MJ Gonzales │ExecutiveChronicles.com
Business is like a tumbler of water as much as possible you want to keep it full to sustain your thirst for success. Your customers serve as your water as without them there’s no profit or even business at all. So it’s good to keep on refilling new water for your company’s longevity, but don’t also forget the importance customer loyalty.
Initiating customer retention principle even you’re still starting up is very rewarding. Loyal clients are like magazine subscriptions, their payments are already placed and all you have to do is deliver the material. Next to this is the idea that loyal customers are the best promoters for your company. Their satisfaction would mean they give testimonial about your products and most likely to recommend you to others. Isn’t big relief in terms of marketing? Imagine that you can allocate smaller budget and time for the promotional side of your business. In fact there are startups that become huge hit merely due to word-of-mouth.
If customer retention is vital, then better to create programs for that one works. In a survey conducted by Nielsen Global Survey of Loyalty Sentiment, it revealed that around the globe 84% of customers probably buy from a retailer that offers a loyalty program, while 59% of customers claimed they buy from a store with loyalty program. In the Philippines, Nielsen shared that 61% of Filipinos love to buy from establishments that have loyalty programs.
“Similar to the rest of Southeast Asia, retail loyalty programs are growing significantly in the Philippines in recent years, both in terms of availability and popularity. These programs are influencing consumers’ choice of store, with Filipino consumers saying that they more likely to be enticed by loyalty program offerings,” Stuart Jamieson, Managing Director of Nielsen Philippines, shared in an interview with Manila Bulletin. “Through these loyalty programs retailers can customize their offers to individual customer needs, thereby increasing the frequency of visits to their stores as well as the amount spent.”
The said survey that got data from 29, 000 Internet respondents in more than 55 countries also include markets from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore. Among these, Thailand and Vietnam got highest score (69%) in terms of number of customers that shop at stores with of loyalty programs. These two also topped, with 94% and 92%, on customers that interested to purchase products from store with loyalty programs. For this part of the survey, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore had 91%, while Indonesia got 86%.
“As loyalty programs continue to grow in numbers across Southeast Asia, loyalty program providers are becoming increasingly savvy on how to tap into the insights that their programs provide,” Pete Gale, Managing Director of Retailer Services in Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Greater China shared, via Nielsen.com. “In the coming years we can expect to see the sophistication of loyalty programs across the region improve as marketers develop new and innovative ways to identify and deliver the program benefits that are of most importance to their customers.”
Gale also added that they found out Philippines and Indonesia markets preferred quality over affordability.
If you’re thinking the sample of programs you can do, mostly it’s giving free items or discounts and gaining reward points that soon can be converted to items. In the report of Review Journal’s, one of the 21 best loyalty programs they cited was Papa John’s ( US) free large three-topping pizza treat when customers accumulated 25 points. To earn this, a Pizza eater should spent at least $5 to get one point.
