Convenience retail has unique challenges and demands a unique approach in this digital age.
Interested in reading more? Check out the loyalty playbook’s chapters below:
Chapter 1: Introduction |
Chapter 2: Customer Connection Cycle |
Chapter 3: How to Wow (Part 1 & Part 2) |
Chapter 8: Rewarding With Stamps |
Chapter 4: Recruiting Members |
Chapter 9: Rewarding With Points |
Chapter 5: Engaging Your Members |
Chapter 10: Success with Subscriptions |
Chapter 6: Powerful Promotions |
Chapter 11: How to Effectively Analyse Your Loyalty Program |
Chapter 7: In-Store Excellence |
Chapter 12: Operating Your Loyalty Program Successfully |
We love to share our knowledge! Explore the full Convenience Retail Loyalty Playbook by downloading it here
Being Brilliant:
Beyond the basic principles above, our digital world means higher expectations in loyalty marketing. Here in Liquid Barcodes, we’ve coined the term ‘live loyalty’ to summarise the three ‘E’s that great programmes use to become truly a part of customers’ daily lives. By clearly understanding each party’s separate objectives in everyday terms, we have gamified the relationship between customers and convenience retailers in a way that also delights the C-Suite. We believe in setting a genuine intention for every programme to make a difference for its members, so here are our top three tips to keep in mind if you’re setting your goal on ‘being brilliant’ at loyalty:
- Easy: The original idea behind the convenience industry continues to dominate customer demands. Whether it’s enabling pre-order or pre-payment, customers love when a loyalty programme makes their every day life easier. Can you eliminate the need to queue? The need to pay cash? The need to repeat yourself simply to enjoy your same order day in and day out? Customers love when you make their lives easy and your loyalty programme is the perfect tool to use.
- Empowering: As customers demand more valuable experiences, ‘live loyalty’ programmes enable customers to create a connection with their friends and family by sharing every day moments as gifts or treats. Already successfully established in China, ‘Say it with Starbucks’ has enabled millions of Starbucks gifts to be shared online over the past year by leveraging partnerships on both Alibaba and WeChat. Does your loyalty programme empower your customers to share and connect?
- Engaging: Gamification is one of the most effective tools to drive consumer engagement, with over ninety compelling case studies quoted by the gamification expert Yu-kai Chou. Examples include Domino’s pizza who have seen over 30% of orders now placed on mobile since they gamified the platform. It’s also well known how effective the technique has proven to be in the fitness industry, with FitBit and Nike successfully using gamification to drive engagement in recent years. Nike alone quoted over 5 million people engaging! Gamification can be used for almost any marketing challenge in convenience retail, whether it’s to drive footfall, reduce waste, stimulate trial of new products or share a moment with friends and family. Using fun is a clear differentiator in a world of loyalty programmes that can sometimes become very tired and dated.
There are plenty of detailed loyalty tactics and ideas available here on our website, which simply need to be approached with a loyalty mindset. JC Penney is quoted as saying that “Every great business is built on friendship” and I’m sure you’ll agree that every great friendship feels easy, empowering and engaging. Hopefully by using these principles, your loyalty programme will too!
About Us:
Liquid Barcodes is a leading global loyalty and digital marketing technology company specialising in the convenience store and foodservice industries. Our proprietary cloud-based technology platform allow retailers to create and manage their digital marketing campaigns with a proprietary process we call the “customer connection cycle’ to engage, promote and reward customers activities in real-time across digital and media channels.
How we do it:
We have developed the most advanced loyalty and digital marketing technology platform specifically for convenience store and foodservice retailers globally.
Retailers use our self-service dashboard to create and manage loyalty driven marketing campaigns that increase purchases with their existing customers, as well as effectively target and acquire new customers through partners or paid media channels.
One core component of live loyalty is gamification. We have gamified branding, loyalty and promotions. We believe this approach is essential in order to get customers’ attention and ultimately truly engage them with repeatable actions thereby winning their loyalty.
Check out some of our exciting/proven results here:
About Me:
Chief Content Officer, Liquid Barcodes and Independent Loyalty Consultant
With over twenty-five years marketing experience, I specialise in loyalty marketing consulting, managing consumer loyalty propositions, strategy and operations. In addition to working with Liquid Barcodes, my clients have included Telefonica O2 Priority, Three Mobile, Electric Ireland, Allied Irish Bank and The Entertainer Group (UAE), as well as Avios – the global points currency for some of the world’s top airlines. I am also a former judge for the Loyalty Magazine Awards and host of the “Let’s Talk Loyalty” podcast.
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