The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing 

To get the most mileage from your loyalty program and make your brand more visible, you should ensure it expands beyond an app, portal or virtual rewards card alone.

Giving your loyalty program omnichannel integration also means that your customers can integrate with your brand seamlessly across every touchpoint imaginable by:

• Offering exclusive in-store deals or discounts (if applicable)
• Setting up push notifications so customers can access content or incentives when they’re on the go
• Rolling out deals with partner brands that your customers can access on separate platforms or websites
• Sending loyalty customers exclusive email content, offers, deals, and access to exclusive virtual or in-person events

You might be asking yourself, “how can I measure and optimize my customer loyalty program?’”To help track performance and make targeted improvements, you should work with these essential metrics:

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This metric measures the overall revenue you can expect from a single loyalty account. Tracking CLV will help you gauge how much revenue your loyalty program is driving over a certain timeframe.
• Repeat Purchase Rate (RPR): This metric will show you the percentage of customers who make repeat purchases in a whatsapp data particular time frame. A higher RPR among your loyalty members typically indicates a rise in customer retention.
• Average Order Value (AOV): Keeping tabs on your AOV will help you determine if your loyalty program members spend more money per transaction than non-members.
• Program Participation Rate: This metric is useful as it measures the percentage of customers who actively participate in the loyalty program on a regular basis. If your rates start to drop, you may need to look at your user experience, communications, and the kind of incentives you offer.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing has empowered brands to automate key parts of their loyalty scheme strategy.

Using AI tools, it’s possible to enhance loyalty scheme data analysis, dynamic rewards optimization (serving tailored rewards to family availability of providers in your area customers at the right time in their journey), and delivering personalized loyalty scheme content.

Advancements in personalization mean that brands looking to foster loyalty send tailored offers or incentives on, say, a birthday. Apps like Stocard allow you to manage all of your loyalty memberships from a  single platform.

As loyalty schemes continue to evolve, more businesses will focus on improving their personalization efforts and explore cross-brand collaborations to expand marketing reach while offering customers additional value.

According to studies from Open Loyalty, here’s what we can expect to see:

• 58% of brands will prioritize personalization as their main area to increase customer engagement and retention
• 30% of brands and businesses are expected to invest in automation to streamline their loyalty scheme activities
• 32% of brands are looking to explore mutually-beneficial collaborations to improve reach and offer exclusive incentives that enrich their customer loyalty offering

These three different but equally effective rewards programs are a testament to how loyalty programs are evolving to keep pace with customer needs.

Starbucks Rewards has been one of the pioneering schemes since its introduction in 2015 (as it evolved from a wallet-based, or whatsapp aumber physical, loyalty card). Through carefully-curated partnerships, continual improvements, and a seamless user experience, Starbucks Rewards is one of the world’s most popular restaurant loyalty apps. In fact, 71% of people use the app at least once a week.

The mobile-centric nature of Starbucks Rewards not only streamlines the food & beverage purchasing journey but by incentivizing its customers by buying directly through the app, Starbucks has increased engagement (and collected valuable data) while driving loyalty.

By combining superior customer experience (CX), an engaging mobile app design, and seamless integration with other apps and services including Spotify (an experience that allows customers to save songs they’ve heard in-store to their Spotify accounts), Starbucks Rewards still leads the way in loyalty programs.