Why Loyalty Marketing... Why Preferred Patron™?
Loyalty Marketing, commonly referred to as Frequency Marketing or Relationship Marketing, is a
long-term strategy focused on the identification, retention and growth of your best customers by
communicating to them and recognizing and rewarding them based on their purchase activity.
It is a universally recognized marketing strategy being employed by more and more businesses today
than ever before. Whether you are trying to retain your customers, motivate them to increase their
purchase activity, or trying to establish loyal relationships, the basic principles of loyalty
marketing can help. And now, with the introduction of Preferred Patron™, even the smallest businesses
can employ this very same strategy without the concerns or overhead involved with those expensive,
and often unattainable, Point-of-Sale systems and third party marketing firms. In fact, Preferred
Patron was designed for small businesses in any segment of the retail industry... keeping low cost,
intuitiveness and simplicity of use as the primary objective while still providing marketing
essentials which rival any product or service on the market today.
Even in an age of increasing customer expectations and intense global competition, the drivers of
customer loyalty remain unchanged. Some customers are still more valuable than others. Consumers
still have two distinct drivers that influence their behavior: the rational level, at which they
compare offers and seek the greatest value; and the emotional level, at which they are influenced
by prior experience and seek to reflect their own lifestyles in their purchases.
Empowered consumers can no longer be treated as the passive targets of one-way marketing
stimulus-response initiatives. A successful marketing initiative will result in a mutual benefit
between the organization and the customer, and that is the reason why an effective loyalty program
such as Preferred Patron™ is so crucial: loyalty campaigns provide differentiated, brand-specific
value, and offer a compelling counterpoint to price-only marketing.
A fundamental prerequisite of a loyalty program is the ability to capture an individual's
transactional data and filter that data through a "rules engine" that assigns both
points and interventions, with storage, reporting, and retrieval of all member and program
information from a centralized database. Without sophisticated technology as found in Preferred
Patron™, you are otherwise confined to a punch card or a stamp program; anonymous versions of reward
and recognition that our grandparents may have liked, but which simply won't work in today's
internet bound world.
Today more than ever, you have likely recognized the value of your existing customer base,
and among that base you have come to understand that certain customers are more profitable
than others. Preferred Patron™ will provide you the tools necessary to know who your best
customers are. Once you have identified your best customers you can formulate service and/or
product enhancement strategies to yield greater profitability.
With Preferred Patron™ the idea is to leverage past behaviors to ascertain the degrees of
profitability your customers represent in the future. Then you can focus your limited, and
hence valuable, marketing resources on those customers with the highest potential for future
profitability.
Preferred Patron™ provides a proliferation of benefits enabling you to effectively identify and
market to your best customers. In essence, Preferred Patron™ is the vehicle to establishing a
well-designed and executed loyalty program, which can:
- Provide a solid understanding of what your patrons desire,
- Influence and direct the behavior or your patrons,
- Establish your business with a competitive advantage
- Allow you to focus your limited, and hence,valuable marketing resources on those patrons with the greatest potential for return,
- Provide you with visibility to your patrons' spending behaviors, and
- Yield long-term customer relationships leading to more significant profits.
Key Ingredients?
Understand your customers. Know who they are. Know what influences them. These are
essential ingredients. If you could capture details about your customers and
their visits, you could then use that information to tailor a unique, interactive
marketing experience for each customer at every visit. Not since the days when a merchant could
know every patron by name has there been an opportunity for getting close to your
patrons in order to meet their specific needs.
Preferred Patron™ understands these essential ingredients and as such, provides a comprehensive,
easy to use patron enrollment process with associated tracking capability targeted at
providing you the information you need to be successful.
Preferred Patron™ provides the tools necessary to implement your:
- Communications Plan - Deliver the right messages to your best
patrons. Preferred Patron™ facilitates this through the use of targeted
bulk mailings as well as real-time advertisements on each transaction
receipt.
