Top Loyalty Strategies for Indie Retail

Loyalty and Cost of Acquisition - Retention 

I think a lot about the evolution of marketing automation from the perspective of cloud Point of Sale, and the small to medium business (SMB) implications of this for indie retail stores, niche shops and lifestyle interest of local retail.  I want to be an advocate for how these small stores with slim margins, can improve their marketing in 2016. I was reading an amazing post by Adele Stewart, on the future of digital marketing in 2016, and I got a bit excited, because I too think marketing automation is the future. 

Where Loyalty is Heading 

For SMB independent retail, I'm of the opinion that marketing automation that utilizes incentives for customers to refer friends via word of mouth, is the easiest way to reduce the cost of acquisition of a customer to your store. This can be done easily if your store is on a Cloud point of sale system, such as Lightspeed or Vend or retail-centric SpringBoard, whereby customer analytics can give sku data that enables you to identify (insights that are actionable) who are your high value customers, with a service such as Thirdshelf. The top software integrations are therefore monthly subscriptions that can generate you additional ROI and transform your loyalty into something you as an indie brand can be proud of. 

This startup, Thirdshelf, is cutting edge, because it does a few things really well. It analyzes customer data to create the highest value segments, it customizes loyalty reward programs to your audience and combines this with triggered Email marketing that reduces churn. All this, under the brand's own trust (no coalition networks here and you get to keep the integrity of your customer's data within your possession), with the ability to demonstrate proof of ROI of each campaign in $ dollar signs and being streamlined with a customer success team. 

Loyalty programs and Email automation that has anti churn campaigns triggered via Emails are really key for independent  businesses. This because the consumer has a more intimate relationship with a small store, and is more likely to be a lifestyle interest where the end-user has more incentive to share on social media and create user-generated content.

So loyalty programs need to be paired with UGC, friend-referrals, events at the store, free product give aways and other customized campaigns that the store can easily implement to increase the customer's lifetime value (CLV) and optimize each segment and all touchpoint of the customer lifetime journey. 

Why Loyalty Reduces Cost of Acquisition & Boosts Retention 

For an indie store or small chain of stores, loyalty campaigns is an important component of your branding that influences and reduces cost of acquisition. By identifying the new customer as a potential high, medium or low value customer and targeting them accordingly, you are maximizing their customer lifetime value (CLV). The best way to do this is adopt a cloud point of sale system and find the best SaaS solution there for loyalty. 

Create campaigns that integrate friend-referral programs into your loyalty rewards programs and pair social sharing by your customers online, with loyalty rewards points, discounts or special offers. Create compelling custom promotional campaigns and events, that increase store traffic like free product giveaways that increase lift and increase peer word of mouth marketing of your top brand advocates of your customers. The way Millennials who create content online has to be integrated with your brand strategy, even if you have zero budget for content. In 2016, integrating marketing means tapping into UGC and automating marketing initiatives all related to your Loyalty program. 

The Highest ROI for Loyalty in 2016 

Marketing automation paired with loyalty, is the top way to decrease cos tor acquisition (COA) and retention of customers. By having customer analytics where you can monitor the ROI of each campaign, even it's just a birthday loyalty offer, and with the ability to analyze the mains customer lifecycle segments along with value segments of your customers, you can optimize the automation of loyalty campaigns for the highest ROI. 

In short, stores need to hack Loyalty differently in 2016, and one of the #Bigideas2016 is to integrate it with marketing automation, user-generated content, friend-referral programs, contests, and free product giveaways at your store to truly get the best bang for your buck and increase traffic, spend frequency, max-out CLV and improve retention at all relevant touchpoint to your store's niche and audience.