It’s going to be difficult to get people on board to a loyalty program that doesn’t work. So before you begin to think about on boarding, you need to plan your program.

Planning a loyalty program involves taking a deeper understanding of your customers and thinking about their needs. It also involves looking at your own business model to see what you can afford.

Whilst it might be nice to offer the third product free for everyone on the loyalty program, the cost might outweigh that benefit.

Once you know what you can afford and what your customers want, you need to align those together.

Market

When you’re trying to get your customers on board with either a new loyalty program, or an existing one, think about how you’re marketing your loyalty program.

Often people assume that if they make a loyalty program, people will join it and get involved with it.

Without being too pushy, you need to alert your customers to the fact your loyalty program exists.

You could implement this at the checkout.

When people are paying for their products, a friendly reminder to let them know what they could’ve been awarded for that purchase is a good incentive to join the program.

For instance, on the section where they’re inputting their card details, you could have a small message that says:

Did you know if you were part of our loyalty program, after this purchase, you’d receive free postage for your next order. Why not click here to join our loyalty program, free of charge

If you are going to interrupt the check-out process then keep these things in mind:

1. If you’re leading your potential customers away from the sale, make sure they don’t have to re-enter any of their details.
2. Make it easy for them to join the loyalty program
3. Provide enough information for them to understand what they will get from the loyalty program, but not enough so they’re inundated with information they can not process.
4. When they do get back to the checkout, offer them a big introductory reward to thank them for joining.

Consistency

Once you have your customers on board with your loyalty program, it’s important to think about how consistent you are being. It’s no good on boarding once and leaving them to it. Chances are, a majority of your customers base will disengage with the program, or even forget it exists entirely.

You need to be consistently checking that people are using the program and that the rewards you are offering to people are engaging enough for them to come back and make that all important repeat purchase.