Features Of A Loyalty Program That Will Help Your Merchant IT Clients Enhance Customer Experience

By Chris Allen, Director, Demand Generation & Channel Marketing, Vantiv Integrated Payments (formerly Mercury Payment Systems)

Loyalty programs have earned a place in the toolbox of merchants that depend on repeat purchases from their customers. Repeat business is great, but there is an even better reason why loyalty programs are important: they save money.

Businesses, on average, spend up to 10 times less on marketing to existing customers than they do on finding new ones, a significant savings for merchants as they strive to retain as many customers as possible. And while loyalty programs have proven to help keep people coming back through the door, it’s important to note that not all of them of are equally effective. The most successful ones have common features that improve the customer experience, enhance value, and deepen the relationship with the best customers.

Here are some ways you can help your merchant IT clients improve their loyalty programs:

1. Make Them Easy To Understand. Everyone has seen cryptic rewards systems some merchants try to use, ones that describe how points convert to dollars and how a certain bank of cash gets you an automatic discount. Enthusiasm for earning points will wane quickly if people have to think too hard about whether their efforts will be truly rewarded. Even worse, people may become skeptical of the integrity of the business if the rewards program is too confusing.
   
   Keeping conversion system simple and easy to understand is always a good idea.

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