10 Ways a Loyalty Program Can Help You Maintain Critical Business During a Crisis

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for our live webinar, 10 Ways a Loyalty Program Can Help You Maintain Critical Business During a Crisis. If you have any questions during the webinar, please put them in the question box and we will try our best to answer them at the end. And with that, I will pass it over to Tim.

Thank you, Lauren, and thank you everybody for joining today. You know, first of all, just want to send out our message that we hope everybody and your families and friends are doing okay. I know this is trying times for everybody. And I want to make a note, this is not in no way a commercial presentation. We are not going to talk about Fielo or Fielo's product at all. We are going to be gleaning some tactics and best practices from our own customers of what they're doing with respect to their loyalty programs, how they're leveraging them to maintain customer engagement, customer loyalty, and we just wanted to share those with you. So I asked Ivantia to join me today. Ivantia has a lot of experience interacting with our customers And she and I are going to share some of the things that they're doing in the face of this coronavirus crisis to buttress their business. So let's get started. You know, given the difficult times that we are facing, companies really need to keep a close eye on developments and adapt accordingly. Not only to minimize the impact on their business, but also, and perhaps most importantly, to ensure the health and safety of their customers. If you're running a customer loyalty program, your strategy cannot be to maintain the status quo. You're going to have to make some modifications to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction levels high in order to diminish churn rate and to assist your business during these difficult times. So we're going to explain 10 different ways a loyalty program can help you maintain critical business during a crisis. Number 1: Direct customer engagement to online channels. This may seem like an obvious one, but you need to give your customers the opportunity to engage with you through online channels and incentivize that behavior to ensure that they remain in their homes and are practicing social distancing. You can incentivize this behavior by giving extra points for every online dollar spent or for every online engagement they have with your brand. And incentivizing this online community goes beyond just the purchase. Pre-sales and post-sales can and should be conducted through online channels as well. Keeping your customers safe while encouraging their participation and helping to make their money go farther.

Eva, talk about it. Hi everyone, thanks for joining. So the other thing that we've seen our clients do is they found a way to increase their customer database and maintain levels of engagement high by launching a member get member promotion. So the idea is that new customers and the referees are awarded extra points for exclusively using online channels. So obviously this doesn't only look after your, their customers' health because they're promoting online purchases and helping people do the necessary social distancing, but it's also helping them gain new customers at a much lower cost than the traditional acquisition method. So in times of crisis like the ones we're living now, your company or any company is going to need this extra business. But also with this initiative, you are going to be increasing customer satisfaction levels by awarding extra points as well. And obviously this is going to assure a long-lasting relationship, which in these difficult times is definitely key.

Point 3, number 3, gamification. You need to keep your program members entertained during a crisis. Depending on the situation your business is in, purchase, purchase might diminish. So gamifying your customer's experience will make them bond to your brand, which is very important to maintain, uh, in an ongoing relationship during these difficult times. The gamification experience does not necessarily have to be about your brand. You can ask program members, for example, to share videos of how they are entertaining their kids or their workout session options during their quarantine. And in so doing, you'll be cultivating a great online community that you can leverage for other purposes after the, after the crisis abates.

Another—

Eva?

Yeah, sorry about that. So yeah, another excellent strategy is opening direct lines of communication between your customers and your business. And the idea behind that is you give them the opportunity to get in touch with you, provide feedback on how you can better your service during this crisis or any crisis. This will make them feel heard, which is extremely important, but it will also be a great opportunity for you to access any possible complaints and try to solve those issues as quickly as possible. And all of this is to make their experience with your brand a great one. If you choose to take this tactic, you have to make sure that your communication channels are agile and well-staffed so that your company can quickly and efficiently respond to any concerns and comments your clients might have.

Number 5, demarketing. So during a crisis, some companies should consider demarketing with respect to their demand management strategy in order to actually reduce demand. The reasons for demarketing include managing an existing shortage, to avoid potential shortages, to minimize harm to individuals and nature, etc. You know, demarketing might be an interesting strategy to implement during this crisis to better manage resources and future shortages. In the situation we're currently in, this strategy definitely makes sense. For example, there's a shortage of specific goods right now. Giving extra points to customers who are buying less of a product incentivizes this idea. Number 6 is all about forgiveness. Post— you cannot expect your customers to engage and purchase from you the same way they would under normal circumstances. So it is important to postpone point expiry dates. Give your customers the chance to use their points under better circumstances. Also, you should postpone voucher expiry dates as well, both for existing vouchers and for those about to be issued. For a variety of reasons, customers may not be able to engage as quickly or frequently with your company as they would like, so give them the time they need to redeem the vouchers they've earned. Continuing on with this forgiveness theme, You should postpone their downgrades, right? There's a reason— there's no reason to penalize customers if they can't keep up with their previous engagement levels. And make no mistake, customers will remember that you had their backs during trying times. So treat them right now and they'll stick with you through thick and thin. And when things come back thick they'll be more loyal than ever.

