Chapter 8: Planning Your Loyalty Program
Chapter 8 walks us through the outline of a loyalty program and gives us the building blocks to bring this program to life! Building a loyalty program starts with finding a problem to solve. The next step is understanding the people of whom you are trying to gain loyalty from! It does not matter what we decide to do if it does not reach our target audiences. That means we have to find out who our target audiences are and what motivates them, as well as their input on improvements. As someone who does not have a business or loyalty program, I look at this information from the perspective of gaining loyalty in general. If you have an Instagram account them you have a platform in which you can see loyalty. Perhaps it is a small account and your followers are friends and family. In this case, they want to see updates on your life which is why they follow. However, maybe you have a bigger platform that extends beyond known family members and friends. How do you keep them loyal? First you have to discover your niche. A niche is defined as, a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service” (Merriam-Webster, 2019). Are you an athlete, a comedian, or an artist? Do you post relatable content, vlogs, or lip synch videos? This is the “problem you are solving.” For myself, I see that social media is a dark, wordly place and want to help solve that by being a light for Christ with my content. You may feel like you know what your audience likes to see, however, this chapter says to dive deeper and ask more questions as if you are a beginner. Companies should always be trying to improve for their customers. In social media marketing, those who succeed are those who tailor their content to what their consumers like. Maybe try to send out a poll or question on a story asking what your audience likes or would like to see more of. It can never hurt to learn more. This builds a relationship with them as well and shows you care about their wants and needs, as a content creator or a company. The next step was to decide what you desired your customers to do (Paharia). Are they earning points or badges, or are they achieving goals and receiving instant feedback? What are the key activities taking place? Going back to social media. Maybe you have an event or giveaway and in order to enter to win, your followers have to like the post, tag 3 people and post it to their story. This gives clear action and outlines what is possibly in store for them if they do this. You also have goals for your own business and profile. For a business there can be goals of sales and meeting quotas, and receiving surveys from customers. For creators, goals could include reaching a number of followers, or posting a certain amount every week, and receiving likes and comments. There should be goals to motivate consumers and the businesses themselves and the employees involved. These are also the performance indicators and the ways to measure success and engagement. Furthermore, your loyalty program should have a mission statement (Paharia). What is the overall goal for the program? An example with my social media would be to engage my followers with content that will move them to post on their stories and further share with others the goodness of God. I do not care about followers or likes, however, if that means my videos are seen by more people, than I would love to have the Lord enlarge my territory. The last two steps are understanding boundaries and the ROI. Both crucial in building a reasonable loyalty program. The entire goal of a loyalty program is to maintain customers which would then lead to more consistent sales and increased revenue stream. In the end, this chapter gives clear direction into applying everything talked about up until now, into the real world. With these steps, you can confidently start building a loyalty program or experiment with building loyalty in other aspects of life, such as your own personal social media. Merriam-Webster. (2019). Definition of NICHE. Merriam-Webster.com. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niche. Rajat Paharia. (2013). Loyalty 3.0 : how big data and gamification are revolutionizing customer and employee engagement. Mcgraw-Hill Education.
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