When it comes to converting customers into regulars, hospitality businesses have their own unique challenges. In Marsello’s latest release, 4 new features make it easier for merchants to build customer relationships.

Do you know who your regulars are? More importantly, can you contact them?

Sure, you probably have a good idea of who comes through your doors the most. Most businesses have built rapport with locals who come in daily, weekly, or monthly.

But ideally, you know how to engage with them and when. Rather than having a reactive relationship, you want to keep regulars in your orbit - incentivize them to increase their order size, reward them for referring friends, and more.

Myth: It’s not worth the effort of getting customers to sign up to your marketing lists.
Reality: Every customer you add to your database is a customer you can re-engage with through personalized marketing. If you’re not signing up customers, you are missing out on valuable data and insights you could use to inform your marketing activities.

Quick Links:

• • • Why hospitality businesses should collect customer details
    • 4 features that help hospitality businesses to build customer relationships
    • See how these features work [video]
    • Want to try these features? How to get started
      
      

Here’s why hospitality businesses should collect customer details.

By collecting your customers’ details, you can maximize your marketing efforts. You will be able to gather data on repeat business, the value of each customer, groups of customers who spend the most, and which campaigns are the most profitable. 

Here are just some of the ways you can use customer data to increase revenue:

1. Segmentation

By using Marsello’s default segments, or creating your own custom segments, you can send targeted, personalized marketing messages to the right customers. Reward your top customers with special gifts, or send incentives to those who haven’t been back in a while. Whatever the message, send it to people who are the most likely to engage.

2. Automation

When your customers are automatically being segmented into groups, you can start sending timely automated emails or SMS messages. For example, instead of manually sending incentives to your ‘at risk’ customers, have a flow set up that does this in the background, whenever a customer matches certain criteria.

3. Testing & Measuring

Test what campaigns work best. Do double points days bring in the most revenue? Which segments respond best to these campaigns? Having access to customer purchase data is invaluable for understanding what marketing actually works, and what doesn’t.

As you can see, customer data is exceedingly powerful - having these insights could even turn your current marketing strategy on its head.

However, when you’ve got a queue of hungry customers waiting for their Monday coffee & scone fix, you and your staff want to make point-of-sale as efficient as possible. Asking customers to create an account can feel like the absolute last priority.

But let’s make one thing clear - collecting details does not have to be a painful experience!

4 new features that make it so much easier for hospitality businesses to build customer relationships.

SMS registration at point-of-sale

In a nutshell: This is very simple. You only need to collect two things at POS: name and mobile number. Once these basic details are collected, a customer profile will be created.

From this point on, sales made by this customer will all be attributed to a single customer profile in Marsello, provided they reference their mobile number upon their next purchase.

This allows you to track how much a customer spends each time, what their average purchase is in $, and how regularly they visit (or buy online, if you have an eCommerce store too).

Complete customer account (via SMS automation)

In a nutshell: Automatically trigger an SMS to send to customers after point-of-sale so they can fill out additional details while they wait for their order.

Once the POS transaction is complete, your customer will receive an SMS to prompt them to finish creating their account on the new in-store customer portal. 

This saves you time at POS, and gives customers something to do while they dine-in or wait for their takeaway order. They won’t need to feel like they’re holding up the line, and can relax while they complete their account and explore your loyalty and rewards program.

Registration QR codes

In a nutshell: Customers can scan a QR code in-store or on print media. This will direct them to take an action (for example, sign-up to marketing, create a loyalty profile, or redeem an offer).

Since QR code scanning technology was integrated into smartphone cameras in 2017, adoption rates picked up massively. The pandemic has only further solidified their role in our lives - now they are familiar, easy for users, and take seconds to create.

Now, you can generate QR codes right from within your Marsello account, and add tracking details including site tracking and custom tags.

Then, download and import your code into Canva (or your preferred design tool) to add your own branding or design. Alternatively, add your codes to your print media - menus, coasters, magazine ads, or window signs.

By adding site tracking, your customer will be added to that site’s POS straight away. With custom tags, you can get even more granular - for example, you can track where in the venue the QR code was scanned, what event the customer was at, or even which specific poster design people scanned more frequently.

In-store customer portal

In a nutshell: The customer portal is a central place where customers can view their loyalty profile, points balance, available loyalty rewards & email discounts. It also holds their membership card, which they can use to identify themselves faster on their next order.

New customers will access this via the SMS registration automation post-POS purchase or when scanning the registration QR code (as above). Initially, it will display a welcome screen where they can sign-up for their account using their Google or Facebook account. This will capture the customer's name and email address, and when they create an account it will opt-in the customer to email & SMS marketing.

Once they’ve signed up, customers will be able to save the portal to their mobile home screen, so they can easily check their points balance and available rewards or discounts. 

The portal also contains a membership card with a QR code. If you have a 2D barcode scanner, you’ll be able to scan customer cards at POS to quickly identify them and attribute the sale to their profile.

Watch the demo video

Want to try these features out?

For now, these features are available to…

• Any Marsello hospitality merchant, upon request 
• Lightspeed Restaurant (O-Series) merchants (learn more about Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty here)

Soon, we’ll be making these more widely available to other merchants as well - so keep an eye out!

Loyalty and customer marketing now work seamlessly within Lightspeed Restaurant POS, so merchants have all their sales and marketing in one place.

What does it feel like to be a loyal customer?

We are business owners, venue managers, marketers - sure. But we’re also consumers ourselves. We know what it feels like to be loyal to a brand. When you boil it down, we like to feel favored. We like to have a buddy who’ll slide us a free beer at the bar, or a friend to keep those shoes on hold for us a liiiitttle bit longer than protocol would usually permit.

We like to feel like someone has bent the rules, just a little bit, just for us.

At its essence, this is what a loyalty program delivers. Although rather than being a quick favor under the table, it’s a calculated & measured marketing tactic - implemented to increase ROI, not hinder it.

Our regular customers are our friends, and the VIP deals we give them incentivize their repeat business - so they come back to us, not to a merchant down the road. The more valuable the customer, the more points they earn, and the better or more frequent the deals.

Quick Links:

• • • Are loyalty programs worth it for hospitality businesses?
    • How do I know a loyalty program will work for my hospitality business?
    • Loyalty is just one part of your broader marketing strategy
    • Close the loop with Lightspeed Loyalty, powered by Marsello.
      
      

Are loyalty programs worth it for hospitality businesses?

Like any industry, the hospitality sector has nuances and unique needs that business owners must consider before committing to a loyalty program service or app.

Hospitality staff will know the pain of waiting for a customer to sign up to their database while other hungry and un-caffeinated customers are waiting impatiently in line. In many cases, the effort just won’t feel worthwhile.

Loyalty software built for hospitality will be designed with these pain points in mind - for example, you’ll be able to have a QR code at the counter to allow customers to scan a code and enter their details within seconds. Moreover, your software will let you know the value of each and every person who signs up - making it easy to show staff why it’s important for customers to join your database.

There’s also a suitability test: ‘what kind of loyalty program is best for my business?’

For a cafe with no online store, a simple coffee card might be more effective and easy to manage than loyalty program software. However, for a multi-site cafe that also sells beans, filter apparatus, and branded coffee mugs from an online store, that loyalty software starts to make much more sense. Taking a step further, a large global chain might even invest in a custom loyalty program app - an expensive option generally not worthwhile for SMEs.

How do I know a loyalty program will work for my hospitality business?

Before you commit to a loyalty program, you probably want to know:

• Can I be sure it will work?
• How will I know when it’s working?
• How do I measure the success of a loyalty program?

One of the biggest challenges for business owners and marketers is calculating the ROI of marketing efforts. If you’ve ever used Google Analytics or other tools to try to attribute revenue to campaigns, you’ll know how frustrating it can be to pinpoint what’s actually bringing in revenue. While a digital ad might be easy to track, anything more nebulous, like “brand equity” or “customer loyalty”, is much more difficult.

So, how can you know your loyalty program is delivering a return on your investment? That is, how can you know when your customers are spending more because of your loyalty program?

For this, you need closed-loop attribution. Closed-loop attribution means that you ‘close the loop’ between marketing and sales - everything is tracked and measured centrally through seamlessly integrated sales and marketing tech.

In a closed-loop system, your customer takes center stage. Rather than piecemeal data spread across different systems and spreadsheets, every activity is tracked and recorded to a neatly organized customer profile. (For you, that means less clutter, less admin, and no more importing and exporting of customer lists.)

Loyalty is just one part of your broader marketing strategy

When you operate a loyalty program within a closed-loop system, you get total visibility over what specific combinations of loyalty tactics and marketing campaigns work best and who your most valuable customers are. That is, you get a broader understanding of how your loyalty program operates in conjunction with the rest of your marketing efforts.

If this is sounding a bit technical, here’s the crux of it:

Every SMS message delivered, email opened, discount code redeemed, purchase made… it’s all there. This is extremely powerful. Using this data, you can segment your customers into groups such as most valuable, most likely to convert from an email, top brand ambassadors… and so much more. 

Using these segments, you can deliver targeted, personalized and highly effective marketing campaigns that drive repeat sales and increase revenue.

We don’t want to make false promises but we will say this: customer loyalty is a tried and tested marketing tactic. If your business is the right fit, it will work.

Close the loop with Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty, powered by Marsello.

