Data is everything. The more information you have about your customers, the better you can treat them. And happy customers are loyal customers who keep returning, creating more business and profits for you.
The overall goal of a loyalty program is to provide your customers with rewards and incentives to show your appreciation for their business and to encourage them to keep purchasing for you.
In the past, stores would give out loyalty cards that customers would present for a stamp with each purchase. Now, with the rise of ecommerce, Shopify loyalty programs offer a powerful tool for online businesses. These digital programs not only offer convenience to customers, but also provide a wealth of valuable data for you, the business owner. Each time a customer completes a purchase, you gain valuable insights into their shopping habits, preferences, and more. This data can be a gamechanger for improving your marketing efforts and growing your business.
The sheer amount of data can be overwhelming, so this guide is here to help you make sense of it all. Read on to learn the best ways to put the data your Shopify loyalty program collects into action.
What Type of Data to Collect with a Shopify Loyalty Program
There’s tons of information you can learn about your customers when they sign up for a loyalty program. Here’s some of the most useful and important:
Purchase-Related Data
- What was purchased (the items and quantity of each)
- When it was purchased (including the day of the week and the time of day)
- How much money was spent
- Location of the purchase (if online then where the buyer is located and if in person than the location of the store)
Rewards-Related Data
- How often are rewards points used to make purchases
- How many rewards points have been accumulated
- What is the redemption rate (i.e. the percentage of earned rewards that customers redeem)
What Loyalty Data Can Teach You About Your Customers and Your Business
Once the data has been collected, you can garner critical insights that will help you reach your customers better and improve their shopping experience. Here are some of the key takeaways from your Shopify loyalty program data:
Customer Segmentation
Customers will naturally fall into certain categories based on their behavior. By tracking their activity in your program, you can segment them and tailor your marketing accordingly. For example, you can target frequent buyers with exclusive promotions or use special offers to entice the occasional customer back into the fold.
Individual Preferences
Take things a step further by looking at individual customer preferences. This allows you to create a personalized experience based on their buying habits. When a customer is about to reach a new milestone, for example, you can automatically send them a targeted promotion to encourage them to make the purchase needed to get there.
A personalized experience is something that today’s shoppers expect. Studies show that up to 80% of retail shoppers want to see some degree of personalization when making purchasing decisions. With Shopify loyalty program data, you can take personalization to a whole new level, offering customers exactly what they need when they need it.
Churn Risks
Use data from your loyalty program to identify customers at risk of churning, or stopping their purchases from your business. Signs of churn can include a decrease in the expected rate of purchases or other periods of inactivity. By recognizing these at-risk customers, you can reach out with personalized offers to win them back and retain them as loyal customers.
Popular Products
In addition to learning valuable information about your customers, you can also use the data collected by your loyalty program to discover relevant details about your products. You can see which products fly off the shelves and which ones gather dust. You can use this information to make informed decisions about inventory management and product offerings.
Rewards Impact
Some of the most valuable data you can gather is the data that tells you how successful your Shopify loyalty program is. By carefully monitoring the redemption rate, for example, you can get a clear picture as to whether and how people are actually using their hard-earned rewards. If people are accumulating points but not using them, investigate why. Do they not know that they have all these reward points, or are they unsure how to redeem them?
Similarly, if rewards are being redeemed too quickly, you might need to reconsider the program’s setup to ensure it remains profitable for your business.
The Benefits of Loyalty Data
Collecting and analyzing the data automatically gathered by your Shopify loyalty program provides you with important insights into your customer behavior and allows you to take steps to improve your business.
What starts as a way to show appreciation to your customers leads to providing them a better experience. This, in turn, will lead to better brand awareness and customer retention, which, of course, brings you to your overall goal of increased sales and revenue.
Better Customer Experience
As mentioned above, today’s customers are all about personalization and a positive customer experience. Shopping has moved from purely transactional to much more relationship-based and experiential. By looking at the data and gleaning facts about your customer base, you can much more easily provide them with the top notch experience they have come to expect.
Better Brand Awareness
Another critical feature of today’s customers is their interest in telling the entire world via their social media accounts what they are loving (and hating) to buy and where they are loving (and hating) to shop. The better the experience you provide to your customers, the more they will shout from the rooftops (or from their Instagram accounts) how amazing your business is. Before you know it, you will have earned increased popularity and brand recognition.
Increased Sales and Revenue
Happy customers and strong brand awareness can only lead to one thing – more sales. At the end of the day, you should be able to attribute increased sales and revenue to the success of your loyalty program. You can use the data to see which rewards are most popular and which ones are not being redeemed. This information can help you refine your program to make it more effective at driving sales.
Set Up Your Shopify Loyalty Program Today!
What are you waiting for? If you don’t have a loyalty program set up for your customers, you are leaving money on the table. Contact Loyalty Dog today and you can have your loyalty program up and running faster than your customers can choose their favorite product!