5 Ideas For Holiday Loyalty Campaigns

Christmas is just around the corner and people are shopping for gifts for themselves, friends and family in full swing for the next 2 weeks. 

This is a great opportunity for you as an online merchant to show your creativity and treat your customers and prospects with amazing deals, special bundles, contests, games and much more - in the proper Christmas spirit. 

You may ask why you should make the extra effort to make Christmas shopping at your store a memorable and engaging experience for your customers.

For starters, 60% of Americans have reported that they prefer buying their Christmas gifts online, which means: increased traffic to your e-store, opportunities for increased referral rates, acquiring new customers, opportunity to delight your existing customers with valuable gifts and much, much more. 

Therefore tweaking your loyalty program to offer great rewards, promotions and offers can help you reap benefits long after the Christmas frenzy ends; focusing on the long-term CLV instead of the momentarily sale is key.

Let's look at 5 cool ideas for your holiday loyalty program this Christmas season.

1. Bonus Points Campaigns

We already know how important it is to offer a well structured points and rewards program on your e-store; people love earning something with each order placed and love it even more when they get to use their earned points for a discount on their favorite products. 

But what customers love even more, is when their earnings are doubled, or tripled!  

Bonus points campaigns or point multiplier events are a super cool way to show your customers some Christmas spirit and give them a way to earn more when they shop at your store! 

Example campaign we love: Sephora Beauty Insider SEPHORATON

Sephora has created the Sephorathon - a month-long campaign in December with tons of promotions, sales events and earning opportunities for Beauty Insider members. 

One of the campaigns is the Point Multiplier Event taking place from December 10th until December 16th - a week time during which Beauty Insider Members can earn multiplied points for their orders. 

The point multiplier is different for each of the 3 VIP tiers of the program - incentivizing customers to shop and earn more as they climb the tiers.

Source: Sephora

How you can replicate this campaign: 

With Lootly Bonus Point Campaign feature, you can create and run point multiplier events like Sephora’s with ease. You just need to define the point multiplier and schedule the time to run the campaign. 

Then for each purchase made, your customers will earn multiplied points which they can then redeem for rewards at your store. 

Once your campaign ends, the earning rules default to your previous settings.

Source: Lootly

This is a super cool and easy way to engage your customers in buying more at your store during Holidays, earn points and continue the relationship long after the holidays end.

2. Offer Free Shipping for Holiday Purchases

When shopping online, shipping is an important part of the whole experience that people consider carefully. Additionally, we all want our gifts to arrive right on time for Christmas parties. So, why not offer various options of free shipping to your most loyal customers and incentivize them to climb the tiers?

Example we love: DSW Free Shipping during the holidays

DSW is an amazing store that sells designer shoes at more affordable prices. Their loyalty program is called DSW VIP and it has a super cool design and overall structure. 

Their program has 3 VIP tiers: Club, Gold and Elite and they offer tons of perks and benefits to each tier: 

DSW offers free shipping to all 3 tiers as follows:

•  Free 4-7 days shipping to the VIP Club members

•  Free shipping on returns within 60 days of purchase to VIP Gold members

•  Free 2 days Shipping for VIP Elite members

DSW recognizes that while shipping can be free for their customers,  when they receive their orders will depend on their VIP tier membership. 

So, play with shipping time to incentivize customers to earn more and reach higher VIP tier membership.

How you can replicate this: 

Lootly’s VIP program can be entirely customized to reflect your special offers for each VIP tier. 

To offer Free shipping for a specific time, you can set a Custom Reward that will display this to your customers.

3. Experiential benefits for members in VIP tiers

Experiential marketing is a strategy to bolster the connection between your brand (especially an e-commerce brand) and your customers. 

Although most branded events are conducted in the offline world, you can still make an online conversation about it and reap the benefits of the events’ aftermath: the mobile videos taken by guests, the social media photos, the tags and the overall conversation. 

This type of UGC can be super useful for your brand in boosting brand awareness and showcasing your customers how you care for your most loyal base. 

And who doesn’t want to be part of such a group?

Example we love: Harvey Nichols Private Designer Sale Event

For lovers of  high-end designer goods this is the shopping event of the year! 

Harvey Nichols knows well their customers and offers to the most loyal spenders at their stores the opportunity to be the first shoppers in their designer sale event.

The event starts on December 3rd and ends on December 11th, offering VIP members early access to the sales event, special discounts and perks for shopping both online and in select stores. 

How to replicate this:

When it comes to delivering branded experiences and events, you want the whole experience to be super joyous, fun, to sparkle a conversation long after it’s over and of course, to be strategically executed.

So, be creative: whether that be an early access to a special sales event or a cocktail party with reward games for your highest tier members - make sure it’s memorable and covered with tons of UGC. 

In Lootly, you can display the details about your super cool offer to your customers by adding them in Custom Rewards in each of the VIP tiers.

4. Gamify your program

Engagement is super important during the holidays because that’s when all your competition is fighting hard for your customers’ attention and don’t forget that stealing them it’s just so, so easy in the digital world. 

So how do you keep your customers engaged with your brand and at your store?

Example we love: Starbucks For Life by Starbucks Rewards

Starbucks have created the Starbucks for Life Game for this year’s holiday season and it’s absolutely amazing. 

For avid coffee lovers this is a super engaging and highly rewarding experience: Starbucks is offering their customers a chance to win super valuable items such as Bose QuietComfort® Earbuds, Alaska Airlines travel vouchers and much more from the Starbucks House of coffee.

Source: Starbucks Rewards

How does it work? 

Once you join their Starbucks Rewards program, you gain access to their game portal where you can earn plays and then use these plays to earn stars. 

Source: Starbucks Rewards

In addition to this, there are other cool ways to earn plays and stars as well as to enter their sweepstake for a $500 Starbucks gift card. 

This is obviously a limited time offer by the coffee giant and it’s a rather rich game with a lot of cool activities for the participants. 

How can you replicate this: 

You can get creative here in designing the game you want to offer to your customers. You can even do the extra effort and look into a game app on your website.

What matters on the loyalty part of the tactic is for you to strategically set the rewards you’ll offer to your customers for making a purchase. 

Is that going to be a free product? 

A bundle of products?

Set a rewards scale: offer free products at a specific points threshold and nudge customers to spend more in order to get the next free product you know they’ll love.

5. Offer holiday-themed products as rewards

Make sure you have reserved some holiday-themed gifts for your customers.

Offering seasonal rewards is always a good idea as people love them and they’re ready to spend a bit more to get them. 

It’s important here to communicate the deal properly to your audience and make sure it's in line with what they want and value.

How to do this in your program: 

Make your dedicated rewards page super holiday-themed. 

Add Christmas motives and visual decorative elements to speak the spirit of the season.

Then communicate your holiday-themed rewards to your customers: are you offering a limited time holiday bundle of products?

Maybe just one super valuable product?

Make sure the offer stands out on your website, is clearly visible and communicates to your customers in their language.

To wrap it up

Knowing what is valuable to your customers and what makes them happy is what makes it easier for you to tweak your loyalty program this Christmas and offer a truly memorable and engaging holiday shopping experience.

When you define your rewards, games, perks and benefits, always keep in mind that the goal isn’t to boost momentarily sales, but to nurture the relationship and reap the benefits long after New Year.

✨ 🎄 Happy Holidays from all of us at Lootly! 🎄✨