You talked, we listened. We heard that you needed a faster, simpler way to sign customers up at POS. Now, staff members can simply capture the customers’ mobile number, and they'll receive an SMS to complete their account - reducing time at POS and keeping this as quick as possible. Alternatively, you can display a QR code to help customers sign up themselves from the venue or an event. Customers can also save their points card to their phone, making it easier for them to scan upon each visit.

We also heard that merchants are tired of having so many different platforms to manage - often requiring regular manual imports and exports of customer lists. So in our latest release, Lightspeed Restaurant merchants can now close the loop between sales and marketing. Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty, powered by Marsello, is designed to help hospitality merchants increase revenue through repeat business and customer loyalty.

What this means? Lightspeed Restaurant (O-Series) merchants can now use one single platform for all of their POS data, email & SMS campaigns, marketing automations, Facebook ad tracking (using Facebook sync), loyalty program activities, Google Review management and more. 

In one single place, merchants will have access to customer data from end-to-end. From a customer’s first coffee to their repeat business and ongoing referrals. Merchants can easily see the return on all their marketing efforts, check their average customer lifetime value, and so, so much more. 

Now that’s closing the loop. 

Looking for a way to increase revenue and reward your loyalty program customers? Referral program incentives are the answer! 

A referral program, also known as an affiliate program, encourages existing customers to share your brand with their friends in exchange for loyalty points or rewards. They work because people are as much as 4x more likely to make a purchase when referred by a friend. 

Keep reading to find out how a referral program works, why they are so effective, and the steps you need to take to successfully run a referral program in your own business.

Quick Links:

• • • How does a referral program work
    • Why is it important to choose referral incentives
    • 3 steps to choosing your rewards incentives
    • Creating demand for your referral program
    • Examples of successful referral programs from existing brands
    • Final words

How does a referral program work

Retail referral programs reward existing loyal customers for bringing new customers to your brand. 

They work by incentivizing existing customers to tell their friends about your business by offering them points, discounts, or other rewards in return. Referral rewards programs also make the ‘KnowLike Trust’ (KLT) factor easier because loyal customers reduce barriers on your behalf and their positive relationships with your store and subsequent promotion of it help their referred friends to feel confident and inclined to shop.

If you set it up correctly, it is a win-win-win strategy for growing your business.

Firstly, your existing loyal customers see instant benefits because when they refer new customers, those referred shoppers use a unique customer code tied to your original customer. In return for each successful referral (tracked by their unique customer code) they receive tangible rewards. 

Secondly, the new customers reap the rewards. They receive rewards or discounts for their purchase, as well as a good retail recommendation from someone they know and trust. 

Lastly, your business sees huge growth in revenue and in customer loyalty. Did you know that referred customers are actually much more likely to stick around too? Let’s dive into why referral marketing is an important addition to your marketing strategy.

Why is it important to choose referral incentives

Customer referral programs are one of the best forms of marketing you can run. The numbers speak for themselves:

• • • Customers acquired through referral programs have a 37% higher retention rate.
    • In general, referred customers increase profits by about 16%.
    • Referral programs mean that loyal customers are marketing your brand for you – 83% of customers trust recommendations from people they know. 
    • 65% of a company’s revenue comes from existing customers, so incentivizing loyal customers will always be beneficial to your bottom line. 

Not only this, but a referral program also encourages new customers to sign up. This means that instead of losing potential sales, you can target your marketing and follow up on abandoned carts to increase conversions. 

Creating a rewards program is worth the investment!

3 steps to choosing your rewards incentives

No matter what referral incentives you choose, there is one question to keep in mind: “are we giving our customers the best possible experience?”

Yes, you benefit greatly from referred customers (they have a lifetime value of about 25% more than other customers). However, your referral incentives should always have the customer experience at the center.  

Whether your incentive structure rewards existing customers, new customers, or both, this step-by-step guide will show you which structure is best for your brand.  

• • • Step 1: Choose the right incentive structure 
    • Step 2: Choose the type of reward you want to give 
    • Step 3: Set the terms and conditions of your referral program. 
      
      

Step 1: Choose the right incentive structure

Your incentive structure will depend on your business and customer experience goals. 

Integrated loyalty programs are one of the easiest ways to set up referral incentives. This allows for several different referral programs: 

• • 1. Incentives for your existing customers (one-sided incentive)
    2. Incentives for the new customer when they sign up (one-sided incentive)
    3. Incentives for both existing and new customers (two-sided incentives)

Let's explore these in a little more detail:

1. One-sided incentives for existing customers

The first incentive structure is rewarding the customer that refers people to you. 

Rewarding your existing loyal customers is always a successful marketing strategy. With a loyalty points program, you can easily award customers points when they refer friends to your brand. 

For example, Bulo Shoes’ loyalty program lets customers earn points even when they’re not making a purchase. Customers are encouraged to share Bulo’s channels on social media, complete their profile and follow Bulo on social media so they can earn points that they can spend in-store.

2. One-sided incentives for the new customer

You could also set up a one-sided incentive that rewards the new customer. 

This could look like:

• • • A discount for their first purchase
    • Automatically earning points when they sign up to your loyalty club 
    • A free shipping discount for first purchases only 

As a referral program, this might look like giving loyal customers discount codes to share with their friends. For example, you could let people share a code for free shipping on their first purchase with you.

One-sided incentives might work for extremely loyal customers, however, it will always work best when you reward existing customers for their efforts. This particular structure works better with influencers who are already receiving incentives in other ways (e.g. Use Code AMANDA10 for 10% off).

3. Two-sided referral incentives: rewarding both customers

Rewarding both customers is the best option for optimum referral program results. This is the standard program for Marsello referral programs. 

In this setup, you reward your existing customers for bringing in referrals, as well as making a great first impression on your new customers. This strategy is win-win-win.

Step 2: Choose the type of reward you want to give

Now that you know who you are rewarding, you need to choose what you are going to offer them. 

The best referral incentives both encourage existing customers to rave about your brand as well as boost your sales and brand image. 

1. Discounts

When an existing customer refers a new person, sweeten the deal by offering a referral discount off their first purchase. This gives them a positive first experience and lets them try out your brand without committing at full price. 

An example of a referral discount is the successful jewelry and women’s wear brand, Katie Waltman. They have a two-sided incentive structure. 

The team at Katie Waltman has not only boosted customer retention with their generous loyalty program, but they've also added a referral program for their customers. The referred friend is incentivized with 10% off their first order and the existing customer earns 200 points when their referred friend makes their first purchase. 

As a result of their creative loyalty program marketing, Katie Waltman has seen 100% customer engagement rate with their omnichannel loyalty program, and a 75% reward redemption rate!

2. Cash / Cash-back

Another referral award is a cash-back program. This more closely resembles an affiliate or commission program than a loyalty rewards program. 

In this setup, customers get a cash reward or percentage of the new customer’s purchase. For example, customers could get $5 every time someone uses their unique code for a purchase of $30 or more. 

For an effective cash-back program, you need to make sure that the minimum purchase amount is more than the cash-back reward. 

Take another look at Katie Waltman’s loyalty program!

The KW loyalty offering includes a “5% back on all purchases for creating an account.” With an offer like this, Katie Waltman not only incentivizes customers to join their loyalty program, they really make it worth the customer’s journey from window shopper to a loyal customer. 

3. Store credit

Earning store credit or loyalty points is a great way to reward customer referrals. That way loyal customers can enjoy your brand even more, and money keeps coming back into your business. 

NZ streetwear brand, Federation +, is a great example of using customer referrals to earn store points. 

With a customer referral program in place, Federation + encourages their current customers to refer friends and earn loyalty points as they do so. This way, the brand grows their customer database, while also improving customer loyalty. 

4. Gift cards

Gift card rewards are similar to store credit incentives. 

A study from First Data shows that on average, U.S. consumers spend around $59 more than the value of a gift card. You could give gift cards to either the new customer,  your existing customer (as a referral reward), or both!  

Combined with a loyalty program, automatic upselling, and investment in customer experience, gift card rewards can be an effective way to boost your average cart value (as well as rewarding referrals). 

6. Free subscription period

Offering a free or reduced subscription lets new customers “try before they buy”. This is most effective for businesses that have a long-lifetime or recurring product. Crealunch is a good example, where customers would be buying meals on an ongoing basis. 

Once they have crossed the threshold, your automatic email marketing can step in and keep them convinced! 

Step 3: Set the conditions for your referral program

The last step for effectively incentivizing referrals is to establish parameters. You don’t want to accidentally encourage referral program abuse or suddenly be out of pocket! 

Posting referral program terms and conditions clearly will mean you get the sales benefits without the headaches. 

Here are some questions to ask yourself when setting conditions.

When will the referral reward be given? 

Decide on a timeframe for giving out rewards. This might look different depending on what reward type you choose. 

Here are a few things to consider: 

• • • Do new customers automatically get a discount or only after they sign up? 
    • For cashback, do they get it immediately after the purchase has been made or each month? 
    • Do existing customers only get rewards when friends actually make a purchase?
    • Is there a time limit on the discount code once new customers sign up? 

Thinking about these conditions early on will mean you make money from referrals rather than lose it. 

Should you use a tiered reward structure? 

A tiered reward program is a customer incentive strategy that rewards people the more they spend. 

