Thinking about it here are some reasons why someone would pick not to have a loyalty program.
Much of these difficulties are particularly true in the set-up phase of the program
Costs
Our point of sale software gives you the tools you need to run such a program, but you will need to provide your customers' benefits to make it work.
Work and skills
It is work.
You do not feel your organisation has the social media skills now days required to make it work plus the management expertise to make it work. It needs constant thought and fine-tuning to find out what is working and what is not working.
Customers' information
You do not feel that you can get enough peoples information to make it work for example you think you cannot get enough peoples email addresses. You need about 500 to 1000 people to gain critical mass.
Lack of time
Busy enough AS IS and they do take time to set up, and they will take time to manage. Based on our clients' comments, an hour a week.
Commitment
Once you have a loyalty program in place, they can be difficult to stop if they do not work out. Customers can get upset if they feel that you are cheating on them. Always remember if starting one that you do need an exit clause.
The other problem can be if you feel that your organisation objectives may change shortly and you cannot make the commitment.
You have infrequent customers
We have a client in a holiday area, and they tell me that the people are always changing and that they see most of their customers for about a week or two and then they are gone. The locals are only a tiny part of their business.
Offers cost you
The expected cost of the proposal is higher than the expected return. The overwhelming number of customers will buy anyway from you at your prices, so there is no point in offering any benefit as such as all it is doing is giving away value to my existing clients who is willing to pay full price.
So What Alternatives are there
Here are some ideas.
Nothing
Often nothing is the correct response. Why interfere with something that is working,
"If it is not broken do not fix it".
Discount vouchers
This is where you offer every customer a discount when they buy products in your shop at the next sale. Here is how to set it up in our system, which would give you an incredibly powerful discount voucher system.
Be warned that these discount sales programs are much more expensive then loyalty programs, but they do produce results. See here for numbers.
If you are near a major operator that brings in traffic consider how to be able to piggyback on their operation. Let them do the work in getting customers coming to what you are doing here is trying to divert some of their traffic to you eg near a supermarket, a coffee shop might do well.
