and simple, creating a culture that drives customer loyalty is really hard to achieve. Ensuring consistency across everything and everyone is the key, but this has always remained a question mark.