Consumers who engage with high-performing loyalty programs are 78% more likely to spend a premium. So the more you reward people, the more loyal they will be!

A referral program rewards your most loyal customers for advocating on your behalf. If you use a tiered reward structure, your referrals could increase as customers move up the levels. A tiered system gives more rewards to people higher up to encourage loyalty and higher spending.

Let's look again at modern streetwear brand Federation +. Their loyalty program features three loyalty tiers: silver, gold, and platinum. With an 88% reward redemption rate and 20% repeat purchase rate, it’s no wonder that they have seen almost a 10% revenue boost from loyalty marketing alone.

Creating demand for your referral program 

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to have a successful reward program. Marsello customers see the best results when they keep it simple! However, there are a few things you can do to make your referral program incentives more desirable or effective.

• • • Create scarcity: Add a limited timeframe for coupons. This creates scarcity and encourages people to spend now
    • Reward loyal customers: If you are a new brand you might consider offering a slightly bigger reward for your existing customers to increase loyalty. For example, if sign-ups receive 20 points, you could make referrals 25 points
    • Run a seasonal campaign: To give your referral program a boost you could give double points for a limited time 
    • Create multiple referrals: instead of giving out store points, you could give people free gifts after a certain number of referrals
    • Make an ambassador program: This is like a loyalty program except exclusively for referrals. This lets your most loyal customers feel like they are “in the club” and are rewarded with raving about you 

Examples of successful referral programs from existing brands

Still not convinced that a referral rewards program is the way to boost sales and build customer loyalty on autopilot? Take a look at these examples of successful referral programs and how simple they can be! 

Merrell NZ

Merrell NZ is a footwear brand that helps people get into the great outdoors. Their loyalty program has a 15% repeat purchase rate and an average purchase frequency of 3.5x, showing that Merrell NZ’s customers are already proven loyal regulars. Customers can earn 100 points to spend in-store when they refer a friend.

Smack Bang 

Smack Bang is a New Zealand-based merchant that specializes in locally-made pet accessories, gifts, and treats. The gorgeous pet boutique also has a lovely loyalty program that’s paying dividends; these loyalty initiatives have generated a 100% loyalty engagement rate, and a reward redemption rate of 38%. Using their adorable, branded widget, customers can earn 10 points when they refer a friend which they can see immediately on their dashboard. 

Carolina Lifestyle 

Carolina Lifestyle also rewards customers who successfully refer their friends. Members get 100 points (equivalent to $10) for every successful referral – and those customers immediately get $20 simply by joining!

All these initiatives, combined with Carolina Lifestyle’s exquisite and unique products, help to ensure that shoppers keep coming back. And it works – the company’s average customer lifetime value (CLV) is $716.94, and about a third of Carolina Lifestyle's customers return to shop again within two months.

CROSBY by Mollie Burch 

CROSBY by Mollie Burch is an eclectic, modern fashion brand. Their loyalty program, The Crosby Collectors, lets customers earn Pink Points. Their referral program is a good example of setting conditions for rewards. For example, customers receive points for referring a friend which can then be spent in store on orders over a certain amount.

Final words

Offering your new and loyal customers referral program incentives is a win-win-win sales strategy. Whether you are offering limited-time discounts, points to spend in-store, or other fun freebies, a referral program is sure to keep your customers (and bank accounts) happy.

Customer advocacy starts by creating a rewarding and engaging experience no matter how your customers choose to shop. Marsello makes it easy to launch a bespoke loyalty and referral program that is proven to increase customer lifetime value and maximize ROI.

There’s a popular saying that you’re only as good as your last performance, and this is certainly true for retail establishments.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have become more discerning about what businesses they support. With more information at their fingertips than ever before, shoppers spend more time researching different options.

Google Reviews have become a crucial tool for businesses to manage their reputations online. This blog will explore how businesses can manage Google Reviews and increase discovery opportunities in the search results – and how Marsello can help!

Quick Links:

• • • What are Google Reviews?
    • Why do Google Reviews matter?
    • How can retailers collect Google reviews?
    • The right way to request a Google Review
    • How should retailers respond to positive and negative reviews?
    • Final words

What are Google Reviews?

Google Reviews is a functionality embedded within Google Maps and Google My Business where consumers can publicly post reviews for establishments they’ve visited.

The purpose of Google Reviews is two-fold. They assist businesses with building a positive reputation amongst consumers while also helping individuals find suitable establishments in their local area. More than half of shoppers say they’ve used Google to discover new businesses.

Why do Google Reviews matter?

Here are some reasons you should consider leveling up your Google Reviews initiatives.

Improving your local search ranking

Google Reviews play a critical role in determining your business’s local search ranking. Local SEO helps Google match a person’s search with relevant nearby businesses (e.g., “Italian restaurants in New York City”). Ensuring a healthy supply of positive reviews increases the odds of your business coming up high in the search results.

Consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Research shows that 84% of consumers trust reviews as much as recommendations from family or friends – this tells us that customers really do consider social proof in their purchasing decisions.

Giving customers the opportunity to provide feedback

Customers want to feel that their experiences matter. Giving them the opportunity to share what they love about your business on a public forum shows that you genuinely care and want to receive feedback – even if it isn’t always positive.

How can retailers collect Google reviews?

Are businesses allowed to ask customers for Google Reviews?

Yes, though there are some ground rules.

Google doesn’t allow businesses to pay customers for leaving reviews or “review gate” by discouraging customers from leaving negative reviews. Furthermore, you cannot use reviews left on Google for marketing purposes on other platforms, such as social media or your website.

Here are some actionable ways that your business can collect Google Reviews:

Email and SMS automated flows

It isn’t practical for your business to manually send out review requests to individual customers. Instead, you need a tool that allows you to contact customers in bulk at a time of your choosing. 

Marsello’s email and SMS automation tool enables brands to build custom email and message flows to request reviews. Marsello customer Harry & Her send automatically triggered email campaigns coupled with the Google Reviews Manager tool to build a solid review base and, in turn, boost their credibility as a retailer. Here's what they had to say about the tool:

At the POS/checkout directly after a sale

While the “right” time to ask for a review will depend on your business, products, and customers (more on this below), striking while the iron is hot is usually the best way to get customers to leave reviews. In-store visitors have the chance to form a relationship with sales associates during the shopping experience, which can make customers more responsive to review requests. Consider speeding up the process by having a QR code at the checkout that directs customers straight to your review page.

When a sale is completed during a promotion

It’s always a good idea to ask for reviews while your brand is hosting a sales promotion. When customers have gotten a great deal from your business, they’re more likely to have a favorable impression and leave a positive Google review.

For example, if your brand runs a flash sale for 24 - 48 hours, you can set up an automation flow that sends a review request to a specific segment of customers (i.e., those who placed an order during your flash sale). By using Marsello’s customer segmentation, your business can solicit reviews from customers who are most likely to engage and give glowing feedback.

When customers join the loyalty program or progress tiers

Loyalty reward programs can act as their own form of customer segmentation. The shoppers who join your program are usually those already loyal to your brand, meaning they’re also more likely to leave reviews.

Brands have multiple opportunities to target loyalty program customers, such as when they sign up, redeem a loyalty reward, or progress to a new loyalty tier. These touchpoints are a great time to ask for a Google Review and show members that you care about their experience.

You can also take this a step further like Marsello-powered pet boutique Smack Bang by offering loyalty points in exchange for leaving a product review on the product listing itself. With custom automations, it’s easy to create an automated campaign that is triggered when customers leave a positive product review. Product reviews provide a great opportunity to encourage your customers to leave a Google Review about your business.

Promote/encourage reviews on social media

Cross-channel promotion is a critical part of collecting Google Reviews. In addition to asking customers for reviews in-person or via email and SMS, you should put out a call on your social channels asking customers to share their experiences.

It’s important to note that Google does not allow you to use reviews as advertising collateral on other platforms. But there are some less direct ways to achieve this.

Thai restaurant Chat Thai has a collection of reviews on their Instagram account created from photos and videos they have been tagged in. Consider resharing user-generated review content to steer customers towards leaving Google Reviews.

Make your Google My Business page easy to find and direct customers there

Customers won’t leave Google Reviews if your Google My Business page is difficult to find. Some of your customers may never have left a Google Review before. When making review requests via email and SMS, ensure you provide a link to your Google My Business page. Also, consider adding a review page to your website so that you can direct customers to your Google listing.

The right way to request a Google Review

We’ve gone over some of the best ways to collect Google Reviews. But when is the best time to request a review?

It can be a tricky balance to get the timing of requesting reviews right. If you leave it too long, your customer’s experience will be less fresh, which could affect the quality of their review. But asking too soon risks annoying your customer, especially if their order hasn’t arrived yet.

You should also factor in different customer segments. Some of your loyal customers may be more eager to submit reviews straightaway, while those who are new to your business may need some time before they’re ready to leave feedback.

Marsello’s SMS and email automations allow businesses to automate the process, segment customers, and ensure communications are sent at the optimum time to encourage positive reviews.

It’s also easy to combine automated campaigns with other review collection methods. For example, a restaurant can prime diners by asking them in person to leave a review and following up by sending an automated email reminder the following day.

How should retailers respond to positive and negative reviews?

Managing positive reviews is simple enough – simply thank your customer for their feedback and say you hope you’ll see them again soon. But what if their experience was less than positive?