- Rewards Structure - Establish a rewards structure aligned towards
your customers' needs and desires. To run a successful marketing campaign,
loyalty offerings must be competitive to ensure your program can be
distinguished with perceived value. With Preferred Patron™ instituting a
flexible and adaptive rewards structure is simple.
- Operational Plan - Preferred Patron™ provides loyalty marketing
technology essential for tracking customer usage and response activity and
supplies the tools required for instituting effective communications and
reward payouts based on that data.
- Reporting and Analysis Plan - The Preferred Patron™ back office provides you
with a proliferation of analysis tools which will allow you to track and
measure your performance objectives.
Analyze Your Business
Understand your business' strengths and weaknesses so you may strengthen your successful
actions and eliminate your unsuccessful actions or non-actions. Identify trends and slow
times so you can be creative and institute promotional actions in an attempt to
make those slow times more profitable. You can't fix what you don't know about.
Preferred Patron™ will help you learn and assist you with this task by providing you invaluable
insight into your business activity. Examine your Sales Activity, by way of the
Preferred Patron™ back office module and identify how your business did month by
month over the last few years. In what months did your sales or income slump
verses excel? Once you know this, you can begin to analyze why? What was your
best month? Why? After two or three years of data collection, patterns will
emerge. Busy times and slow times are typically not random occurrences. There
were reasons and Preferred Patron™ can facilitate the identification of those
reasons by pointing out where to look. Once you have some probable reasons
identified, you can design your promotional activities to keep your sales
volume up during those slower times.
Bulk Mailings
Get the word out about your business by using strategic, targeted bulk mailings. Find any reason
you can to proactively communicate to your customers. Preferred Patron™ offers you several reasons
for communicating to your customers. At the simplest level you have annual celebrations such as
patron birthdays and anniversaries. Over time, you can identify your best patrons based on spending
habits or frequency of visits. Just thank them for their business. Likewise, identify lost business
by targeting those patrons who have stopped coming in. This could be an overwhelming if not
impossible task to accomplish but not to worry... Preferred Patron™ will allow you to effortlessly
capture and identify this information and with it, you now have several reasons to communicate to
your patrons and fortify loyalty. Preferred Patron™ will even prepare the content of those bulk
mailings or, if you feel inspired, just generate a mailing list and devise your own bulk mailing.
Keep your name in front of your customers... it shows you care about their business.
Customer Understanding
The success of your communications plan depends on how closely your message hits the customer
target. Gaining knowledge about the targeted customers' demographics, behaviors
and attitudes is critical to developing and delivering effective messages and
rewards. Once again, Preferred Patron™ is a tool to facilitate this process.
Flexibility
Because loyalty is an ongoing effort, Preferred Patron's™ design and structure allows for
flexibility. The retail industry is riddled with examples of competitors introducing
comparable offers within six to nine months after a new program launch.
Preferred Patron™ allows you to enhance your loyalty program with a new reward
offer and/or new bonus opportunity to react to competitive threats, at any time
and on-the-fly. Preferred Patron™ is tailored to this need.
There are many times of the year when focus should be place on gift cards: Christmas,
New Years, Hanukkah, Easter, Valentine's Day, Secretaries Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day,
etc. With Preferred Patron™, managing a gift card program is a snap. No, you don't need to
invest in expensive 'smart cards' that remember the specifics of the gift card
and you don't need to pay on-going transaction fees that eat away at your
profits... Preferred Patron™ will eliminate this burden. All that is required are
the same, inexpensive cards you use for program membership. Of course, you will
want to order cards specifically for the gift card program, clearly identified
as a gift card. Don't forget to include your logo on the card - advertising at every opportunity
is a critical element to success.
With Preferred Patron™, you have two options for managing your gift cards:
- Pre-determined monetary denominations or
- On-the-fly monetary denominations.
