Build loyalty and communicate with customers

Loyalty   15 Oct 2019   Sami Al-Taher

Build loyalty and communicate with customers

Loyalty Programs are widely used by businesses as a marketing tool to help build repeat business. The best type of customers any business can have is one where the customers keep coming back to them.

In the past, when faced with the options of creating a loyalty program, businesses have had mainly two options.

1. Paper or Loyalty Stamp or Punch Cards, or
2. Points based Plastic Loyalty Cards possibly linked to a Point of Sale System.

The benefits of Paper based loyalty cards are that they are easy to implement and relatively low cost for a business. The business only needs to cover the cost of printing the cards.

However, the effectiveness of Paper Loyalty cards is limited to those customers that are organised and prepared to carry them. For most customers, they will end up with multiple cards or they will lose, misplace or forget them - which is no good for the business.

The other major shortcoming of paper based loyalty cards is that it provides no information on the customer (who, when, frequency of visit), and therefor are next useless when it comes to a business understanding their customers habits and communicating with them.

Points based Loyalty cards solve this problem of communication with the customer, but it often comes at a substantial cost to the business. This cost can run from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per annum by the time you add on the software module and issue plastic cards, usually at $1-2 each, develop marketing collateral and train staff. Whether the customer chooses to register for the program and or carry the card on them is another matter! The cost of these programs is simply too much for the average small to medium sized business.

Loyalty Programs based on Smartphones effectively overcomes all the problems of traditional loyalty programs. For the the cost of a paper loyalty cards, Whats-OUT can put your businesses loyalty program on your customers iPhones and Androids devices immediately.

• It is more effective than a card as the customer is more likely than not to be carrying a Smartphone these days.
• There is no complicated software or hardware that businesses often struggle with. It is all on the customers phone.
• Staff don't need to waste time taking customers details, as all the information is submitted to the business through the Whats-OUT App.
• The Whats-OUT system provides the analytical and communication benefits of expensive Point of Sale Plastic card system for the price of a paper card loyalty program or less.
• Your customer loves to be rewarded and the convenience of having your reward program on their phone.