No business wants to receive a bad review. But the most important thing to remember about Google Reviews is whatever you say (or don’t say) is there for potential customers to see. How you respond affects the customer who left the review and onlookers who make decisions based on the reviews left about your business and how you choose to respond. 

If you receive a negative review, always thank the person for their review. Take the time to investigate the issue to find out what went wrong so you can explain in your response. Most importantly, tell your customer the steps you will take to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Consider offering them a discount for their next visit to encourage them to return and see the changes you’ve made; this puts the ball back in their court and shows onlookers that you have made a serious effort to resolve the issue.

In some cases, it may help get more information from the customer. In this case, you can respond by encouraging them to tell you more about their experience. As always, it’s best to stay courteous by thanking the customer for their feedback and empathizing with them. 

Check out this example from Romano's Macaroni Grill.

Final words

Google Reviews can feel like a business’s best friend or worst enemy. Using a tool like Marsello to support your Google Review strategy enables you to streamline Review management and ensure that you’re sending the right response at the right time to foster customer loyalty.

By taking a responsive and automated approach to Google Reviews, your business can proactively enhance its reputation and build stronger relationships with customers – one review at a time.

If you’re searching for a product or service online, do you read a review or two before clicking “book” or “purchase”? If so, you aren’t alone: 93% of consumers say that online reviews influence their purchasing decisions, while 70% of people will only use a business if it has a star rating of four stars or more.

But it’s no longer enough to list a review or two on your website and call it a day; today’s customers want to see a large amount of social proof before they trust a business. In fact, 54.7% of consumers read at least four product reviews before making a purchasing decision.

So, what does this mean for businesses?

It means that you need an ongoing source of positive Google customer reviews to maintain a strong customer acquisition rate. In this post, we’re going to explain how you can get more Google reviews with ease – with a little help from Marsello.

Quick Links:

• • • Why Google business reviews are essential for any business
    • Why frequent positive reviews are essential for good SEO
    • How Google My Business reviews work
    • How to use Marsello’s Google Reviews Manager
    • How to use Google Reviews to increase brand awareness
    • Final words
      
      

Why Google business reviews are essential for any business

With a whopping 92.6% of all search queries going through Google as of June 2021, it’s no secret that Google business reviews are some of the most valuable. 

When Google is the one-stop shop for consumers searching for everything from hairdressers to restaurants, you need to ensure that you’re at the top of those search results. Otherwise, your business is practically invisible to potential customers. And if they can’t see you, they’re not going to click through to your website.

By managing Google reviews more effectively, you can make your business more visible – all thanks to something called local SEO.

Why frequent positive reviews are essential for good SEO

Local SEO focuses on optimizing a business’s online presence to assist nearby consumers in finding it more easily in search. If a consumer is showing search intent for a particular product or service, Google’s algorithm matches that search query with relevant businesses close to where the person is located.

For example, if you’re a restaurant in Manhattan, your target audience is likely to be people who are living or visiting in that area. So, if a person searches for “best restaurants in Manhattan” you want your establishment to be as high as possible in those results. 

According to Moz’s State of Local SEO Industry Report 2020, 90% of search experts believe that review activity is “moderately important” or “very important” in determining local SEO, while 78% agree that Google has become the new homepage for businesses. As such, Google reviews are a fantastic tool to boost local search presence – if you do it right.

How Google My Business reviews work

To start collecting Google reviews, you need to either claim or set up a Google My Business listing. This is a free tool offered by Google that allows businesses to manage their presence on the search engine. In addition to reviews, Google My Business listings can also include information such as:

• • • Opening hours
    • Address/Contact details
    • Menus
    • Booking widgets 
    • Photos of your establishment

It’s important to make an effort to fill out as many parts of your profile as possible, as a comprehensive listing will help to boost your local ranking. 

Check out the listing of the restaurant Chat Thai, which has a number of locations across Australia. All of Chat Thai’s Google listings are fully populated; you can view key business details and contact info, as well as photos and reviews. There’s even an “Order Online” button that lets customers order straight from Google.

Once Google My Business is set up and optimized, you’re ready to start driving review activity.

This is where Marsello’s Google Reviews feature comes in.

How to use Marsello’s Google Reviews Manager

By integrating your Google My Business account with your Marsello marketing, you can easily generate new reviews through automated email and SMS campaigns. 

Here’s how it works: connect your Google My Business account to Marsello, then enable automated email or SMS flows to encourage people to leave a review. You can customize your email flow with segmentation rules to ensure that you’re engaging the right customers. For instance, you can configure the workflow to only ask your “Best” customers for a review after they purchase. 

Note that Google Reviews workflows will only be triggered after someone places an order, so you can guarantee the authenticity of your business reviews.

Finally, it’s easy to track the success of your review automations. And when you receive a review, you can respond to your customers in-app, reward them with loyalty points to say thank you, or email the customer directly – manage reviews your way! 

Get in touch with our team to book a demo and learn more.

How to use Google Reviews to increase brand awareness

Before the web existed, businesses and hospitality establishments had to rely on being as visible as possible to attract foot traffic. Everything from flyers and store signage to branded shopping bags have been valuable tools to help businesses increase brand awareness.

This principle is no different online. Your business needs to take up as much “space” as possible to become known and recognized by as many customers as possible in such a competitive environment. 

In a time where digital marketing can feel increasingly like a pay-to-play model where only the biggest budgets see results, Google reviews offer a way for less-established businesses to level the playing field. By getting more reviews on Google, you’ll stand out over bigger but less-reviewed competitors.

How to encourage customers to leave positive reviews

It’s easy to assume that customers will shout from the rooftops when they have a stellar experience at your establishment. But this isn’t the case in reality; less than 50% of customers (47%) say they don’t post negative or positive reviews online at all.

There are a variety of reasons for this. A lot of us are busy and forget to write a review. Many businesses don’t make it easy or intuitive to leave reviews. If we’ve written reviews in the past and haven’t gotten a response, we might decide it’s not worth the effort.

By this point, you’re probably asking: How can I get more Google reviews for my business? Continue the following top tips:

Prompt for reviews after purchases with automated emails and SMS

The first step to getting customers to leave reviews? Strike while the iron is hot.

Businesses want to create balance by asking for reviews while a customer’s experience is fresh – this can be tough to coordinate if your establishment asks for reviews manually. 

Moreover, sending out individually-written emails or SMS is a massive drain on your time. To make asking for reviews as painless as possible, consider investing in marketing automation software that can handle review requests on your behalf.

Marsello’s automated email and SMS campaign tool enables businesses to send and manage review requests via a straightforward interface. Set the ideal time for your messages to go out to customers and even automate the sending of follow-up messages to give you another shot at securing positive reviews.

Make an effort to respond to customer feedback

Getting more customers to leave reviews isn’t just about how you ask for them, but how you choose to respond when you receive them. 

In fact, 89% of consumers read a business’s responses to reviews during the consideration stage. Why? Because how an establishment engages with positive and negative reviews tells potential customers a great deal about how that business treats its patrons.

Suppose a customer leaves a negative Google review and that business makes no effort to respond; this could be interpreted as the company not caring about the quality of their customer’s experience, which is a massive red flag. 

Plus, if you aren’t in the habit of replying to reviews and showing that you’re listening to feedback, what incentive do customers have to put in the effort?

Restaurant and Bar, The Monday Room, has done a great job of replying to Google reviews, even thanking customers who write more detailed reviews and provide photos:

Use positive reinforcement, but don’t bribe customers

If you’re looking to shape consumer behavior in ways that are advantageous to your business, it might seem like a good idea to offer customers a discount on their next order in exchange for leaving a positive review. However, this isn’t a good long-term strategy for most businesses. 

Too many 5-star reviews on a business listing create suspicion, with studies finding that consumers were more likely to purchase a product or service when the rating is between 4.2 to 4.5 stars. You don’t want your efforts to come across as though your business is buying reviews or deleting negative Google reviews, which can cause potential customers to doubt their authenticity and can even result in your business being penalized by Google. 

It’s much better to reward customers after leaving a review to guarantee honest feedback. For example, lifestyle and clothing boutique Harry & Her rewards customers with loyalty points if they leave 4 or 5-star reviews, but they don’t actively promote this policy on any of their marketing channels. This practice increases customer satisfaction and ensures that all positive reviews are genuine. 

The team at Harry and Her was also one of the first to test Marsello's Google Reviews Manager and they've found that Google Reviews are an undeniable source of revenue growth for their business. So much so, they're not going back! Here's what they had to say about their review process and the response from customers:

"We use Marsello's Google Reviews feature to encourage customer reviews after they buy something from one of our stores. First, we send an automated SMS; then we follow that up with an email to those who have not seen the SMS campaign. It's also been exciting to see our customers respond with so many positive reviews – we now have a 5-star average across our stores!"

Final words

Managing online reviews can feel a bit overwhelming, especially if you have a brand-new Google My Business listing and gather reviews from scratch. But it’s well worth the effort to create a streamlined outreach strategy to build social proof for your business; when you have a long list of positive customer testimonials, you’re in a much stronger position to acquire new customers.

By taking advantage of SMS and email automation to coordinate review requests and communicating how feedback enhances the customer experience, you can build a lasting Google review strategy that acquires and retains loyal customers. Marsello’s Google Reviews Manager makes this easy! Book a demo to get started today.