In either case, be sure to create an attractive image on the back of your cards and display
them in a prominent location, such as on top of or next to each checkout counter. Don't worry
about theft... these cards have no value until scanned into Preferred Patron™ and sold.
Gift Cards: Pre-determined Monetary Denominations
An affective approach to gift card management is to order your cards in pre-determined
denominations. Typical denominations would be $5.00, $10.00, $15.00, $20.00, $25.00, $50.00,
$75.00, $100.00, $125.00, $150.00, $200.00 and so on. Be sure to have the pre-determined
denomination clearly indicated on each card. From here, the rest is simple.
After ordering your cards, go to the Preferred Patron™ back office Gift Card
Pre-registration module. Separate your cards by denomination and scan the lowest and highest
card numbers into the specified inputs. Set the denomination and any expiration date appropriate.
The system will register all cards in that range, sequentially, in Preferred Patron™, as having the
specified monetary value. Again, no need to worry about theft. These cards have no actual
value and cannot be used unless they are first sold as part of a gift card sale.
Gift Cards: On-the-fly Monetary Denominations
An alternate approach to pre-determined gift card denominations is to define the gift card
values as they are sold. This approach offers you more flexibility in setting the amount
of each card, as any monetary value can be assigned. Additionally, all cards
are created equal... so from a perspective of stock, you do not have to be
concerned with ordering too many cards of a specific denomination. Once again,
no need to worry about theft. These cards have no actual value and cannot be
used unless they are first sold as part of a gift card sale. The monetary value
is registered with Preferred Patron™ at the time of sale.
Once again, Preferred Patron™ comes through with an effective tool to facilitate increasing
your customer base and promoting customer loyalty.
Long Term Commitment
Achieving customer loyalty does take time. Loyal relationships are
not built over night. Your company needs a minimum of two to three years to
thoroughly understand your customers, deliver on evolving customer expectations
and build sufficient brand equity in your customer's mind. So don't delay... start enrolling your
customers in Preferred Patron™ now and begin building up an invaluable warehouse of data
critical for success.
The Value of Advertisements
Advertise, advertise and advertise again... Preferred Patron™ understands this and helps you achieve
this goal.
Receipt Advertisements - Preferred Patron™ facilitates your advertising campaign by
allowing you to incorporate special advertisements directly on the Preferred Patron™ checkout
receipt. Use this feature to provide notices of specials or special purchases or events that
will interest your patrons. Find something about your business that will attract people and make
them want to come back. Don't get wordy just put something eye catching down that will make them
want to return.
Keychain Advertisements - The Rewards Card issued from Preferred Patron™ is an excellent source
of advertisement. Be sure to have each card imprinted with your store logo, name, and address and
phone number. People don't throw them away. Keychain cards are an excellent choice. They
tend not to get lost; they stay visible while dangling from the keychain and
are looked at on a daily basis.
Of course, you will have the option to allow Preferred Patron Loyalty to eliminate the hassle of
card acquisition by supplying you with your initial starter pack as well as on-going card
replenishment.
Preferred Patron™ Rewards Card
Make use of the Preferred Patron™ Rewards Card. To the Patron, this card signifies a sense of belonging,
a sense of being recognized and the idea of better value and service. To you, this card is a
continuing form of advertisement.
In a down market the businesses that survive are those that provide immaculate good service. Always
handle any complaint promptly and pleasantly. Sometimes it requires a refund, a
replacement or a repair, whatever it takes. It may seem like a customer is
being difficult but if you objectively listen to them, they always tell you how
to satisfy them. So listen. Always handle complaints expeditiously and with courtesy. Do not give your patrons
the opportunity to write to the Better Business Bureau, why should they? Take good care of your
customers and your business will benefit. Preferred Patron™ offers you a
robust tool to track and manage your customer complaints, so you can
effectively monitor complaints and manage this challenge.
