What can a VIP Loyalty Program do for your digital business?

What goals define the roadmap for your digital business in 2019? Increased revenue? Consistent sales during the slow season? Heightened customer loyalty?

A VIP loyalty rewards program helps you identify, track, and reward the top customers of your app or subscription service, ultimately increasing brand awareness and advocacy to encourage purchases from both frequent and first-time buyers.

How does a VIP program work?

A VIP program offers exclusive rewards to your most loyal customers, giving them more reasons to spend with your brand. The benefits of a VIP program are reserved for your top-tier customers - those who have significantly contributed value to your product or service, usually in the form of repeat purchases.

A survey by Technology Advice revealed that 57% of customers are more likely to participate in a loyalty program if it offers a VIP status and exclusive rewards.

VIP programs make your customers feel special as they reach an elite status with your brand. This new social status, combined with unique rewards attainable by only a select few, incentivizes customers to remain loyal brand advocates.

If you’re just getting started with leveraging customer loyalty, we recommend brushing up on the importance of loyalty marketing.

What does it mean to be a VIP?

“VIP” status with your brand is as exclusive as you decide to make it.

For example, a customer could be eligible for VIP rewards such as a $5 credit or free shipping for the month once they have spent at least $100 on your product or service, or once they have successfully referred at least five new customers.

A VIP program’s effectiveness is directly related to the perceived value of the rewards you choose to offer, whether that be store credits, discounts, points, or an asset unique to your organization.

Through analyzing your existing customer base and understanding what they value most, a VIP program can be successfully executed for your business.

Here’s what a VIP Loyalty Program can do for your business:

1. Increase Sales Volume

When you make an effort to reward and retain your top customers, you’re increasing the frequency of high-value purchases by up-selling clients in exchange for giving out rewards. According to a post on the Marketing Tech Blog, loyal customers (on average) are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase.

With a desirable set of rewards to be attained, a customer’s average spend amount will increase in order to reach and maintain VIP status with your brand. Even if a customer doesn’t reach the VIP level, the challenge to attain it will increase their usage and spending.

By offering time-sensitive reward collection or redemption periods, you’re able to reduce the time between purchases. Additionally, non-transferrable rewards like discounts or store credit further encourage spending with your brand.

2. Encourage Specific Customer Behavior

Enlist your top customers to help you achieve your sales and marketing goals by building rewards that encourage specific purchases and actions.

For example, kick off the new calendar year with a VIP program to incentivize purchases if your sales typically slow down after Christmas, or if you need to clear out old inventory. Another great idea is to offer VIP rewards to customers who bring in qualified leads so you can grow your audience in preparation for an upcoming product launch.

When you define the actions that customers take to collect rewards, you can influence and strengthen buying habits, controlling purchasing patterns and customer behavior to your advantage.

3. Uncover Your Customers’ Motivators

What types of customers engage with your brand the most? What kinds of rewards do they value?

A VIP program lets you discover who your repeat customers are, how much they buy, and how often. Use your VIP program’s data to quickly determine what characteristics your top customers share, and what motivates them to keep coming back for more.

This valuable information is effective to segment and target specific groups of users with future promotional campaigns and referral programs, and ensure you’re always offering the best types of rewards.

For more insight on choosing the best rewards, check out this article.

4. Strengthen Brand Advocacy

By focusing your loyalty efforts on your highest-value customers, you’re reducing their likelihood of churning while simultaneously increasing the potential for high-value referrals. These referrals allow you to reach a wider audience with your message.

A VIP loyalty program makes your top customers feel special. An increase in positive feelings associated with your brand naturally motivates customers to share their experience among their social circles.

How to set up your first VIP Program

With a platform like SaaSquatch, you can quickly set up multiple VIP Loyalty Programs to start rewarding high-value, repeat customers and encourage specific purchases.

When you implement a VIP Program, you control how and when a customer reaches VIP status, and what they receive as a reward. You can offer rewards in the form of a credit with your product or service, discounts, gift cards, points, or a custom reward unique to your organization.

A loyalty platform like SaaSquatch continually evaluates how much a participant has spent or contributed in a specified period of time, and automatically rewards them when the required threshold has been met, meaning you don’t need to worry about always monitoring your client’s behavior.

Using dedicated loyalty program software means your custom rewards program can feature targeted audience segmentation, automatically expiring rewards, revenue reporting, custom profile information, and multi-language support. Additionally, you have continuous access to new programs as they become available, plus built-in fraud protection to maximize campaign revenue.