Watch the Loyalty Marketing Masterclass

In this Cin7 Masterclass, Marsello CRO Rory Moss dives into the how-to of successful loyalty marketing.

Quick Links:

• • • What is customer loyalty?
    • Why deploy a loyalty or rewards program?
    • Why focus on repeat customers?
    • Checklist: How to develop a successful loyalty program
    • How to measure the success of your loyalty program
    • Segment and delight customers with RFM analysis
    • Success Story: Merrell NZ
    • Key takeaways

What is customer loyalty?

Are you part of a loyalty program? Your answer is probably “yes”. But does it make you more loyal to that brand? According to CRO Rory Moss, it actually doesn’t.

Customer loyalty is all about customer relationships with your business. The positive interactions you have with customers every day and the relationships those interactions build create measurable value that you can continue to grow.

And customer loyalty is not necessarily transactional; it’s about the experience your customer has when they walk into your store, shop online, read an email, or have any other interaction with your brand.

For a loyalty program to work...

• • • Your product/offering must be consistent.

    • Your product/offering must be valuable.

You don’t need a loyalty program to differentiate and compete.

You do need a deeper understanding of your customer base and a reason for your customers to keep coming back.

Why deploy a loyalty or rewards program?

There are lots of ways to give customers a good experience and keep them coming back - loyalty marketing is just one. Before you make the call, make sure a loyalty program is right for you and your business objectives.

So, why would you choose to deploy a loyalty program?

• • • Gain a deeper understanding of your customer base to augment your marketing mix. The data you collect will empower your marketing team to deliver more personalized, targeted customer experiences.
    • Mitigate price perception and influence perceived value. Smaller brands can’t compete with more prominent enterprise brands on price alone. Loyalty programs are one way to attract customers from your larger competitors.
    • Formation of customer ‘clubs’ which reflect your brand values. Your loyalty program is an extension of your brand. You can tailor your rewards to your customer and personalize automations to augment your brand experience.
    • Steal market share from existing programs. For example, fuel retailers use loyalty marketing to attract customers from competitors. Fuel retailers don’t make their money on fuel, but they do make money on people walking in and buying products in-store.
    • Enhance the customer experience with personalization. Birthday messages, post-purchase automations, data-driven product recommendations, merge tags within campaigns – adding personalization to your marketing will improve your customer’s experience with your brand and help you build long-lasting relationships.
    • Surprise and ‘delight’ with personalized moments. Keep your rewards program up-to-date. Don’t do one big launch then set and forget it – plan campaigns, add new rewards or run competitions. Give your customers new things to engage with (see more ideas in the checklist below).

Ultimately, data is all about retention. But smaller retailers can’t shell out for expensive coalitions or big agency-led research projects. Loyalty programs make it much cheaper and easier to get that data yourself.

Why focus on repeat customers?

Did you know 61% of retailers cite customer retention as their biggest obstacle, and a 5% increase in customer loyalty can increase the average profit per customer by 25% – 100%? (Source: Invespcro.com)

Developing customer loyalty is critical to long-term customer retention and loyalty programs can be a great marketing tool to really strengthen those feelings of brand loyalty.

Checklist: How to develop a successful loyalty program

So what questions do you need to be asking and what steps do you need to take to help you develop a loyalty program that your customers love and that sees long-term success?

Ask: do I need a loyalty program?

• Analyze your NPS or CSAT scoring. Are customers satisfied with your offering? 
• Would deploying a rewards program diminish your brand or enhance the experience and value proposition? 
• Understand your customer’s needs, their values and ask them about their rewards preferences. 

Any brand can deploy a rewards system, but it needs to complement your offering to be successful. Make sure you know your problem and make sure loyalty marketing is the right solution. Sometimes, it might be a marketing problem; other times it could be a problem with product-market fit. Deploying loyalty marketing is not always the right solution.

Study your competitors

Look towards your competition, and distinguish whether loyalty tactics would steal market share – a common tactic in Fuel Retail. 

If all of your top competitors have implemented loyalty programs, this could be a good indication that they believe loyalty marketing will increase their market share. Of course, that does not necessarily mean it’s right for your brand! 

Alternatively, if you can’t see any of your competitors doing it, maybe there’s a reason why. Again, this is not conclusive evidence – your brand could be ahead of the curve, which could be a very rewarding opportunity to increase your market share.

Do your loyalty platform research

Custom-built loyalty marketing tech can be costly. While some brands have implemented custom-built programs really well (for example, Mecca’s Beauty Loop), we recommend choosing a platform that integrates with both your POS and eCommerce platforms and enables easy set-up straight off the bat.

Ensure your chosen platform works across your tech stack and don’t invest in programs that don’t scale with your customer database growth. Make sure you provide an omnichannel experience – customers expect to redeem online.

Set up a pilot store

Before any go-live, ensure you’ve set up a single site to test and measure your loyalty program success. Are customers responding to your program and the points values you’ve set?

Keep it simple

Too many earn rules result in a term called ‘loyalty confusion’, where your customers don’t understand what they get in return.

Look at your data and adjust your program accordingly

Once you’re transacting and issuing points, measure sign-up rates and ‘point breakage’ (the % of points earned and spent) monthly. Your point breakage rate will tell you pretty quickly whether or not the rewards program is working.

If your customers aren’t spending their points, they’re not engaging in your program. Customer engagement is essential if you want to build long-term customer relationships that result in growth.

Start small and introduce new campaigns quarterly

Keep your program fresh by introducing new rewards, double points days, or VIP tiers. You want to ensure your marketing team has a constant stream of new things to shout about!

How to measure the success of your loyalty program

•  
  • • Customer Feedback
      Are your customers engaging with your loyalty program?
    • Point Breakage
      Are customers spending their points? Track your Point Breakage rate monthly.
    • Loyalty program Return on Investment (ROI)
      Cost of the loyalty program vs. increased revenue since implementation.
    • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
      How much, on average, your customers are worth to your business throughout their relationship with your store.
    • Repurchase Rate
      The % of your customers who complete more than one purchase.
    • Average Purchase Frequency
      The average rate at which customers shop with your store.
   
•  

Segment and delight customers with RFM analysis

Smart retailers use RFM analysis: Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value.

Segment your customers into different buckets – a new customer has very different needs from a regular or loyal customer. Treat each customer’s needs differently, rather than applying a standard experience in one broad stroke. Incentivize each segment to come back and reward those who do.

These days, people expect this kind of brand experience.

Success Story: Merrell NZ 

When COVID hit, Merrell NZ knew they needed to grow their eCommerce presence and encourage customer engagement. To do this, they began testing automated campaigns, one-off emails, and a detailed loyalty program that was designed to attract their in-store customers to shop online.

By ensuring their marketing changes were recognizable, appealing, and informed from customer data, they were able to grow their customer loyalty program and VIP memberships, improve conversion rates, and increase repeat purchase rates. So far, they’ve seen an ROI of 969x – for every $1 they’ve spent on their marketing initiatives, they’ve earned $969 back.

“[…] the Merrell Rewards program means a lot to us – it gives us the opportunity to link customers from our retail and web stores, work around customer retention and automate email marketing flows in a really clever way.” - Merrell NZ

Key takeaways

• • • Deploying a loyalty program won’t lead to loyal customers, but it will help you develop loyalty program tactics.
    • Loyalty programs mitigate price perception.
    • Use personalization and automation to delight customers.
    • Be consistent across your sales channels and marketing.
    • Prioritize memorable customer experiences.
    • Start small and build on your program.
      
      

Retailers need to know the tech they invest in will meet their needs and help their businesses grow while also adapting to current trends. In response to changing customer shopping trends, 2021 saw more retailers than ever move into the eCommerce space, and the importance of creating a cohesive shopping experience across in-store and online locations was highlighted again and again. To master this, retailers have needed faster websites, smarter tools, and better connectivity between their different store types.

To meet the growing needs of omnichannel retailers, Shopify released several exciting changes in the last 12 months – from Themes 2.0 to Shopify Flow. To build on these additions and create more and more marketing opportunities for Marsello x Shopify retailers, we released several complementary features that are helping retailers make the most of their retail toolkit.

Let’s dive in and discover Marsello’s latest features and biggest updates for Shopify users.

What features has Marsello released for Shopify users?

The last year saw the development of several stand-out features, and many of these were designed specifically for Shopify powered-retailers looking to grow their business with smart marketing. 

Introducing Marsello’s  biggest releases of 2021 and a sneak peek of what’s to come very soon:

Shopify Theme Extension – Product Recommendations:

The announcement of Themes 2.0 at the Shopify Unite 2021 conference was a cause for a flurry of excitement. With some sources calling it Shopify’s biggest investment in their platform to date, Themes 2.0 opened up a world of opportunities for retailers looking to create their perfect online store, edit and customize themes, and prioritize user experience. 

To meet the needs of fast-growing retailers who need smart, data-driven marketing tools, we developed a product recommendations extension for Shopify Themes 2.0 users. With this tool, users can add personalized product recommendations to their eCommerce store to encourage bigger cart sizes, improve customers’ online purchase experience, and help customers find products they’ll love.

Marsello’s product recommendations are powered by our purpose-built, data-driven product recommendations engine that recommends products based on buyer behavior and purchase history. And the potential doesn’t stop with data-driven recommendations either. Retailers can also select specific products to implant into the recommendations block and encourage sales of specific products. 

