Why is loyalty so important to retailers?

Any brand would love to have customers who enjoy their products or services and come back for more. 

Unfortunately, that’s not always the way things shake out. While it feels like just having a great product or service should be enough to have customers return again and again, the reality isn’t quite so simple. 

Today, brands need to work on building loyal customers; and that’s especially true for retailers. 

The real reason behind that is pretty simple: loyal customers spend more money. 

But, let’s dig into it a little bit more. 

Retail loyalty behind the numbers

First, let’s make it easy and look at the data. 

Studies have shown that approximately 65% to 70% of a company’s retail sales come from existing customers. That’s a huge percentage of overall profit. 

On top of that, experts estimate that upwards of 80% of future sales often come from only 20% of existing customers. Talk about the Pareto Principle come to life. It’s the idea that 80% of the effects of anything come from just 20% of the causes.

Finally, happy and loyal customers end up buying more than their first-time counterparts. 

All that sounds like a recipe for focusing on building a base of loyal customers, right?

Exactly. 

And yet, here comes the lousy part…so many brands put a ton of their focus on getting brand new customers. 

Now, that’s not to say you should ignore new customers, of course, you shouldn’t. However, in the rush to sell more, don’t forget the customers who have already bought from you. 

One great way to do that is through loyalty emails, a great way to focus on customer personalization.

Why retailers should learn to love loyalty emails

Ok, yes, retailers should love email marketing no matter what, first. 

But, loyalty emails can open things up to a whole new level that both entices your brand new potential customers to buy and motivates your current customers to buy again.

And with the ability to track customer behavior coupled with hyper-personalization, segmenting, and targeting, you can do way more to help build customer loyalty through email. 

One easy way to stay personalized is to track your loyalty program. 

Here’s a simple one from Regal Cinemas. Regal offers a Crown Club that tracks your level, points, and number of movies you’ve seen over a given period. 

With Crown Club emails, Regal can track the movies I’ve already seen and then figure what I’d like to see and then send me an email like this. All I have to do is click to watch this trailer, and I get even more credits in the system, which I can put toward free drinks, snacks, swag, and tickets.

At the top of every email Regal sends out, there is a personalized tally of my status, constantly reminding me that if I go to more movies, I get more stuff.

So that’s pretty cool, but what about integrating moment of open technology into loyalty points?

With that, customers can see their exact tally in real-time right from their email. So while it’s nice to see the credits on that Regal email, to get an actual real-time tally customers have to visit the site and log in, that’s an extra step or two.

With emails like the one above, customers can see something like their current airline miles update right from their email. 

Loyalty trackers like this can display anything from airline miles to hotel points and even track rewards at the local coffee shop and specialty beauty store. 

This sort of ability to always let customers know exactly where they stand with points and rewards can stand out for them. Plus, that means you also don’t have to keep printing out all those tiny ten stamp cards that everyone loses, right?

You can also hook up your customer loyalty tracker to their phone number, email, and credit card in your shop, and create entire email marketing campaigns personalized around their shopping habits. 

These are just some of the ways you can tap into email marketing to approach customer loyalty. And for retailers, where the competition is fierce, anything you can do to stand out from the crowd can make the difference in the eyes of your customers.

It’s never too late to build loyalty

Even if your shop hasn’t instituted a loyalty or rewards program, it’s not too late to start. You can glean crucial customer data from your shoppers that can help you build more robust and personalized email marketing campaigns around their needs. 

Focusing on ways to build a more loyal customer base is the perfect place to start.