So number 7, we've been repeating this quite a while. Your customers' health and their well-being is your top priority. So given that that is your objective and making sure that your customers are practicing social distancing, it definitely makes absolutely no sense to conduct marketing campaigns that encourage the purchase of products or services that puts them at risk. For example, I remember very well that when this whole situation started, I received a number of promotions offering trips abroad to happen in April or May or June at extremely discounted prices. And at the same time, we were constantly receiving news broadcasts saying that various countries were closing their borders to try and contain the spread of COVID-19. So clearly that is not the right way to go, that wasn't a correct marketing campaign. So the worst thing you can do is incentivize your customers to take actions that go against the current health regulations and obviously against their well-being. That's your top priority, so it would be irresponsible to conduct these kinds of campaigns at times like these. Depending on the crisis, make sure to make the appropriate marketing campaign that drives the right behaviors and that protects your customers, but that also strengths that also strengthens your brand loyalty. And continuing a little bit with what I just said, if you're going to be careful with the kind of marketing campaigns you're going to conduct, you have to consider the rewards catalog you're going to offer your customers. That also needs to be appropriate to the crisis and the situation we're living in. If you want to make sure that people stay home, Don't give them the options to redeem their points for places that are crammed with people, like live courses or concerts, or giving them a voucher to go to their favorite restaurant. The idea is to give them rewards that they find valuable so that they keep redeeming their points with you and they keep engaging with your loyalty program, but that also fit the situation. So for example, obviously this is going to depend on your business, but consider online courses, trips into the far future, like 2021 or even 2022, when things become a little bit more calm, or credit to allow them to order their favorite meal online and have that delivered to their home. Those are great ideas, and it definitely makes sense considering what we're living today.

So point number 9. You know, to maintain engagement and to have a constant exchange with your customers, it might make sense to have them redeem their points now for a reward they will enjoy in the future, right? There are just some things that they, you know, may want to plan for in the future. Let them, let them do that. Redeem their points down, give them credit towards that future reward. And last but certainly not least, make sure you have a clear communication with your program members and society in general regarding the measures you are adopting to care for your customers. Have the message come from an important figure in your company and have them position your brand in light of the crisis. So we covered 10 ways, 10 ideas of how you can leverage a customer loyalty program in this particular time of crisis. The, uh, and these are things that our customers have shared with us and that we are sharing with you. This also, this webinar appears in the form of a blog post on the Fialo.com website. If you have more ideas that you would like to contribute, please visit Fialo.com, uh, go to resources, you'll find under blog this particular article, and, uh, and offer your own ideas. And then we will be creating a templated tool for how you can actually implement these things using your loyalty program. So the changes you choose to take up will of course depend on the needs of your business and your customers. It may not be possible or even practical to implement all the changes mentioned above, but implementing even a few will not only help you to keep your customers safe, it will maintain critical business during this difficult time and foster the continued loyalty of your trusted customers over the long term. So with that, I know we want to keep this short. Everybody has a lot I'm sure they're working on, but Lauren, were there any questions that came up that we want to address?

Yeah, Tim, we, we actually have time for one, and this one is from Matt. Can you give an example of how a demarketing incentive would work?

So demarketing— remember that I said that demarketing is really about lessening demand or decreasing demand for your product. We'd seems ironic, but like, uh, like we noted, there are lots of products that are in shortage, uh, supplies right now, or maybe disrupted by your own, uh, supply chain. You can't deliver enough, or your customer's demand is taking it off the grocery shelves too quickly. Um, you know, one way to do that is to use what we call the countdown performance goal model, right? So each month you start out by allocating your customers, your loyal loyalty customers, your program members, a certain number of points. Let's say you allocate them, uh, 100 points each month. And then each day that goes by, um, now, now each time they, uh, buy a certain product, you actually decrement that point number so that if they buy no products over the course of a month, then they earn 100 points. If they buy, you know, if you decrement it by 10 points every time they buy a product, then if they buy a product once, then they still wind up with 90 points. And you can see, for example, how this might work with, with the, the toilet paper shortage, right? If they are going into the store every day and hoarding toilet paper and actually keeping it from other customers, they're going to wind up with zero points at the end of the month. So you're actually, you know, giving them rewards and having their backs and having all of your customers' backs to make sure that sharing is facilitated across your entire customer base.

Alright, well, thank you everyone for joining us today. Hope you enjoyed this webinar. If we did not have a chance to get to your question, we will do so through email after the webinar. And if you'd like to learn more about Fielo, please visit us at fielo.com. Thank you everyone.