Learn more about our Shopify Theme extension – Product recommendations.

Marketing Extensions:

Shopify’s extensions feature allows merchants to integrate tools and apps into their Shopify admin almost as if they were in-built. There are countless options to choose from merchandising to stock management; however, none would allow you to create loyalty points campaigns designed to multiply customers’ loyalty points on purchases automatically – this is where Marsello’s Marketing Extension for Shopify comes in.

Shopify Marketing Extensions users can now create points campaigns in their Shopify admin with the Marsello marketing extension, reducing steps to creating and managing loyalty points campaigns that boost customer loyalty. For example, to increase customers’ motivation to make purchases, you can easily create campaigns where customers earn double loyalty points during a set promotional period directly from the Shopify admin. 

Loyalty points promotion campaigns are a great tool to help promote and encourage engagement with your store's loyalty program.  You not only give customers an extra reason to shop and increase their cart size, but points campaigns are a great alternative to running a sale or discount and help your customers to feel appreciated and respected.

Marsello’s Shopify Flow connector:

2021 was a big year for marketing automation – in fact, one study found that 51% of companies were reportedly moved to or were already using marketing automation in some way by 2021. This increased demand for automated marketing capabilities saw the perfect opportunity for Shopify to release Shopify Flows for their Shopify Plus users - in our opinion, one of the most exciting features released in 2021. 

To help Shopify Flow users tie their loyalty program to customer activities, we released a Shopify Flow connector designed to augment the potential for loyalty marketing. Customers can now earn loyalty points for actions like leaving Google or social media reviews, purchasing specific products, or even purchasing at a particular store location through carefully crafted flows and triggers. 

Learn more about Marsello’s Shopify Flows connector in our launch blog.

Google Reviews:

Do you request Google Business reviews from your customers? Do you manage and respond to the reviews left about your business? 

Google Reviews are integral to helping business owners improve their Google ranking and appear higher in search results, which, in turn, plays a huge role in influencing customers’ purchasing decisions.

To help you collect, manage and respond to reviews, we’ve developed a Marsello-powered Google Reviews marketing feature. A soon-to-be-released addition to the Marsello toolkit, consider this your sneak preview into our latest tool for retailers who want to increase their presence through local SEO and Google recommendations. 

Marsello’s Google Reviews feature will make it easy to automate the review process and create a consistent flow of quality reviews that increase online visibility and help to acquire new customers. 

With email and SMS automations built into your Marsello admin, it’s easy to promote and generate Google reviews as soon as a customer makes a purchase (when their experience is fresh in their minds). You can then easily track, manage and respond to reviews directly from your Marsello admin. Subscribe to our blog and emails to stay up to date with each new release as it happens.

What’s changed for the Marsello platform?

One of Marsello’s biggest updates within the last year has been to implement a new look and feel for our existing app. Since June 2021, we’ve been launching a variety of improvements to the Marsello admin to save you time and make your life easier. With a cleaner design and faster tech, new-look Marsello will now launch universally in April 2022, and we can’t wait to hear what you think.

Can't wait? Get access to new-look Marsello now. 

How can Shopify merchants make the most of their Marsello marketing?

Hopefully, you're familiar with Marsello’s core features. If not, let’s recap quickly with just a few bullet points:

• • • Customer loyalty marketing – use a branded loyalty program, automated notification emails, varied reward types, and achievable earn options to garner customer support and engagement. And you can build customer relationships that span a lifetime with VIP tiers that segment your loyal customers based on their purchase history. Learn more here.  

• • • Marketing automation – delight customers by communicating with them how they’d prefer. With Marsello’s email & SMS campaigns, you can create one-off campaigns from scratch or choose from a library of professionally designed email campaigns developed to get results. And once you’ve sent your campaigns, it’s easy to monitor their success, create new campaigns, or even boost your original with a new subject line for those who didn’t open the first. Learn more here.  
      
    • Email & SMS campaigns – delight customers by communicating with them in the way they’d prefer. With Marsello’s email & SMS campaigns, you can create one-off campaigns from scratch, or you can choose from a library of professionally designed email campaigns developed to get results. And once you’ve sent your campaigns, it’s easy to monitor their success, create new campaigns, or even boost your original with a new subject line for those who didn’t open the first. Learn more here. 
      
      
    • Marketing lists – Use forms, landing pages, and marketing opt-ins to grow your customer database and your return on investment. You create marketing opportunities with new customers by capturing customer information at your POS and eCommerce site. Marsello also automatically segments your customers based on their shopping history, making it easy for you to leverage your customer database and target specific customer groups through email, SMS, or even Facebook ad targeting. Learn more here.  
      
      
    • Feedback surveys – Gather customer feedback to understand their shopping experiences and create memorable shopping experiences that they adore. By adding feedback surveys to your communications (for example, a points-earned email that is sent when a customer has just made a purchase), you get confidential, real-time insight into what it’s like to shop at your store. Monitor your growth, see how your business improves, and celebrate your success by measuring customer satisfaction and feedback. Learn more here. 

And Marsello has much more to offer our Shopify users too – just think of the combination of possibilities! What if you were to create a custom Shopify Flow that rewarded your customers with loyalty points when they leave a 4-5 star review? Or, if customers shopped during an annual secret sale, you could reward points to purchases over a set price! Get creative and start delighting your customers in all-new ways with all new experiences. 

Get in touch with our team to learn about Marsello’s full product offering for Shopify.

Final words

The last two years have seen tremendous growth for retail and eCommerce technologies – and that growth doesn't seem to be slowing down. That's why meeting the growing needs of retailers in the retail and eCommerce market is at the forefront of platform and tech providers like Shopify (and Marsello). 

To help our Shopify-powered retailers achieve their goals, grow their business, and stay ahead of the competition, we needed to continue to innovate with Shopify's product offering in mind. And we don't plan on stopping in 2022. 

From automated campaigns and complete customization to set-and-forget style flows and fully integrated customer loyalty programs, the future is looking bright for Marsello x Shopify retailers. Book a demo today to grow your business with Marsello.

Create automated loyalty rewards that encourage customer engagement no matter how they engage with your store by enabling Marsello’s Shopify Flow connection. In this blog, we learn a little about the Shopify Flow platform and how you can pair it with your Marsello-powered loyalty to get creative and reward customers for all kinds of actions.

First, let’s understand what Shopify Flow is and how it works.

What is Shopify Flow?

Exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants, Shopify Flow is an automation platform that connects to your eCommerce (and other third-party services) and allows you to automate just about anything that could be a trackable event. 

The possibilities for intelligent, automated retail are a game-changer – from tagging and flagging customers and orders, to rewarding customers with loyalty points for just about any action (for example, exclusive rewards for customers who leave 4 or 5 star Google reviews). 

To access Shopify Flow, you’ll need to get the app from the Shopify App Store.

And to make sure you have a complete understanding of the possibilities that Shopify Flow offers, there are countless resources available. From downloadable workflows and examples to imports for your store, Shopify has you covered. Check out these resources below to get started: 

1. 1. A selection of examples from the Shopify Flow reference manual
   2. 14 top workflows blog post

Check out this video from the Shopify team about the Shopify Flow platform and how it can become your new secret weapon.

How can Shopify Plus merchants use Shopify Flow to automate and track their Marsello marketing?

Let’s delve deeper into what a Marsello connection for Shopify Flow means and how you can pair the two platforms to boost customer loyalty by rewarding loyalty with all new triggers.

As we mentioned, one of the ways that retailers could use Shopify Flow is to reward high-value customers who leave 4 or 5 star Google reviews. And rewarding Google Business Reviews is just one example of how you could make the most of Marsello’s Shopify Flow connection.

And when you’ve created your new flows, you can track the success of each flow – helping you to create automations that reap more and more benefits as your business grows.

Learn how to create custom automated flows with Marsello’s Shopify Flow connection in our help center.

And remember, while Shopify Flow is only available to Shopify Plus retailers, Marsello’s Customer Loyalty feature still uses built-in automated points earn options triggered by events like completed purchases, birthdays, and social media interactions. The Marsello loyalty feature is also available to all Marsello Pro users, and the automation doesn’t stop there.

Do you know about Marsello’s Marketing Automation feature?

Final words

Shopify Flow opens up exciting new automation possibilities for Shopify Plus merchants – and with Marsello’s Shopify Flow connector, this now includes rewarding customers for their loyalty no matter the interaction. 

Retailers are now able to automate processes like stock orders, product tagging, and (with the help of Marsello’s connector) rewarding customers with loyalty points for a variety of interactions. And as each Flow is created and used, retailers can track their success and adapt their automations to encourage more and more customer interaction. 

Curious about Marsello and how it works with Shopify Flows? Get in touch with our team today.

Marsello integrates seamlessly with Ecwid by Lightspeed and
your chosen Point-of-Sale platform.

If you use Ecwid to power your eCommerce store, you can now run your customer loyalty program across your physical stores and online! And that’s not all – grow your ROI, nurture customer relationships, boost customer loyalty, and grow your business with proven marketing strategies all available within the Marsello app.

But what does this mean for your business, customers, and marketing? Let’s dive in and understand what Marsello brings to Ecwid retailers.

