Many businesses have now turned to digital marketing for their ad and marketing campaigns. Most accurately so as digital marketing is now one of the most effective and competitive means of marketing a business. With smartphones on the rise and more and more people inhabiting the Internet, the world is literally at your fingertips when you subscribe to digital marketing. This fact is a considerable advantage that businesses shouldn’t turn a blind eye on.
Narrowing down digital marketing, there are many forms and strategies to try out, too. One of the most commonly used is blogging. This refers to running a website that contains your blog or an online journal. In this blog, a business will talk about anything about their products and services, latest offers, discounts, and matters that would incite its audience purchase their products or avail of their services.
When you’ve already started blogging, you may also realize that there may be some problem areas. Do you lack viewers? Are you in need of a stronger blog engagement? These are all very important to keep your digital marketing campaigns effective. As you strive for better engagement, have you tried to offer membership cards? These cards are the loyalty cards that you sell to your customers, and which allow them to become subscribers to your blog.
Yes, there are benefits of membership cards not just to your consumers, but even to yourself as the business owner or blog owner. What are these advantages of memberships cards? Read through below to find out the answers.
1. Provide Added Value To Your Customers/Followers
Providing an added value means that you’re increasing the value that you’re putting on your customers. Instead of taking them for granted, you are doing everything that you can to maximize the value of a single follower. Through following your blog or business, this specific person feels that you appreciate the time and the effort they give in patronizing your blog and your services as a whole.
For example, because of holding a membership card, the particular customer has access to exclusive rewards and privileges. That, in itself, can help improve your customer service versus other blogs or businesses.
Here are some of the ways that membership cards can add value to customers:
- These cards take into consideration the needs, wants, and perspectives of your customers/followers.
- Membership cards can be a testament that you constantly want to improve on your customer satisfaction ratings.
- Membership cards help create a memorable customer experience.
2. Increased Frequency Of Sales
Customers are responsible shoppers, too. But, this isn’t to say that customers are going to keep purchasing products from you, even those that they don’t need, in exchange for rewards. That’s a completely wrong notion. By increasing the frequency of sales or views, this means that instead of patronizing other brands, stores, or blogs and websites for their needs, they immediately go to yours. Because your site is now the top choice, the frequency of sales occurs as sales are made in your favour, rather than from the competitors’. This is also an effective content marketing campaign. In exchange for these purchases or views, your members are given periodic rewards.
The more they shop or patronize you, the more that these members get in return. But, it doesn’t even have to be anything big. It can be any of these following freebies:
- Coupons
- Discount vouchers
- Free drinks or meals
- Free product offers
3. Increased Revenue
Because of an increased frequency in sales and views, the result is this: increased revenue for the business. This means that now, the objective of your marketing campaigns is achieved. Your business or your blog is enjoying an increase in revenue or a rise in profits. Naturally, no one starts a business or blog without the intention to earn from it. So, when you gain this kind of benefit, that means that you’ve done well from your end. All you have to do now is maintain it or get to even better sales levels.
The great thing about membership cards is that sneakily enough, these are structured to encourage more customer spending or views. Here are some of the ways that this is achieved:
- Additional rewards are offered to customers who spend above a certain level.
- Different categories of membership are given to customers, such as silver, gold, or platinum. The higher your category of membership, the better also are the rewards or incentives.
4. Increased Awareness
Through distributing membership cards, you’re also effectively increasing people’s awareness of your blog or your products and services. By awareness, this means that so many more people know that you exist. Beyond just knowing that you exist, they choose to patronize your products and services as well.
Membership cards can even encourage your already-loyal followers to try out any of your new offerings. For example: offering one free tiramisu coffee after every five purchases of any drink. Or, offering one discount voucher for every three purchases made on a product that you’re advertising on your blog. These kinds of schemes that are exclusive only to your members can also enable them to know more about the products that you’re offering.
5. Enable You To Hold More Customer Data
How important is it for business owners or blog owners to hold customer data? Very important. This can help you improve your current marketing strategies to encourage customer loyalty among followers that you already have. With membership cards, these come along with magnetic strips. Hence, you’re able to obtain data regarding spending preferences and behaviours of your customers. From there, you can collate all information and come up with periodic graphs relating to customer spending behaviour.
From this data that you’ve gathered, for example, you can have a better understanding of your current customer base. You can tweak your discounts, for instance, and apply them to products that are needed by your customers regularly. This encourages them to spend more.
