Loyalty Analytics: Expectations vs. Reality
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Jurate
- December 13, 2021
This article reveals some loyalty analytics expectations vs. reality to help you navigate loyalty software solutions choices.
Table of Contents
Let’s begin with a conclusion – customer loyalty programs without analytics is like driving somewhere not knowing either the road or direction. Therefore, customer loyalty analytics is a crucial part of the loyalty solution and equally important as an actual loyalty program as it helps to understand if the loyalty program is working. Data itself is useless without analysis – that’s why a self-service analytics hub is a must for every loyalty software solution.
However, loyalty analytics is not only about tracking how many users you have or how many points you reward. It is about increased customer visibility and a deeper understanding of individual customer behaviour, which helps define personalised offers that trigger brand loyalty and advocacy.
But how can loyalty analytics boost up your business growth?
Improved Customer Retention
Customer retention and the intimacy of the relationship between company and customer are closely linked. Retaining customers is about more than just transactions, it is about building relationships. Analytics help you highlight these customers before they switch to your competitor. Loyal customers bring you better revenue and are easier to keep than attracting new customers. A stepping stone on the journey of business growth.
Increased Customer Lifetime Value
We have said it once and we will say it again, customers spend 33% more than new customers since they already know they love your products or service! Personalised services and products can only be delivered if you know your customer and have data to support personalization or are able to calculate their lifetime value.
Pretty much, businesses that track customer acquisition KPIs are 23x more likely to outperform their competitors. A win-win!
Improve Customer Experience
Analytics provide insight into customers behaviour and personal preferences. 49% of buyers make increased purchases after receiving a more personalised experience. Slowly, over time a closer relationship will be developed which is vital when trying to keep the level of customer experience that is now expected.
With a high standard of customer service now being expected, analytics help create a competitive advantage in a competitive industry. Which means growth, growth, growth.
Save time and money on marketing!
Reduced costs are always a goal for a business. It is often the way that social media and paid advertising can be very expensive, with the award not always being clear to see. Analytics can help ensure the money you are investing is going to the areas where you are going to reap the most reward.
Which KPIs are the most important to track?
So let’s discuss the main KPIs (key performance indicator) every loyalty program app should track.
First, let’s start with the daily KPIs. These are important to understand to have a pulse on loyalty performance and plan daily campaigns or activities.
- Customer enrolment – A standard KPI, which helps you to track customer enrollment in your programme. Who is in your community/ contact list? This is a great way to track if your community is growing.
- Number of daily/weekly/monthly loyalty app users – How often is your community engaging? An important figure when it comes to budgeting for campaigns and creative scope.
- Number of transactions – How many of your customers are purchasing from you? This is important to see if your customers are actually spending? If customers are often visiting your store/website but are not purchasing there could be something wrong with your customer journey. This could be anything from customer experience to the product itself.
- Amount of revenue per loyal customer – How much are your loyal customers spending? This value, compared with the average basket, helps you to assess your loyalty program value. So keep checking!
The second step is to get an overall customer overview, or how it is commonly called a 360-degree view of your loyalty program customers. Behaviour analytics would help put a face on every customer and understand their actual habits. Based on that, you can plan your future campaigns and improve personalisation. Need a refresher on why a more intimate relationship between customer and company is important? Freshen up here.
Back to customer overview, important KPIs to track:
- Most common days of checking loyalty app or buying goods and services – What days are your customers most active? These are the days you should be pushing out your brand new content; such as news or new offer campaigns. Take advantage of the organic engagement you are achieving and grow from there!
- Most favourite places to visit – Work out if your customers are frequent visitors at one specific location. This allows you to take advantage of global and regional campaigns.
- Purchasing behaviour – It is important to track the purchasing behaviour of your customers. Do some customers only shop in the winter? May be worth providing a discount code before the winter season to encourage them to return to you over a competitor.
- Bottom line contribution: points awarded, campaign redemption, etc – Do you want to understand your loyalty program engagement. Then track your rewards redemption, points awarded and understand what triggers customer behaviour.
- Devices/platforms customers use – This one pretty much explains itself. Are your users using Google or Apple products more? Chrome or Safari?
- The most read news, offers, events- is the content you are creating resonating? Are some events or offers not seeing a lot of interaction? Maybe worth investing the time and resource into content that will have more interaction
Last and most important is defining segments that require the most attention, either converting them to loyal customers/brand advocates, retaining them, or just rewarding their fantastic loyalty.
Different segments behave differently, and it is important to track their behaviour changes to act early.
KPIs to track:
- Inactive customers change – Inactive customers are those customers who haven’t interacted with your brand for quite some time. So how can we change this? Have you changed your strategy and have noticed more interaction – a.k.a it is working. Track track track.
- High-value customers change & behaviour – high-value customers = clients who have a significant impact on your bottom line. It is important to keep an eye on these customers and their behaviour. What do they like? Don’t like it? Prefer to shop at a certain time? It is important to track as different waves in behaviour can have a serious effect on your business.
- Customer tastes and preferences – An intimate relationship with your customers is vital as we all know. By tracking your customers’ tastes and preferences you are more likely to create a product that your customers are going to love and enjoy! Isn’t that the goal?
Is there more? Definitely, there is, but it is a journey, and it is crucial to separate the most important things first.
But knowing and understanding customer analytics is just part of a journey, and sometimes it is misleading to think that analytics will give all answers by just having all possible. It is vital to create test groups to run the loyalty program campaigns, see the results, and make necessary improvements. More about this in the next blog post!
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Loyalty Analytics: Expectations vs. Reality - MyLoyal
This article reveals some loyalty analytics expectations vs. reality to help you navigate loyalty software solutions choices.
Price Currency: Eur
Operating System: iOS, Android
Application Category: Loyalty App
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