Rewards programs are an extremely effective and popular marketing strategy in use today by large
retail chains, airlines and credit card companies to name a few. Why? Because they
work! Customers value the points they earn. Even if another business offers a better discount, price, product or
service, knowing they have a free payoff coming from you will help you retain
their business.
The Rewards Program is one of the greatest strengths of Preferred Patron™ Rewards Card. Every Patron
enrolled automatically participates in the Preferred Patron™ Rewards Program.
You define the point to dollar ratio, the rewards and corresponding reward payout schedule.
Preferred Patron™ centrally tracks each member's account in your database, on-site in your store;
the information does not live 'on-the-card' or remotely at any third party service provider.
Have a patron who lost their card? No need to worry, lost cards are not a problem. The Patron's
phone number will cross reference their account and a new card can simply be reissued, right there
on the spot!
We're all familiar with the ever-popular punch card strategy. A VIP card that gives the 10th
service or product free after they have purchased, at full price 9 similar products or
services. These are simple strategies that work great if the patron can find
their card and hasn't lost it but can easily become a discouragement in those
events. With the Preferred Patron™ Rewards Program these hassles just
don't exist. The Rewards Card itself is mostly symbolic but great for
advertising!
Rewards - Make them Effective
What makes a reward compelling? This is certainly a complex question whose answer will vary
customer to customer. However, there are a few key fundamentals that will help you
achieve this:
Ensure Customer Awareness: Your customers must know what the rewards are and how they can
earn them. Effective communication is the ingredient to success here and Preferred Patron™ has you
covered. Unlike other programs on the market that keep you guessing as to
what your eligible payouts are or refer you to a website to find out, with
Preferred Patron™, your reward payout schedule is clearly advertised on every
transaction receipt - real-time.
Keep your Rewards Attainable: What is the perceived difficulty in reaching those desirable
point levels with respect to your customers' potential purchase activity? Keep your payout schedule
real and viable. While Preferred Patron™ won't tell you what your specific rewards should be, it will
certainly give you the information you need to make that assessment!
Make sure your Rewards are Attractive: Your rewards must be perceived to have value and
relevance.
Gratification and Satisfaction: Your rewards must instill a sense of satisfaction and
accomplishment in your customers at the time of redemption. Remember, you want
those customers to strive to reach those reward levels again! That's what Loyalty Marketing is all
about!
It's the successful application of these fundamentals, relative to a specific market or customer
segment, that makes a reward compelling. While an all paid grand action filled
adventure trip might be attractive to a young action enthused individual, such
an award would have diminished appeal to a middle-class middle-aged person who
would require several years to earn it. A more attainable reward such as an
evening out at an upscale local restaurant or tickets to a popular play or
musical might be all the spark that customer needs.
The fundamental point is to develop rewards based on the growth of your customer segments and
your perception of your customer preferences and how those preferences evolve over time.
Preferred Patron™ is tailored to this need by allowing you to define you rewards payout schedule
in an unlimited and flexible manner.
A Small Taste of Marketing Strategies Offered By Preferred Patron™
Raffle Promotion - Monthly raffles are a great way to entice patrons back for subsequent
visits. With Preferred Patron™, managing a raffle promotion is quite easy. Patrons are awarded raffle
entries based on meeting spending thresholds you define. The concept is straightforward. Choose
a prize offering of significant interest to your customer base, something that
they really would like to win. If necessary, consider going outside your normal
product offering and arrange for a third party to sponsor the prize. Preferred
Patron will not only advertise that eye-catching offering on every transaction
receipt along with the requirements for raffle entry, but can optionally
advertise the sponsor's name on every receipt too!
For non-members, consider using the raffle promotion as a means of enticing your customers to
become members. That is, say "Just fill out this form with your name, address and phone and
we'll enter you into our monthly raffle. This month we're giving away...". Of course, be sure
to supply them with a corresponding Rewards Card. Now you have an additional list
of customers to market to and if the prize is of interest, they will come and
buy more just to increase their chances to win.