What marketing can you achieve with Marsello x Ecwid by Lightspeed?

Marsello integrates seamlessly with Ecwid and your POS provider making it easy to set up and run your retail marketing strategy across your Ecwid eCommerce and brick-and-mortar stores.

Here are our top marketing features for Ecwid retailers:

Run a fully-integrated loyalty program with Marsello, Ecwid, and your POS provider

Turn one-off shoppers into brand ambassadors and reward customer loyalty with an omnichannel customer loyalty program that encourages customers to keep coming back no matter where they like to shop. 

Studies show that up to 86% of customers are more loyal to the brands with which they have reward program memberships. And this number grows again when customers can access their loyalty program information and benefits in-store, online, and on the go. 

With Marsello & Ecwid, your customers can automatically earn points for online purchases and effortlessly redeem rewards at checkout, just like they do in-store. And because Marsello integrates with Ecwid and your chosen POS platform, all your customer data, loyalty marketing results, and essential business are wrapped up in detailed closed-loop reporting. Then, you can use this information to refine your marketing strategy and create an undeniable customer-centric loyalty that boosts your ROI. 

Make the most of your Marsello-powered marketing and offer an eCommerce and POS loyalty program that all of your customers love. Build life-long relationships with your customers and turn them into brand ambassadors with a customer referral program that rewards successful friend referrals.  

Learn more about customer loyalty with our Loyalty Marketing Guide.

Design and trigger automated marketing campaigns directly from in-store and online purchase behavior

With Ecwid connected to Marsello, you can automate marketing campaigns from customer activities across your entire business. From welcome messages to customer reactivation, it's easy to customize and enable pre-built workflows for every step of your customer journey or design and build new flows from scratch.

Marketing automations help you to encourage purchase, build customer relationships, and boost sales with perfectly timed emails and SMS automations triggered by customers’ purchase behavior. And because Marsello integrates with Ecwid and your chosen POS provider, your customer data is captured no matter where they shop, making it easy to trigger the right message to the right customer at the right time. 

Did you know that 76% of companies that start using marketing automation generate noticeable ROI within the first year? If you don’t already use automated marketing campaigns to delight and engage your customers, now is the perfect time to start.

Learn more about Marsello’s Marketing Automation software.

Create personalized one-off campaigns to increase sales online and in-store

Marsello’s integration with Ecwid and your POS makes it easy to use one-to-one email and SMS campaigns to design personalized campaigns that help to build diverse customer relationships. 

Marsello automatically collects your customer data and organizes shoppers into customer segments, giving you access to valuable insights that make it easy to personalize your campaigns and target specific customer groups strategically. Offer your best customers exclusive deals and encourage them to share promotions with their friends, then target at-risk customers with easy-win campaigns that encourage them to shop with you again before they disappear for good. The options are endless! And with a library of professionally designed email templates for you to choose from, creating stand-out campaigns that excite every type of customer is simple.

Gain customer insight and track the effectiveness of their marketing accurately in-store and online

With both your POS and eCommerce connected to Marsello, you can also track the efficacy of your customer marketing strategy. Closed-loop data attribution directly attributes your marketing efforts to sales, helping you understand the success of specific campaigns, flows, and marketing tools while also creating opportunities to improve and iterate on areas that don’t perform as expected.

Testing is an integral part of the marketing journey, and accurate data reporting will help you curate valuable marketing campaigns that get results. 

Look at it this way: by understanding what tools work well with your business and customers, you improve the customers’ experience. Merrell NZ had this to say about testing their Marsello-powered marketing campaigns:

“Marsello also offers automations, loyalty, rewards, email campaign segmentation, SMS. All the tools that we knew we wanted to test in stages as our eCommerce and business grows.”

They went on to add: “Marsello is a platform that provides you with a lot of solutions that you can test step-by-step while looking at the results. It’s not an expensive tool, so it makes sense to test it for a couple of months.” 

By investing in accurate reporting and using the data to improve your marketing, you’ll boost customer engagement and, therefore, increase your ROI. 

And Marsello’s insights don’t just stop at reporting around your marketing efforts. By connecting your Ecwid and POS providers to your Marsello account, Marsello automatically segments your customers into marketing lists, making it easy for your to confidently create marketing campaigns and promotions designs for specific customer groups. You can even create your own customer segments – a simple way to design campaigns for groups like your VIP loyalty program customers.

Understand more about the insights you’ll see in your Marsello dashboard or learn more about our Marketing Lists feature.

Final words

By connecting Ecwid and your POS platform to Marsello, you gain access to a variety of marketing tools designed to help you get the most out of your retail marketing strategy. From customer loyalty programs to marketing automations and one-off campaigns, there are countless ways to build life-long customer relationships, promote your business, and encourage new growth.

We haven’t even covered all the tools Marsello has to offer! To name just a few: feedback surveys, online pop-ups to gather customer data, sync your marketing lists to Facebook Ads audiences, unique coupon codes – these are still just a few of the tools on offer.

Ready to increase your ROI and design an retail marketing strategy that engages customers no matter where they chose to shop?

Run your loyalty and marketing across all your stores and online by seamlessly integrating Marsello with Heartland Retail and your eCommerce platform.

Become the ultimate omnichannel retailer with marketing across all your sales channels! You asked for an all-in-one retail marketing platform that would integrate with both Heartland Retail POS and your eCommerce provider, and we’ve delivered!

Let’s dive in and learn what Marsello brings to Heartland Retail POS users. 

How do Marsello and Heartland Retail POS work together?

It’s easy to set up and run your retail marketing strategy across brick-and-mortar and online stores. Marsello integrates seamlessly with Heartland Retail POS and your choice of eCommerce platform.

Integrate your customer loyalty program in-store & online, and turn shoppers into brand ambassadors

With an omnichannel customer loyalty program integrated across your Heartland Retail POS-powered store and eCommerce, you can create a seamless customer loyalty experience. Track and reward customer engagement, gather valuable customer information, trigger perfectly-timed notifications to encourage customers to shop, grow life-long customer relationships, and more! 

Create an undeniable customer loyalty program that can turn one-off customers into brand ambassadors by bringing your in-store and online customer, marketing, and retail data into one platform.

Get started by learning how to add customers to your Marsello x Heartland Retail POS loyalty program and how customers earn points.

Send personalized email and SMS campaigns and delight customers with communications they love

Personalization is the secret ingredient to make email and SMS campaigns stand out. When you include brand colors, logo, product images and use data to feed-in customer information, you create a standout marketing experience that captures your customers’ attention. 

With tools like data-driven product recommendations, merge tags to automatically include customer details (like their names), unique coupon codes, a drag-and-drop email builder, and professionally designed templates, it’s easy to create campaigns that encourage customer engagement.

Marsello’s email templates library is an excellent place to source inspiration while quickly creating memorable email campaigns if you’re new to creating them.

Trigger automated marketing campaigns based on customer data and boost your ROI

Automated marketing campaigns are a powerful customer retention tool. Celebrate critical milestones, encourage customers to return to your store, reward your best customers, and more – all automatically triggered, so you don’t have to manually remember every date for every customer. Better yet? Marsello includes pre-designed automated campaigns. All you need to do is customize the flows with your branding, check that the settings meet your desired goals, and then click enable. Our pre-built automated campaigns include:

• • • A ‘Thank you’ automation to new customers who have shopped for the first time. 
    • A product recommendations and exclusive discount email flow designed to encourage Best shoppers to keep shopping with you.
    • A ‘Happy birthday’ celebration flow for customers who have shared this data with you. 
    • A ‘win-back’ automation to encourage at-risk customers (those who’ve not shopped recently) to make a purchase.
    • An automated flow dedicated to recovering abandoned carts when customers fail to complete a purchase.

But with customizable campaigns, the options are endless. Learn more about Marketing Automations by Marsello or book a demo today.

Understand detailed marketing reports and customer data to improve your marketing

By integrating your Marketing results with your Heartland Retail POS and eCommerce data, you can accurately attribute sales and successes from your marketing to specific sales channels, giving you results you can trust. Marsello uses closed-loop data attribution to ensure you can make informed decisions that see results. 

Track your Return on Investment, Average Customer Lifetime Value, specific marketing results (like loyalty program insights), and detailed customers & revenue insights. Then, use this information to improve your marketing campaigns and processes to ensure that your efforts see the best results in-store, online, and through whatever marketing channels you use.

Use customer segmentation to target specific customer groups through email, SMS, or paid advertising

Capture visitors’ details with POS & eCommerce marketing opt-ins, email capture pop-up forms, and website landing pages. Then, leverage your customer data with Marsello’s in-built segmentation, which can be used for email, SMS, and Facebook ad targeting.

Marsello automatically segments your customers into specific groups to help you create personalized marketing campaigns that get results! With RFM segmentation, you’ll see your customers grouped into the following segments:

• • • Best: ordered recently, ordered the most often, and spent the most 
    • Loyal: ordered recently, ordered often, spent good money
    • Promising: ordered recently, ordered more than once, and spent an average amount
    • New: made their first order recently
    • At-risk: haven’t ordered recently
    • Lost: haven’t ordered in a very long time.  

Customer segmentation is a valuable tool for enabling marketing that gets results. Although you might be narrowing down the recipient list, you’re also making it more relevant, which means that customers in that list are much more likely to engage; this is particularly important when creating email or SMS campaigns and paid advertising.

