The Best Customer Loyalty Implementations for Magento
In today’s competitive market, increasing conversion rates, acquiring customers, and retaining them using traditional methods has become increasingly more difficult.
It is imperative Merchants define and incorporate loyalty/reward programs to entice new customers, motivate existing and develop loyalty amongst its customer base
Customer loyalty programs are designed to increase the lifetime value of customers while nurturing and advancing customer relationships. Additionally, loyalty and reward programs attract new buyers thereby increasing overall revenues and total transactions.
“study from Bain & Co shows a 30% increase in company value due to a 10% increase in customer retention levels.”
Effective customer loyalty programs increase purchase frequency, average order value, and customer lifetime value by transforming a customer’s relationship with the brand from a transactional relationship to an emotional one. Furthermore, customer loyalty programs can reward shoppers for numerous events, including birthdays, account registration, social sharing, number of purchases, etc. Offering multiple reward benefits not only increases sales, doing so also increases customer retention rates!
Customer loyalty reward program’s modules fall under two broad categories:
- Self-Managed
- Cloud-Based
Self-Managed Loyalty Modules
Self-managed customer loyalty programs are Magento eCommerce extensions that are installed on the site. Magento Enterprise has reward point functionality built into the system. Extension providers like AheadWorks offer exceptional extensions aimed at providing your Magento Store with a loyalty/ reward program.
The Aheadworks extension has a one-time licensing fee, after which they can be installed and customized to suit your specific business requirements. This extension captures various customer actions, including purchase, registration, and reward customers accordingly. Below are the top third party self-managed extensions in the market:
Aheadworks’s Points & Rewards Extension
The Points and Rewards extension feature referral system. It introduces an in-store currency (points) that can reward customers for promoting additional purchases. It offers customer reward points on many inbuilt actions like registration, newsletter signup, product review, tagging product, poll participation, customer’s birthday, etc.
Key Features
- Reward customers for being active at the store (purchases, reviews, social sharing, etc)
- Use lifetime sales info to define individual earn rates
- Show prices discounted by available points in the frontend
- Limit the products that can be purchased with points
- Allow applying reward points before or after taxes
- Import/export the existing balances
Price:$349 Compatible with Magento: Open Source (Community): 2.2.X – 2.3.X and Commerce (Enterprise): 2.2.X – 2.3.X
Disadvantages of Self-Managed extensions
- Self-managed extensions do not offer the full functionality cloud-based loyalty programs provide.
- Self-managed extensions are not centralized. They are installed on a single website, so if a
merchant has multiple platforms for product purchases and other customer events, self-managed extensions will not work. - Self-managed extensions consume more server resources as compared to cloud-based extensions.
Cloud-Based Loyalty Modules
Cloud-based customer loyalty programs are independent systems. They are centralized and have feature admin panels with various tools to control the reward point system of customers. With Cloud-based loyalty programs, merchants can create custom events on which he/she wants to reward a customer. APIs manage the cloud-based loyalty program, and they also provide extensions/plugins/apps for different platforms. Using cloud-based solutions, customers can be divided into tiers and be rewarded based on their loyalty towards the brand. The following are details of some of the Cloud-Based loyalty programs.
Zinrelo (Formally ShopSocially)
Zinrelo is a SaaS-based, social, referral, and loyalty marketing platform that delivers up to 40% better revenue by enabling an increase in new customer acquisition, engagement, conversion rate, and retention.
500+ global brands are using it to grow their business via proven strategies such as referral marketing, visual commerce, customer loyalty, social login, social gamification, customer Q&A and more.
Key Features
- Reward for purchases and pre-defined actions such as sharing on Twitter, LinkedIn, referrals, email subscriptions,
writing reviews, and answering questions. - Customizable loyalty actions can be added in just a few clicks.
- Integration with third-party systems via loyalty API
- Turnkey loyalty program, no programming necessary
- Loyalty dashboard that can be seamlessly embedded on your website
Price: Starts from $83.00/month
Smile.io (Formally SweetTooth)
Smile.io exists to help businesses make their customers happy. It allows internet-based companies to create fun, on-brand, and easy-to-use reward programs. Smile.io integrates with eCommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, and Bigcommerce, among others, and provides developer tools to create the world’s most engaging reward programs.
Key Features
- Customers can earn reward points on their purchases, account registrations, social shares, and follows
(on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.), birthday, reaching a VIP tier, and referring friends. - Customers can redeem their points in $ off discounts, % off discounts, free shipping, and gift cards.
- Smile.io is optimized for mobile, always making it easy for your customers to access your reward program.
- Integration with third-party systems via APIs.
- Create their events by which customers can get rewards.
Price: Starts from $49.00/month
Disadvantage of Cloud-Based Solutions
Generally, Cloud-Based solutions come with monthly fees. While studies show that excellent customer service is the most crucial factor in building repeat business, a properly executed loyalty program also aids in retention. Therefore, many retailers have implemented customer loyalty and reward point systems; however, a poorly executed loyalty program can prove ineffective as it can negatively impact your bottom-line. In conclusion, choosing the right loyalty solution for your online business starts with identifying which features and functionalities are most important to you and fit within your budget.
