10 creative ways to promote your loyalty program

One of the 4 components of the marketing mix is promotion. For every product or service that you offer, promotion is a crucial element for getting that product or service in front of the right audience.

Your loyalty program is an asset to your business that you designed to offer even more value to your customers. 

However, if your customers don’t know about it, don’t see the value you’re offering them through your program, they won’t engage with it. This is especially important for e-commerce businesses, where the shopping experience should be flawless and super user-friendly.

There are few reasons why you should think about a promotion strategy for your loyalty program:

Boosting customer acquisition - when your target audience knows that you’re offering a loyalty program on top of amazing products they love, choosing between you and your competition is much easier. 

Re-engaging customers - invite past customers who only bought once from you to revisit your store and enjoy the benefits of your program. Remind them of their points earned and explain to them how easy it is to use them and gain even more. 

So, how to promote your loyalty program?

Buckle up, as this guide explores 10 creative ways to deploy a great promotion strategy of your loyalty program based on real examples and insights from e-commerce marketing managers. 

In this article:

1. Explainer page for your program

2. Website elements: banner, category tab, program widget, inline points

3. Explainer video

4. Email + SMS campaigns 

5. Social Media Promotion

6. Paid ads

7. Printed materials in the order package

8. Personalized email recommendations

9. Blog posts

10. Program promotion through customer support reps

A program explainer page

The easiest way to promote your program to your customers is to deploy a dedicated rewards explainer page. 

This page would explain how people can use your program and what value they can gain. Add a FAQ section dedicated specifically to the program that will help existing and prospective customers educate themselves about your loyalty program offering. 

Pro tip: customize the design of your page to fit your brand and to be visually appealing. Also, customize the page url, so that when you share this page in blog posts or social media posts, it communicates its contents and value properly to both users and search engines.

Source: Dharma Door

Website elements

Your e-store website is the first place where people learn about your offers, so a strategic reference to your new loyalty program is a great way to get customers' attention. 

Here are few website elements that you can deploy to promote your program on your e-store website.

A home page banner

A branded banner deployed above the fold on the home page is a top-notch promotion strategy, here’s why: 

• People spend 80% of their time on your website reading above the fold. Therefore, it’s a great opportunity to share the newest addition to your offer and inspire them to take action.

• It’s the first thing people will see when they land on your website, instantly being intrigued to learn more; 

• It points to the difference between you and the competition, making your store a preferred choice by customers;

• It's an effective way to drive customer acquisition

  
  

  
  

  
  

Source: Jacinta Tienda

In the navigation bar

The navigation bar of your website is always available to customers, so it makes a perfect promotion strategy to give your new loyalty program a place in the category list. 

A study conducted to determine which website elements attract the attention of visitors the most, concluded that among other elements, the category list and the dropdowns from the category list are among the main things on a website the attention is focused on. 

In addition to capturing attention, this deployment strategy also makes the user-experience super easy - the program is always a click-away from users. 

Add the program widget on every page of the website

An even better strategy is to have the program widget available on every page of your website. 

Why?

1. It’s an enticing way to draw customers attention to the program offering

2. It’s super interactive, as the widget can be accessed at any point during the browsing session

3. It’s a  continuous promotion technique, always drawing the attention of new visitors and existing customers to the program.

   
   

Inline points

Using inline points is a great way to instantly differentiate your brand from your competition for people who are comparison shopping.

Seeing that they can earn points for their purchase is much more appealing than not and can make the difference when people are comparing prices. 

For e-commerce retailers in the fashion, beauty, CBD, supplements or toys industry, this promotion technique is a great way to help customers make an easy choice when comparing retailers. 

Explainer video

Let’s be honest; people prefer consuming video content way more than written content. It’s far easier and more engaging than reading a post. 

Although your explainer page is short, easy to understand and visually appealing, a short video explaining briefly your program’s value is a great way to promote it and at the same time engage your audience. 

Short-form videos are currently on the rise as the go-to tool for marketers because they address the short attention span of consumers and because people watching short-form videos are more receptive to advertising. 

So, take advantage of video in both longer and shorter form to promote your program; you can have a 5 minute video explaining to your customers how to use the program and a shorter 60 seconds video on Instagram Stories or TikTok ( depending on where your audience lives) and promote your program’s value.

Promotion via email and SMS campaigns

As an e-commerce business you probably rely heavily on email marketing to communicate with your customers at various points of their buying cycle and build a relationship. So, it makes perfect sense to use it to promote your new program. 

Send an email to your customers outlining the program’s value, why you’ve decided to offer this program, and how they can start benefiting from it now. Make sure to tune the messaging, visuals and most importantly, the CTA - either to check their point balance or to start earning by referring your brand to friends and family.  

Don’t forget that email generates about 3800% ROI, so make sure you think thoroughly about  this specific email. 

Another promotion channel on the rise is SMS, as people spend most of their time browsing, shopping and communicating on mobile. 

Just how effective is SMS as a promotion channel? Research by Attentive Mobile shows that a staggering 96% of marketers say that using SMS marketing has helped them drive more revenue because 66.5% of consumers have signed up to receive SMS from brands. 

If you’re doing SMS marketing, make sure you do a campaign to notify your customers and subscribers of the program’s value. 

Social Media Posts

Social media is the top promotion channel for marketers because that’s where people spend most of their time finding new brands, getting news from brands they love, sharing information and communicating with brands directly. 

Make sure you take advantage of the attention your brand has on your social channels to spread the word about your new loyalty program - design a catchy visual and customize the message to speak the program’s value. 

Social Media Paid Ads

While a social media post is a great promotion tactic to let your existing customers know about your program and start using it, a paid ad on Facebook or Instagram can tackle the top of the marketing funnel and boost acquisition. 

Your loyalty program is not just of value to existing customers, but also a competitive advantage distinguishing you from your competitors. Letting prospective customers know that your program is a long-lasting relationship based on various ways to earn great rewards can make a difference with people thinking whether to buy from you or your competitor. 

Packaging Inserts

A creative, spot-on promotion technique are packaging inserts. This technique is effective because it’s highly targeted, it’s low-cost, and if crafted well, it inspires loyalty!

Including a reference to your program in the box ensures people receive your program offer right in their hand and will always be reminded to check out what you got for them. 

Personalized email product recommendations

The point of offering a loyalty program to your customers is for them to actively engage with it and actually enjoy the value it provides. 

With each email you send to customers, make sure you include info such as their point balance or unique referral url and let them know of the rewards they can earn by using these points or referring to your brand. 

You can add this reference to all kinds of emails such as recommending products based on past purchases, thank you email after 3 purchases pointing to the satisfaction with your brand and asking for a referral - be creative.

This is a great way to actively and continuously promote your program and ensure its success. 

Blog posts

A dedicated post to your program on your company blog page is a great way to promote it. Through a blog post you have the opportunity to explain its value to your customers and more importantly to tell them why you decided to offer this program to them. You can outline your plan and maybe future promotions you’re planning to run and get that excitement up. 

The post doesn’t have to be long, but it should be on- point and easy to understand. 

Check out this example from Tea with Tracie.

Promotion through customer support representatives

Customer Support representatives talk to your customers daily. They know how they think, what their problems are and what they expect from you. They pay a lot of attention to what customer support reps tell them. So, this is a great way not just to promote your program’s launch, but also for active promotion through the entire customer experience. 

Make sure your customer support teams are informed of the program’s value and how it works. Also, if you’re using a customer support software such as Reamaze, it’s super helpful for reps to always have customers’ loyalty data at hand.

If you also sell your products in a physical store, store representatives should also make sure people know about your program and sign up for it on the spot.