subject: E-commerce Site Customer Reward Feature [print this page] E-commerce Site Customer Reward Feature E-commerce Site Customer Reward Feature
Many well established online and offline retailers use customer incentives to increase sales for the business. They go by the name customer loyalty programs or customer reward programs. These are powerful tools that can be integrated into any marketing campaign. The primary purpose of having incentives is to reward customers for making repeat purchases, it promotes loyal buying behavior.
The way that customer incentives work is a visitor to your ecommerce website makes a purchase and in turn earns reward points for either the total amount spent, the number of products or specific type of products purchased. They will then accumulate those points and use it towards future purchases. As an online store owner, you can determine how the customer reward program works. Set your own threshold for amount of points required for customers to redeem their rewards. You are also able to designate what kind of reward to offer them, which can be in the form of discount for future purchases, free gifts or gift certificates.
Just having a customer reward program is not sufficient, you must make sure that it's both simple to find and simple for your customers to use. It is necessary to display text or image links throughout your online store so customers are able to get the information they need. Ideally, these links should be located in different areas such as headers, footers and sidebars. This way no matter which page the visitor is on, they will be able to get to the customer incentives page. The information you provide your customers is also crucial, be detailed when giving them directions on how to redeem their points. The worst thing for a customer is not having any idea on how to redeem their points or getting unexplained errors when completing a purchase. Review all the small details and think in terms of a new customer, then make the necessary modifications to your website.
An e-commerce solution that has customer reward capabilities should have the ability to do the following:
built-in reward points systems in the store control panel
be able to select the type of reward to offer
be able to convert points into gift cards or gift certificates
be able to create your own regulations for calculating reward points
be able to set predefined criteria for reward redemption
There are many advantages for offering customer incentives on your online store. It's a powerful tool that will not only help you acquire new customers but does an even better job retaining current customers. Recent studies have shown that it's a lot easier to sell to current customers than it is to acquire new ones. In fact, it is 7 to 10 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to get a current customer to buy from you again. Repeat customers on average will spend 33% more than new customers and if they belong to a customer loyalty program, they spend 4 times as much money. There is plenty of reason to develop your own customer reward program.
Since you are primarily targeting existing customers, the first thing you must do is let them know about this new program. Make sure you add image and text links all over your website and if you have a mailing list, send a mass email out to everyone on that list. Remember to include details of the program in the checkout area. You can also use it as a promotional tool to gain new customers. Some tactics you can use include rewarding existing customers for recommending their friends, starting contests where participants can earn points and giving away points to customers with positive feedback that can be used to help improve your website. Customer reward programs have the ability to become viral, especially if you use contests to entice people to join. Promote it to well known bloggers, post to related forums or get more people to follow you using a social media campaign. All of these tactics are used to market your business, the customer incentives are used to get them to return.
