Loyalty Programs and Your POS

Building loyalty among customers should be a central goal of any business. Customers who are happy and eager to buy repeatedly are the source of considerable gains in profits. They even can bring new customers into your company with referrals. Fortunately, your company's POS system can be a valuable tool to make your customers long-term assets to your business rather than one-time buyers. 

Importance of Customer Loyalty Programs

Ensuring customer loyalty is essential for your business. Research shows repeat customers spend significantly more per purchase than other customers. 

You can stand out from your competition by investing in customer loyalty. The overwhelming majority of marketing efforts are directed toward new customers. By investing in your existing customers, you stand out from the crowd. These programs can even bring in new customers, as your current customers are much more likely to refer your company to others. 

Essential for your business is the fact that it is much more expensive for you to go out and find new customers than keep your existing customers. Customer retention is simply more efficient than getting new customers. This, combined with the fact that repeat customers spend more, makes customer loyalty essential. 

POS and Customer Loyalty Programs

Fortunately, you can embed a customer loyalty program into your POS system. Many POS systems come with customer loyalty software that allows you to collect customer information and purchase trends easily. This data will enable you to fine-tune your company to your customers' needs. 

A POS system allows you to quickly implement a point system to keep track of your customer's purchases and the number of points they have earned. It also can keep track of their points when they redeem them. 

Your POS system lets you easily see which rewards your customers engage with the most. This will enable you to change your loyalty programs to best fit what your customers want. 

Customer Loyalty Program Tips

Sign Up Rewards

You can offer rewards and discounts to incentivize customers to sign up for your loyalty program. 

Text, Email, and Social Media

Text and email are essential as they allow you to reach your customers and share great rewards with them easily. However, you should also integrate social media to let your customers more opportunities to interact with your company and even purchase from you via social media. 

Gift Cards

Every customer loves a good gift card. So offer gift cards to your customers alongside your loyalty program to encourage them to keep coming back. 

Referral Program

One massive benefit of happy customers is that they are much more likely to refer you to their friends and family. This brings in new customers with a good opinion of your business. You can reward customers for referring others to you by having a referral program. 

This should be the ultimate goal of any customer loyalty effort. Not only are your customers coming back time and time again to buy from you, but they also bring in new customers for your company. 

Customer Service

Customer service is central to any effort to retain customers. Ensuring your customers have a positive experience whenever they work with you is the best way to keep them coming back. Always be ready to help your customers with any issues and make them feel valued and cared for. 

Customers are even willing to pay more if they feel they will get a higher service. Additionally, many will stop doing business with a company if they think the customer service is lacking. Finally, customer service allows you to build trust with your customers. 

Limitations of Customer Loyalty Programs 

The data collected by your loyalty program only shows how your customers engage with your business rather than their overall purchasing habits. However, these general purchasing habits can impact how and when your customers engage with your company. 

While helpful in analyzing how to engage with your customers, past purchasing habits cannot predict future customer habits with certainty. 

Many companies have seen the benefits of customer loyalty programs. The problem is that consumers are typically enrolled in a wide variety of customer loyalty programs, making it more difficult for yours to stand out. 

Finding the balance between providing meaningful rewards while maintaining your profit margin can be challenging. It also can be difficult to tell if your customers are really loyal to your brand or if your company may be the most convenient due to another factor, such as location. 

Options Available 

Square

Square Loyalty is straightforward for your business to set up. However, you will have to pay for Square Loyalty on top of the standard Square POS. Fortunately, you only need to pay for the amount of Square Loyalty you use. Pricing starts at $45 for Square Loyalty. This software sends automatic texts to your customers whenever they purchase and comes with a functional reporting feature. 

Vend

Vend Loyalty is included in Vend's Pro package, which starts at $129 a month. This software contains CRM, gift cards, promos, and advanced retail inventory management. In addition, customers are automatically added to the Vend Loyalty program when they purchase from your business. 

Lightspeed

Lightspeed's loyalty program comes with its advanced package at $169 a month. You get CRM software, customizable rewards, and helpful marketing features. Your customers can use their rewards for both in-person and online purchases. In addition, you can easily use both email and text campaigns to reach out to customers. 

Treati

With Treati, you gain access to excellent customer loyalty software. With the Clover terminals we offer, you can gain access to Clover Loyalty programs. This software allows you to customize your promotions to suit your customers' needs. You can also provide customers with points they can accumulate to earn rewards. 

In addition to providing your customers with rewards and perks, you also can build out feedback options for them to engage with. This allows you to collect customer feedback quickly. Most importantly, you do not have to pay extra fees to access this software. Unlike other payment processors that charge you extra for this critical tool, we think it should come standard with our payment processing. You can check out our competitive payment processing pricing here to learn how we can save you money.