Four years in and the discount voucher loyalty program continues to be the best loyalty offering in the business.
Managed automatically by the software, the vouchers provide to shoppers encouragement to increase their spend in the visit or to come back soon for another purchase.
Customers continue to respond with delight. This is because more than a third of shoppers we see are first time or infrequent.
I call the vouchers front end loyalty because they put the incentive in front of the customer to get them to act beyond average. Most loyalty systems only reward the customer after they have jumped through the hoops and carried a plastic card around.
The discount vouchers are easy.
- No paperwork.
- No card.
- No confusing points.
- Easily understood currency.
- Automatically managed by the software.
- delivering incremental business.
- They cost the business nothing.
The vouchers are particularly useful for habit based purchases such as magazines, greeting cards, collectibles and similar where a customer can comfortably purchase more as they know they will want the additional purchase at some point in time.
I had a shopper yesterday who purchased a bag and a bow and received a voucher for $1.00. They used that to purchase two cards and with that they received another $1 voucher. They used that to purchase a $20.00 item for a future birthday.
The business gave away $2.00 for an additional $33.00 in revenue to a customer who is not local and will not be back in the centre any time soon. The additional GP earned was $18.45. I am happy for this to cost $2.00 as banking $16.45 is better than banking nothing.
If this was the old-school points based offer they’d have to sign up, visit a few times and then maybe get enough to get a discount. That is why points based loyalty programs are regarded as past their use by date and no longer relevant to retail today.
Things are moving faster. Shoppers want more and sooner. Social media has educated people to seek instant gratification. Discount vouchers provide this.
The engagement with discount vouchers is across demographic groups and this another thing to love about them. While different demos respond differently, they all respond positively and valuably for the business.
So, my marketing tip today – embrace discount vouchers and make more money in your business.