Customer loyalty is a key to the success of every business. Several big brands consider loyalty as a critical part of their online engagement strategies and employ various tools, from social check-ins to digital payment systems, to gain better involvement from customers. Retention and customer loyalty programs are becoming important revenue drivers in these highly crowded marketplaces.

Brands who are take the lead to prioritize their customers are proving to be early winners. About 43% of mobile app users are more likely to make a purchase when loyalty deals are a part of the app marketing campaign. That’s the level of influence mobile apps have on the lives of people and that’s the channel a business must target. Today we look some apps that (both from retailers themselves or through generic loyalty scheme service provider) that show how business can engage better with customers for a win-win deal –

Shopkick

A location based app, Shopkick offers exciting offers and discounts to customers who simply choose to walk into stores guided by the app. Some of the most prominent clients of Shopkick include Macy’s, Best Buy and Target. Currently Shopkick has been adding independent small retailers in select markets like Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Washington DC, Dallas Seattle and Austin. Customers using Shopkick also get discounts by scanning products through the app. Shopkick is powered by shopBeacon, which helps users flag businesses of their choice around them.

Belly

Belly has proved to be a profitable choice for several businesses. The app allows businesses to track customer footfall wherein the plastic loyalty cards can be scanned on mobile devices and the data can be stored on the cloud. Belly also helps integrate this data over social media platforms and emails, helping spread the word among potential customers. Belly also enables businesses to customize their loyalty programs according to customer behavior and target the same through email messages. When customers scan their loyalty cards/QR codes on their devices, the data gets updated to the merchant database and increases potential leads.

Pirq

Pirq was extensively used in regular business deals after being launched nationwide in the US in 2014. Unlike Belly, Pirq does not require using an in-store tablet. One of the most interesting features of Pirq is Facebook integration across different demographics and several varieties of deals. Pirq has been providing customers with some amazingly unique offers helping businesses do more with their customer loyalty programs.

Foursquare

Foursquare has been an extremely popular customer loyalty service for a decade now. Focusing mainly on social media, Foursquare adds your business listing to enable free analytics and tools. Businesses use these analytics to target demographics more specifically and work towards their business goals. Customers on the other hand use Foursquare for business searches and associated deals and offers. You can also set up special deals for highest purchases and frequent customers.

LoyalBlocks

LoyalBlocks is another exciting app that automatically offers rewards to customers who simply choose to walk into store guided by the app. Business can register online and use an Android powered device as their base server to analyze and customize the rewards for their customers. Once the app has been installed, the interface automatically recognizes the customers and sends tailored rewards every time they walk into the store (powered by a location based tracking).

Mobile loyalty programs are a great benefit to startups and stores that are losing their customers to online retailers. Having such programs is easy and guarantees elaborate returns in the form of leads and profits.

The adoption of mobile devices is the single most rapidly growing and evolving adoption of any technology in the world currently. With huge number of people jumping on the smartphone technology bandwagon, marketers can find it a massive struggle to keep up. The huge potential is ideal to tap into, and businesses are flourishing after adopting the mobile platform. The mobile app industry was in its infancy as recently as five years ago. However, currently it comprises one of the largest markets in the world of technology, with billions of people spending almost 86% of their time using mobile devices on mobile app use.

The holiday season of 2014 can be viewed as a new landmark for retail companies, as they have really upped the ante when it comes to using the mobile app platform for their business. The highly competitive nature of the holiday shopping season saw plenty of effort on the part of retail companies to leverage the mobile platform and use it to their advantage. This has resulted in a massive evolution in the retailer mobile app segment.

Studying the Numbers

An independent study, collecting data from 150 retail mobile apps during the pre-holiday season in 2014, picked up some really interesting data. These trends and strategies have helped change the domain of retailer mobile apps and can be expected to be repeated over and over throughout 2015. Retailers increased their use of mobile communication during this period of time, and customers generally responded with extremely encouraging responses.

Here are some of the more compelling statistics –

• Compared to the previous year, 34% more push messages and notifications were sent by retailers through their mobile apps in 2014.
• Engagement rate for users increased to twice the amount for the previous year as a result of these push notifications.
• Among the total instances of app opens, almost a third was a direct result of the push notifications.

The Importance of Push Messages

Push notifications proved to be the difference-maker in the holiday season of 2014. Consumers appeared to be more engaged as a direct result, and retention rates were found to be considerably higher. Compared to email marketing, push notification scored heavily on all aspects, being seen to increase open rates by 50%, increasing CTR (Click Through Rate) by ten times and even resulting in a whopping 1200% greater conversion.

Retail companies targeted heavy shopping days like Thanksgiving and Black Friday to step up their game with push notifications, and were suitably rewarded. The study also showed that there are defined parameters that can be adhered to for making push notifications a success. The day of choice and the time of day are important factors in this regard.

These are indeed great signs for the future of mobile engagement for the retail industry. Companies who respect the unique nature of the mobile platform and its eccentricities can keep leveraging its huge potential in the holiday season by targeted mobile marketing campaigns.

Mobile apps have totally changed the way we interact. Small businesses out there have recognized the fact that potential consumers are easier to attract through well-designed and highly functional apps. Gone are the days when “buy ten and get one” offers were used to attract the loyalty of existing consumers. This is the era of faster apps and equally prompt in customer purchase decisions. Smartphones and business loyalty applications are loaded with administrating features and unlimited ways to create, explore and manage the consumer behavior. Emerging businesses can easily manage the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns or business loyalty initiatives by bringing these valuable apps to the scene.

The rationale behind loyalty programs

‘When we are closer to our long chased goals, we put in 100% of our efforts to reach there’, says Professor Oleg Urminskey who teaches marketing research at the University of Chicago Booth school of Business. For example – when you are closer to winning a prize from some random retail store, you frequently visit the same.

According to a recent market survey done by Manta and BIA / Kelsey, only 14 % companies admitted to spending their budgets on acquiring new customers. Nearly 61% said that they get their major business from the existing customer base and around 34% accepted that they have a well-developed customer loyalty program in place. This provides ample proof of the degree of traction loyalty programs has gained in the retail segment.

Some Known Names

Digital media is offering free trial issues of online magazines and newspapers that could be read through their exclusive apps. Some leading international newspapers offer cash coupons and also free mobile recharge on installing their app on your phone. Applications like – Belly, Foursquare, FrontFlip, KeyRing, Loyal Blocks, Perka, Slyde and SpotOn are being used by small businesses all over the world. These applications identify the loyal consumers, give points and also reward them depending on the campaign criteria. Through these applications, bulk messages and emails can be sent to the ‘listed’ loyal consumers.

How these help small businesses –

Small businesses can monitor their consumer’s buying behavior and encourage them to buy more. Messages in forms of discount emails, sale, and special offers can now directly arrive in their consumer’s ‘inbox’, from where they have the maximum exposure. Smartphones and apps are saving small businesses from putting in precious manual labor that was used extensively in designing, executing and managing small business loyalty programs earlier.

What you can expect as a consumer?

Being a consumer, you get reward points or earn coins when you buy specific product. Later on, these could be redeemed to buy a free product from the same company or retail store. In addition to this, reward programs treat special customers by giving them advance information about sale, new stock arrivals and lucky draws.

The traditional business loyalty programs involved more physical cards and they were given to consumers on random basis. Majority of these consumers kept these on their refrigerator only to find later that the reward program has expired. With applications especially meant for rewarding consumers at the right time, and influencing their purchase decisions, this scenario has definitely improved. Newer apps that will come to the scene in 2015 will be more targeted, user friendly, specific and meaningful, says a leading industry expert.