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The customers usually want it all. The more the better. They want you to give them good products and/or services. When you do, and they like it then they hope to be rewarded for coming back to you for more.
It’s a never-ending cycle. But isn’t that the fun of business, the very definition of a successful business, the loyalty of customers to keep coming back to you?
Speaking of customer loyalty, attracting customers and retaining them with an effective loyalty program has been around for a minute now. What makes the loyalty programs stand out is by making them worthwhile for your customers. Having tires in your loyalty program makes them more exciting to your customers. Let us find out how.
What are tiered loyalty programs?
A tiered loyalty program is a membership-based loyalty program. It usually has multiple levels for loyal customers to gain various rewards based on their ranks. We, humans, are very competitive in nature and we like to win.
The same goes for tiered rewards programs. A normal loyalty program rewards customers’ loyalty alike on their repeat purchases. Whereas tiered loyalty programs rank the customers based on several metrics and assign different levels of rewards based on the customers’ ranks.
Why are tiered loyalty programs so attractive to customers?
There is give and take involved in all aspects of life and when there is a way to try and get better every time, well, that definitely has a sweet victory-type ring to it. The tiers-based loyalty program is solely based on this premise. Tier members at every rank have their own variety of benefits and rewards that keeps getting better with every higher tier.
Hence, the competitiveness of climbing up the ladder to gain better rewards than others becomes very appealing to customers.
Customers like to be taken care of and the fact that with every repeat purchase, they will get more or better rewards and/or higher value benefits and/or more personalized services becomes hard to ignore. It certainly gives them that extra boost of appreciation for your brand and enhanced motivation to buy more in order to climb up that ladder of exclusivity on a tiered loyalty program.
Benefits of tiered loyalty programs
Customer retention can be claimed as the fundamental benefit of a loyalty program but there are plenty of other benefits of loyalty programs too, especially tiered loyalty programs that have their own collection of multi-faceted benefits.
Let us have a look at some of them below:
1. Progressive benefits for the customers
The ranking-based customer reward programs enable your customers to leverage their benefits depending on their rank i.e. the tier they are based on.
Every tier indulges them with more and more exciting rewards and motivates them to earn more rewards and climb up more tiers to get better benefits. This makes your customers feel valued and also gives them a sense of achievement with the higher ranks.
2. Improved customer engagement
The tier system and the ranking that the customers achieve at every level give them a sense of achievement. The thrill of getting promoted to the next tier by earning more loyalty points can excite the customers and encourage them to engage more with the loyalty program.
Planning the scoring system in a certain way and assigning different colors/themes relating to the brand can be a great way to connect with your customers on an emotional level. The constant brand recall in the loyalty program can build strong relationships with your customers.
3. Long-term customer loyalty
Connecting with your customer outside of the standard transactions of the brand with the tiered loyalty programs improves customer engagement. When the customers feel that your brand cares for them even outside of their purchases, they develop an emotional bond towards your brand.
The consistent engagement through your tiered loyalty program with multiple levels of benefits and rewards fosters customer loyalty over the long term.
4. Exciting gamification
The tiered loyalty program already gives an illusion to the customers of playing a game where every time they make purchases and earn points, they go a step up to the next tier.
This allows your organization to come up with interactive and innovative gamification options to keep your customers engaged and interested. There can be multiple levels of your choice and there can also be several different metrics that can define the incremental rise through the tiers.
5. Fosters loyalty with exclusivity
The tiered loyalty programs unveil the truly loyal customers who are regularly interacting with the brand. Although most of your customers will enjoy participating in the program, the tier system will help to filter out the most loyal customers who will want to reach the top tier of the program.
Hence, it promotes exclusivity or perhaps a club of the true advocates of your brand, wouldn’t you agree?
What makes tiered loyalty programs attractive and sustains to customers?
Going through all the loyalty program benefits of the tiered system does bring the case in point that customers do prefer them over any regular loyalty program. Studies show that customers are more likely to spend more to get more exclusivity from the brand.
Customers tend to favor the tiered system of loyalty programs as they get to decide and make a choice at the level of exclusivity they would like to reach. Without realizing it, they usually tend to compete for the next level for the excitement of better and more valuable rewards. This helps to keep the relationship going with the customers and sustain their loyalty for longer periods.
How to create a tiered loyalty program?
Having loyalty programs is very trending nowadays but finding the right loyalty program is the key to maximizing customer retention as well as customer satisfaction.
The loyalty program should meet your business needs as well as be attractive to your customers. It requires the perfect blend of loyalty technology with seamless integration and most of all end-to-end loyalty management to touch all parts of a customer lifecycle.
At Giift, we pride ourselves on having the best in the industry loyalty technology. With our focus on high-end technology, coupled with our global experience in executing projects across industries, we create meaningful loyalty experiences that power lifetime connections with your customers and employees.
How to engage customers with a tiered loyalty program?
Choosing to have a tiered loyalty program over a regular loyalty program is a step in the right direction to improve customer engagement. Even with the tiers, make sure to pick the right metrics for your customers to climb up the ladder for the right value of rewards to make it worth their while.
The customers could easily lose interest if the ranks are difficult to attain as well as if the rewards are not worth their valuable time and effort so the perfect blend of those does give you the magic combination to successfully engage your customers with your tiered loyalty program.
Rewards and experiences in tiered loyalty programs
One could argue that any type of reward is exciting for customers but that’s further from the truth. Albeit, the thought of having well-planned and innovative loyalty programs for loyal customers to feel valued is already a winning move but consistently sustaining customer interaction requires amazing rewards and experiences.
The type of rewards system and experiences that make them work hard to earn enough loyalty points to be eligible to win them. Such is our GiiftMarketplace, the first-of-its-kind network that empowers you with the most comprehensive redemption suite enabling your customers to redeem loyalty points online, offline, instantly, and from any channel.
GiiftMarketplace will be your one-stop shop for all your must-haves and lifestyle products such as flights, hotels, hi-tech, fashion, jewelry, and more. Accessible in over 50 countries, with 50,000+ affiliate programs and 55 million+ users.
Strategies for making the most of tiered loyalty programs
The success of your tier based loyalty programs solely depends on how effectively your customers engage and interact with it and how motivated they are to constantly climb up the ladder to higher tiers.
Organizations such as yours should make sure to have a carefully planned loyalty program strategy that not only engages your customers but also provides you with higher ROI on your loyalty program. Why don’t we brush through a few pointers for better insight into the tactical strategies you can employ?
The tiered loyalty program should be easy to understand and simple enough to keep the customers’ interest. Overly complicated steps make it overkill.Your customers are already spending for repeat purchases so you need to make sure that the rewards hold good value for them to even make an effort of climbing up the loyalty program ladder.
They are buying more from your brand and then also engaging with your program, which means, they’ve already done enough so climbing up the tiered loyalty program should give them the exclusivity and importance their loyalty deserves.
Ensure to incorporate exciting gamification features in the mix as constantly engaging the customers through the tiers and keeping them interested can be tricky.
Last but not least, rewarding customers with a diverse blend of rewards such as international travel options, undeniably good gift cards, exciting cash rewards, and most of all unique experiential rewards, can be the cherry on top.
Takeaway
We already agree that in this competitive and dynamic economy, smart customer retention strategies are a must and a tiered loyalty program is the ace of it all.
Tired loyalty programs not only allow the customer to leverage their benefits but also gives your organization multiple ways to keep your customers entertained and satisfied throughout the customer lifecycle.
We could go on and on but you get the gist. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to designing your one-of-a-kind tiered loyalty program today!
