Building brand loyalty is often spoken about as if there’s some kind of magic formula. The truth is, there are hundreds of ways to do it, and no one method can be suitable for everyone. It can take years, months or in some cases just a couple of minutes to build depending on the exact motivations of your individual purchasers.
Luckily, there are some very popular methods that can be tried, tested and tweaked to optimise your success.
#1 Email marketing post-purchase
This is the simplest and arguably most effective way to keep the conversation going. Contacting customers any time past the return period will push your brand front and centre, encourage reviews and feedback, and remind them of what will have hopefully been a pleasant shopping experience. If the prospect had forgotten their purchase, this will give them a friendly reminder while helping to build brand familiarity.
#2 Use their data to personalise their experience and build a relationship
If your website required a customer to sign up and they gave you permission to collect information, you can do some very clever things to help them feel loved. This could include any of the following:
- Recommending items similar to what they have purchased
- Giving them the opportunity to save items or request to be notified when something is out of stock
- Letting them know when sets of items have been purchased together frequently
- Tailor promotions and content to them
#3 Provide incentive for a follow-up sale
If someone has committed to spending their hard-earned money with you at Christmas, consider that they may be looking to tighten the purse strings in the new year. This means their thought process for purchasing may be more considered. Give them an incentive to make a repeat purchase, but also keep them excited about the generosity of your brand with an early opportunity to access sale items or discounts. Even just 24 hours before it’s made public will be enough to make some first-time customers feel special and appreciated.
#4 Unlimited delivery
A popular option for large retailers is to offer a whole year of ‘free’ next-day delivery, for a small annual fee. The cost of the whole year is usually comparable to two single delivery costs, which makes it a very attractive deal for customers. This helps to breed loyalty because if a consumer is torn between your brand and another, and they hold what they see as unlimited delivery with your brand, they are more inclined to make the purchase with you.
#5 Memberships
Creating a points system or VIP account option with incentives can make you more attractive than your competitors. It might be that you can cash in your points for money off or rewards, receive a gift or discount on your birthday and get access to VIP sales or promotion earlier than regular customers.
Being reactive in retail
As we outlined earlier, what hooks each customer will differ depending on their motivations and circumstances at the time of marketing to them. There are many different ways to engage customers both digitally and in-store, but the latter can be difficult without any digitisation or data capture.
The more data you have, the more opportunities you have to focus your messaging and tailor your promotions to your audience’s preferences. Beyond this, a strong brand, purpose and marketing strategy to stay front and centre will act as an integral foundation layer to all this additional activity. Over and above this, your team needs the tools to be able to react quickly to trends and opportunities, and shouldn’t be bogged down by limitations such as budget and time.
With Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management platform, your global teams get to create an infinite amount of digital and print assets, without specialised skills or needing additional budget. Videos, emails, POS, signage and so much more can be created within a dedicated brand portal, with predefined rules that avoid brand consistency disasters.