Halloween is easily one of the biggest events of the year. It is the perfect holiday for eCommerce retailers to make a killing. Launching a customer loyalty rewards program before the holidays is something that retailers should consider seriously. Loyalty plays a successful role for retailers during the holiday season. This article looks at a step-by-step process to launch a rewards program for Halloween.

Here’s how to launch a customer loyalty rewards program in time for Halloween:

Determine your loyalty program objectives:

You must have a clear handle on the objectives you plan to achieve with the loyalty program. Doing so will also help you know which are the KPIs that need to be measured. You can ask the following questions:

Why are we launching a loyalty program?
What do we want from the program?
What are the goals of the program?

Each retailer will have different goals, but one of the most common would be increased sales. The good thing about a loyalty program is that it will fetch you returns for the long term and during the holiday sales this year. You need to have a definite idea so that the entire organization is aligned with the customer loyalty program goals for this holiday.

Identify what your customers want from the loyalty program:

The next thing you need to worry about is your customer’s expectations. The target of an attractive loyalty program is the retailer’s customers. Use the internal customer data and current market trends to understand what they want.

Here are a few questions that can help:

What do your customers prefer?
Is there any way you can alleviate their pain points with your loyalty program?
What are the rewards that they have expressed interest in receiving?
How can you make their experience with your brand more fulfilling?

Most of the information should be available from external data sources, but your first-party data will give you unique perspectives. Talk to your sales teams to discover how conversations with customers have progressed as they go deeper into the sales funnel.

Assess your organizational resources:

Before you dive head-first into a customer loyalty program, it is better to assess your current wherewithal and get a realistic idea of what is possible. Ensure that you get a buy-in from the leadership team before starting.

When launching a customer loyalty program, there are many things to consider, especially during the holidays, here are some of them:

You need to figure out the right customer loyalty program software to use.
Structuring the loyalty program to get maximum ROI.
Create a list of rewards to be used in the program.
Identify the marketing strategy to get the most out of the launch.
Assigning an internal team to champion the program.

One of the best things about launching a customer loyalty rewards program is that tools are available that cut your troubles by half. Otherwise, you’d be wasting tonnes of resources, effort, and money to build a product that might not even be doing its job well. The rest can be managed by a committed internal team.

Build your loyalty program:

The next step is to plan the loyalty program. Have a small team that will be in charge of the customer loyalty program. Assign project roles and responsibilities to each of them.

Below are a few questions that you need answers for:

Which are the holidays we are planning the launch for?

Who are our target customers?
How do we intend to market?
What are the success metrics that we will use to measure the effectiveness of the campaign?
What is the content strategy that we will use to get new signups?

The channels you regularly use to distribute your content are good for spreading the word about your customer loyalty program.

Communicate the importance of your loyalty program internally:

It is important that your team knows how crucial your customer loyalty program launch is going to be. Communicate with them about what you hope to gain from the exercise and how the program will be a regular fixture- holiday sales or not. Ensure that your team is on the same page regarding the steps of action that will be taken.

Your customers will get excited about the program only if your employees will translate their enthusiasm into the program launch. All the different departments should work together and engage in information sharing. If they are used to working in silos, you might want to correct it before the launch.

Choose the right rewards:

You need to be clear about the rewards you will offer your customers. The success of the rewards program entirely depends on this question, “What’s in it for me?” If you can answer the above question with clarity and in a way that keeps the customers excited about being a part of your loyalty program, it will be a winner. Ensure that the customers are communicated properly on how they can claim their reward.

Train your team:

The first point of contact for most customers with respect to the loyalty program is your support team. Make sure they are aware of the nitty-gritty of the program. The last thing you want is a disgruntled set of customers because of a poorly trained support team. Make them understand the program’s benefits for the consumer and how it can be effectively sold to them.

Launch your pilot:

Once you are sure that all the preparations are completed, the time is ripe to launch the program. Check if everything is in order and if there are no last-minute hiccups. Monitor the metrics that you plan to measure and see how they fare. If you don’t want to go all guns blazing, you can send the program to a select few customers. It will be a simple way to track the success of such a loyalty program and see how your customers react to it. Are they gung-ho about it? Or are they passively signing up to the platform with nary a follow-up?

If your customers are excited, it means that you have given it the much-needed marketing push. When the excitement is bland, be assured that you need to find better marketing strategies to make such launches a success.

After-launch shenanigans:

Once the program is launched, sit back and relax. Find out what’s working and what is not. If there are any changes that need to be incorporated into the loyalty program, you can do so in real-time if you are using a sophisticated platform like the one offered by 99minds.

Test the program on different buyer personas using content that is written specifically for each segment. When you test the campaigns, you can quickly determine which aspects of the program are more engaging than the others and act accordingly. Gather feedback from the members and keep refining the program. Launching all at once without testing or optimizing can be costly, especially if you don’t have a software partner like 99minds.

Wrapping up:

If you haven’t launched your customer loyalty rewards program for Halloween, gather all your resources and do it now. You are late, but you can still catch up by using a rewards program that is as easy as ‘plug-and-play’ and doesn’t require the services of a developer to get it up and running. You can follow the above steps and make your Halloween successful by launching your customer loyalty rewards program right in time.

Get in touch with the 99minds team to skip ahead of all your peers and make Halloween your best sales day yet.

Got any questions?