Additionally, it’s also easier for your blog or business to come up with personalized incentives. For instance, with the data that you’ve now collected, you also know when specific customers’ birthdays are coming up. Especially for those customers that you can classify as VIP because of their regular patronage, you can make them feel extra special by offering perks on their special day.
Here are some other compelling reasons why the collection of customer data is important:
- Helps you discover internally how you can improve your campaigns
- Enables you to create better business decisions, especially about matters that affect your customers
- Reaches your audience, on their terms based on their desires and preferences
- Creates a competitive advantage against other businesses or blogs
- Makes you more relevant to your customers or followers
6. Increased Reach Of Customers
When you’ve previously reached customers or followers only from Point A to Point C, perhaps now’s the time for you to strive further. Go beyond and try to reach Point E. That means if you’re successful, you’re able to gain more customers even at a market reach that you didn’t expect to be able to penetrate successfully.
For example, an offer like this exclusive to cardholders: bring in a friend on the National Best Friends Day and encourage them to sign up for a membership. For every friend that you bring, you receive a discount voucher. That way, your loyal customer is pleased that their efforts are well-appreciated. Also, your customer reach has also widened as now you’ve got a new client or viewer coming in.
Here are some other fail-proof ways on how to reach new customers or followers through membership cards:
- Encourage new customers or followers to join your membership list
- Share samples or freebies exclusive only to members
- Host contests or giveaways exclusive only to membership cardholders
- Host events for your followers, but exclusive only to membership cardholders
- Set up a strong referral reward system
7. Foster Stronger Loyalty Among Existing Clients Or Followers
One of the common problems faced by businesses or blog owners today is that, yes, they’ve got followers, but they can’t say that these followers are loyal to them. It’s often the typical behaviour of many to jump from one business or blog to another, depending on which satisfies their needs best. If you’re lucky, these followers are still going to remember you and will come back. However, this isn’t always the case. The danger with this very superficial level of loyalty is that the customers may never return, in favour of another blog or business.
If you’ve seen this pattern with your followers, why not create a membership scheme? Having one can foster a stronger sense of loyalty among your existing clients or followers. As they’re now members, they’ve got access to exclusive discounts, events, rewards, or privileges. Hence, they don’t find any more reason to jump to another business offering the same goods as you or another blog within the same niche.
Customers generally want to maximize the perks of the membership cards that they hold. Hence, there’s that tendency to stick to one, rather than move to another and lose the possibility of gaining points.
Here are the reasons why improving customer loyalty is very important:
- It’s easier to sell new products or market new blog posts to followers who are already loyal.
- It’s like having free marketing or free brand ambassadors when loyal customers talk about you and market your business openly and without hesitation.
- It’s an additional layer of protection against the competition when loyal customers speak good things about your business or blog.
- It cuts down the need for you to put in so much effort in acquiring new customers as the loyal followers generally can do this for you, too.
- It opens your blog or business up to constructive criticism, which, in turn, can help you improve and grow.
8. Keep Customers Or Followers Happy
When you’re in business, the goal, apart from gaining profit, should always be to keep your existing customers happy. It’s more than just about them staying loyal to you. It’s more about the customers being so satisfied with you that they no longer have any reason at all to look for other businesses to purchase from or blogs to follow. When your customers are happy, this also means that your customer satisfaction ratings improve, and so does your overall customer service.
Having membership cards can leave your customers happy because of the perks that they’ve got access to. There’s also that level of satisfaction that they get when they see their points increase every time they make certain purchases. In their mind, it’s as if they’re one step closer to buying 100 dollars worth of free products because of the 97 points that they’ve already received.
Another reason why customer satisfaction is also very important has to do with the reviews that are sure to be found in public sites or even on your blog. In digital marketing, you’d know that customers generally scour the Internet first for recommendations or comments about particular businesses. When this isn’t satisfactory, chances are they’ll have no reason at all to patronize that business or blog. You don’t want this to be yours. As much as possible, you’ll want to strive for positive reviews to get more buyers and followers coming in.
Here are other reasons why increasing customer satisfaction is very important:
- Happy customers turn into loyal followers that will never leave you.
- Customer satisfaction is one of the basis for repurchase intentions and behaviors of clients.
- Poor customer satisfaction can result in customers leaving you right away, in a blink of an eye.
Conclusion
Membership or loyalty cards are an asset for your business or your blog. With this list of benefits, now it’s easy for you to see why your business should also have one. It’s one of the most strategic marketing tools that you can ever use. It brings customers in, encourages purchase and loyalty, and even makes them feel valued through the rewards that you offer in return. With membership cards, you don’t only attract new customers. You’re able to keep them as well.