How to optimize loyalty program emails with real time content

One of the best ways to connect with your customers today is to give them real-time up to the minute information.

Most brands think that real-time communication doesn’t apply to them; after all, your typical retail shop rarely needs to send out urgent news bulletins.

The reality is different. In the fast-paced, always ‘on’ world we live in, with smartphones within reach, getting real-time content is a way for brands to keep in touch with their customers.

This is especially true when it comes to building customer loyalty, and there’s no better way to do that than through loyalty programs. 

Now, the question is, is your brand grabbing that opportunity? Many aren’t, but here are some ways you can optimize your loyalty emails by tapping into real-time content.

Reward point updates

Picture this: you’ve been thinking about a trip to the Bahamas, after all a little sun and relaxing waves could do you some good. But, you aren’t exactly sure how many points you have for that hotel chain normally use.

So, you go to the last email they sent; your points are always listed at the top. There’s only one big problem, the last email you got was six months ago, and you know you’ve racked up more points. The number on the email is out of date, and you don’t really have the time to dig for your website login, so you move on, you’ll check later.

Tons of loyalty reward programs include key information in their emails, which is great. But if your reward program is only sending out updates every few months, then you’re missing out on giving your customers better information.

Here’s what you can do instead: send out rewards and points updates with every purchase your customers make. Include their loyalty rewards in your order confirmation and shipping emails as well as your marketing emails, so they can always know exactly how many points they have.

Highlight a local reward

Geolocation is a simple type of data that you can do so much with when it comes to your emails. It’s also a great way to get your loyalty emails more personalized. 

Take your customer’s location and couple it with your loyalty program to give specialized hyper-local rewards that are personalized to each customer. 

Here’s a good example:

Everyone likes getting something on their birthday. And that’s a pretty standard way to inject a little bit of loyalty in your customer’s inbox. But, here, you can see how brands can take the standard-issue birthday email and make it better.

First, you’re giving customers something in real-time, it’s their birthday, they can use this reward right now. Second, you’re also using their location as another sneaky way to get them to focus on the now.

If your customer is out and about shopping on their birthday, what’s better than extra reward points plus highlighting the store where they can use those points today?

Promote a sale

Have a sale or special event going on? Let your rewards members know about it when it’s happening, instead of sending some generic email a week before and hoping your customers remember.

You can’t, and probably shouldn’t just rely on your marketing emails to get the message across, so look to your loyalty program emails to give customers the extra boost they might need to buy. 

An even better way to do this is to go back to the well of data you have on your customers again. Here, you can not only highlight a sale that’s happening right now but also the last product your customer looked at or something that they currently have abandoned in their cart. 

By giving them the sale information, plus their real-time points tally and the products they care about right now, you can create a powerful message that really gets your customers to take action. 

As you can see, there are all sorts of interesting things you can do with loyalty emails, especially if you want to start pulling in real-time content. Start using these strategies in your campaigns and see what your customers respond to, you might find an increase across the board in opens, clicks, and conversions.