Reward Your Customers
A good friend of mine is a Graze junkie. If you aren’t familiar with the product, Graze.com is a delivery snack company. Their tasty personalized snacks appear in her mailbox weekly, biweekly or monthly and contain 4-8 snacks based on her preferences. In addition to her addiction to their Pecan Power sampler, the quality which makes Graze.com the one of her favorite companies is their dedication to their customers.
Graze makes the snacks and gives the rest of the power to the customers. Each box is full of personal touches from a company who is listening to your thoughts and taste buds. Customers rate every snack and future orders are prepared with their preferences in mind.
Graze also rewards customers when we share a personal promo code with a friend. Receiving a free box of a product she already enjoys is a powerful incentive to keep recommending Graze.
How to Create a Reward Program
So maybe your product isn’t as tasty as Graze.com, but many brands can benefit from creating a program which rewards brand advocates. This army of super fans will carry your message far and wide. So what do you need to do to launch a successful reward program?
- Wow your customers. I know this is obvious, but you need to start here. Create experiences customers get excited about and they will be more likely to suggest you to others.
- Give people something they want. I buy a Graze box every two weeks, so the offer of a free box gets my attention. If you have a product people use regularly rewarding them with a discount or free product will work. But what if you sell something people only buy infrequently, like carpet cleaning? Then you need to look outside your product offer, maybe a gift card for coffee or dinner, to get their attention.
- Make it easy for people to share your message. From simple codes which can be sent via email or social media to cards you hand to every customer as they leave your store there are lots of ways to get people to share your information. Just make it simple. The Graze systems works beccause every customer has a personal referral code. That’s great but you don’t have to go that hight tech. You could simply print referral cards and have customers write their name on the back every time they pass one on. When the card is returned to you, it is easy to know who to thank.
- Remind people about your program – It is not enough to send an email one time and expect every customer will see it. Periodically, include a link to the reward program to remind customers to take advantage of the offer.
This type of program is a nice way to say thanks to the influential people ( your happy customers) who are willing to recommend you to a friend. Isn’t that worth rewarding?
Categorized in: Blog, Consumer Experience, Customer Service, Technology
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