If your business has an app, it’s no doubt a great way to interact with your customers, push notifications, and provide a user-friendly environment to engage with your brand. The key to a successful app is frequent customer usage.
A recent article featured on adweek notes that 40% of consumers prefer to order food online and when they place an order, they spend 26% more than they would have in-store. A study revealed that only 33% of restaurant apps offered coupons that encouraged customers to repeatedly visit. “The biggest thing is making sure that there’s a consumer need and then getting people to use the technology,” said Kurt Kane at Wendy’s. Wendy’s is now experimenting with adding offers and a customer loyalty program to its app.
Customers need a reason to open your app on a regular basis but what will motivate your customers? Consider adding an element of gamification to your app – similar to achievements or trophies you would earn in video games – providing a sense of accomplishment to your customers with rewards they want… and a reason to keep interacting with your app and your business. Starbucks “My Starbucks Rewards” program features a progress bar, limited time bonus offers, and “Gold” status as a few fun perks of frequent participation. Special promotions will keep your program (and app) fresh so customers have a reason to keep checking back.
If you’re looking to add a customer loyalty program component to your app, you’ll want to look for a loyalty program software that offers use of their API (Application Programming Interface) to integrate. Loyalty Gator offers a robust loyalty API to make it easy for merchants and developers to integrate loyalty programs with their apps, POS, and other platforms! If you’re not a developer yourself, you’ll need to have your developer (or source one) to review the API so they can let you know how to best execute your custom loyalty integration with your specific requirements and ideas.