Now, what will happen, as the legal lockdown starts to end, is unclear. Even before the government lockdown came into effect, shops were recording fewer people coming. Yet we need people back.
Many shops are now frozen with goods from March. Shops will be looking for money plus a lot will have stock that must be moved e.g. summer clothes soon we are coming into winter. Plus many people are now out of work, and it will take a lot of time to get them back working so many do not have money. Prices will need to cut, so what we are looking at is possibly the biggest clearance sale in history starting up.
From a retailers point of view, a loyalty program is giving up value to get their customer data. This customer data can be used to market. That is why we know the most successful of these shops will be those with an active progressive retail loyalty program. As a rule of thumb, the cost is about 1% to 2% of turnover.
Does it work? Check these figures. 46% of Australians are actively involved in a loyalty program, and of that, these are the results.
That is 25% of all consumers.
These marketing programs do influence customer's buying behaviour, and research has shown that people do buy more from shops of which they are a member of its loyalty program. For many years, the study "For the love or money" has been the best study of customer loyalty and loyalty programs in Australia. The 2020 edition has just been released. The study itself you need to pay for, but the executive summary is here free.
I found the summary absorbing reading.
If you have not already got a loyalty program, I urge you to research companies like yours starting on Facebook to see what they are doing. I can tell you this, I have seen many successful retailers from very big to very small and one point they stress is their loyalty program.