Learn more about Marsello’s Marketing Lists feature.

Final words

The options don’t stop at loyalty marketing, email and SMS campaigns, automations, or customer data either! From customer feedback collection to native eCommerce integrations, Marsello creates an all-in-one marketing powerhouse designed for omnichannel Heartland Retail merchants.

Ready to increase your ROI and create an omnichannel retail marketing strategy your customers love?

For modern Shopify businesses, it’s easy to lose track of your customers - between all your different touchpoints, customers and marketing opportunities fall through the cracks, leaving you with missed sales and less-than-optimal customer retention.

By incorporating a suite of set-and-forget automations into your marketing strategy, you can reach the right customers at the right time, with the perfect offer to increase engagement and drive sales with zero ongoing maintenance.

What is marketing automation, and how does it work?

Marketing automation is the combination of technology and strategic marketing activity that runs on autopilot for your business. A good marketing automation platform (MAP) will enable you to automate repetitive tasks, like email marketing and loyalty programs, while building lasting relationships with your customers, increasing brand loyalty, and driving new and repeat purchases across all of your touchpoints.

For merchants who sell in-store and online, marketing automation works by following your customers throughout their journey and engaging with them based on pre-defined triggers. With most automation platforms, you can either choose from a selection of pre-built email flows that are designed to drive sales at key moments, or you can build your own from scratch.

5 automations that Shopify merchants should have enabled

1. Recover abandoned carts: Encourage customers to complete their checkout with a series of abandoned cart recovery emails. This acts as a friendly reminder for your customers to come back to your store and complete their purchases. Pro tip: If a customer doesn’t convert from the first email in the series, consider adding a discount or free shipping to incentivize the purchase.

2. Thank first-time customers: Say thanks to your customers after their first purchase with you. Make a great first impression, introduce them to your brand, and encourage them to keep coming back for more with product recommendations and exclusive offers.

3. Reward your best customers: Look after your best customers with an automated email workflow that thanks them for their loyalty and encourages them to shop again. Personalize your emails with product recommendations that align with your customers’ needs and purchase history. Make them feel like valued customers and that their loyalty matters.

4. Wish your customers a Happy Birthday: Make your customers feel appreciated on their special day. A cheerful Happy Birthday email will get them shopping and strengthen their relationship with your brand.

5. Win-back lapsed customers: Remind customers to come back to your store with an automated email that’s designed to win them back. Motivate repeat purchases discounts that are too good to ignore, and create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers.

Did you know that Marsello merchants who have more than one email automation enabled see an average of over 70x ROI for their marketing?

The advantages of marketing automation for omnichannel Shopify businesses

1. Save time while nurturing your customer relationships

With marketing automation, you can save yourself hours of work every week. Rather than wasting valuable time building one-off marketing campaigns, you can simply enable behavior-triggered marketing emails that run on autopilot and feel authentically engaging. 

2. Provide a personalized experience

Quit annoying your customers with irrelevant emails…. It’s frustrating and can impact your email open rates. Utilizing personalized messaging means that your customers are more likely to open your emails, engage with your content, and complete a purchase. Some simple examples of personalized messaging include; using customers’ names in your email headlines, suggesting products based on their purchase history, or promoting new collections that might interest them.

3. Build relationships and increase customer lifetime value

Acquiring new customers can be expensive. In fact, it’s around 5x more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to nurture your existing ones. So, rather than investing all your marketing dollars into attracting new customers, it’s worth redirecting some effort into improving your existing customers’ experience and building brand loyalty.

By automating your Shopify marketing, you can ensure your customers stay informed and engaged across every touchpoint. Whether it’s an update regarding their loyalty points status, an email that invites them back to the store with a discount, or a one-time offer, these timely and hyper-personalized messages all work together to grow your relationship with your customers and keep them interested.

4. Keep your brand front-and-center across all your marketing channels

Your customers are constantly moving between various marketing channels, from email and social media to your eCommerce website or your physical store, so being able to reach them automatically across all these touchpoints is critical to keeping your business top-of-mind. Marketing automation apps work overtime to nurture these relationships while you can focus on other areas of your Shopify business. Read 6 essential steps for omnichannel commerce.

5. Boost your in-store and online revenue, automatically

Implementing a set-and-forget marketing automation system enables you to bring in consistent ‘background’ revenue for your business. Once set up, it runs completely autonomously for you - Simply enable pre-built email workflows, or customize your own and watch your platform do the hard work for you. Deliver timely and personalized messages that reach your customers at exactly the right moment to encourage them to make a purchase. 

Ozzie Collectables have seen a 517% increase in revenue since enabling their automated marketing campaigns with Marsello. Learn more.

Final words

Creating a seamless, automated marketing experience is critical for growing revenue and building customer loyalty across both brick-and-mortar and Shopify eCommerce sites.

With marketing automation apps, you can send timely and targeted messages that encourage your customers to keep coming back for more, all while decreasing your personal workload and letting your focus on other areas of your business.

An all-in-one marketing platform harnesses your customer data to create a carefully curated and specific marketing experience that feels intentional to your customers. If your marketing automation provider has your back, the basics of these automations will be largely set up for you.

Did you know that Keep Cart is part of the Marsello ecosystem?

Keep Cart was purpose-built for omnichannel Shopify merchants to recover sales from abandoned shopping carts. But while Keep Cart has helped recover thousands of abandoned carts, many of you wanted to know - What else could I be doing?

That’s why we built Marsello - it’s the complete marketing solution for Shopify merchants who sell products in-store and online. Marsello has an entire suite of set-and-forget automations (including abandoned cart recovery emails) that bring in consistent, predictable revenue for your business. Learn more about Marsello’s features

With Marsello, everyone gets special treatment with a personal touch. Every customer is different, so each marketing feature is designed to guide them through different points in their journey with your brand - The ultimate goal? To move them from a one-time shopper to becoming a loyal customer that keeps coming back for more.

Ready to automate your marketing?

Quick Links:

• • • How do Loyalty coupons work?
    • How does a POS system increase customer loyalty?
    • Different ways customers can redeem loyalty coupons through a POS system
    • Final words on redeeming loyalty coupons through a POS system
      
      
      

On average, 65% of your revenue comes from your most loyal customers. Integrating loyalty coupons into your existing POS system lets you serve your best customers and reap the revenue rewards with ease! 

Loyalty coupons are one of the best ways to encourage repeat buyers, increase the lifetime value of customers, and build the loyalty of your already happy customers. Customer loyalty strategies pay for themselves.

By combining loyalty coupons and your eCommerce or POS system, you can target your marketing, identify your best customers, award coupons and turn your business into a loyalty-building machine. 

How do Loyalty coupons work?

Loyalty coupons, also known as customer coupons, are effective at driving repeat and loyal customers. Repeat customers spend 33% more than other customers, so it is worth focusing your marketing efforts on them specifically. 

So how do they work? 

Simple. Loyalty coupons encourage already loyal customers to be even better customers by improving their shopping experience. You can either set up customer accounts to add points and vouchers or give people discounts automatically when they meet certain criteria. 

The easiest way to start giving loyalty coupons or rewards points is to integrate it with your existing Point of Service (POS) system.

For example, ethical toy company Evermore Toys has customers that buy online and in stores. To simplify their loyalty program, they integrated Marsello directly into their POS systems (Shopify and Cin7) so customers can redeem points no matter where they shop. Using Marsello, their simple loyalty program resulted in a 156x ROI and a 738.87% increase in revenue.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to integrate loyalty coupons into your business!

How does a POS system increase customer loyalty?

A POS system increases loyalty because you can use customer details to personalize their shopping experience. An all-in-one system makes it easy for customers to use loyalty coupons no matter where they shop with you and therefore improves user experience and loyalty over time.

1. By collecting customer data

One of the main functions of a POS system is to collect customer data. This allows you to create targeted marketing campaigns, personalize customer experiences, and identify your most loyal customers.

Your POS system is an opportunity to collect online eCommerce and in-store visitor details and turn them into repeat customers. The best way to collect details is in exchange for something valuable like in-store points and loyalty coupons.

For example, Merrell NZ cleverly maximizes every opportunity to encourage customer engagement with their brand. Their website has a simple pop-up form that encourages shoppers to leave their name, email, and date of birth in exchange for promotions and exclusive discounts. 

This pop-up has a sign-up rate of 25%, a customer engagement rate that you miss out on if you don’t collect customer details with a POS system!

2. By providing personalized promotion

Once you have customer details in your POS system, you can create personalized promotions. The details you collect when a customer signs up mean that you can segment your marketing based on their behavior. 

This behavioral segmentation is known as RFM segmentation, which stands for 

• • • Recency – When the customer last purchased from you.
    • Frequency – How often they buy. 
    • Monetary – The amount they’ve spent.

In other words, you can maximize your marketing ROI and increase loyalty by knowing more about them. 

Modern streetwear brand Federation + shows this in action with their segmented email campaigns.

When shoppers first create a customer account with Federation +, they immediately receive the “WELCOME TO THE FAMILY” automated email campaign. The eye-catching email offers customers 10% off their first purchase and uses a product recommendations email block to suggest current top-selling products. 

This campaign has seen a 19% conversion rate in just over 5 months, and almost 50% of the total revenue generated by their automated campaigns is directly attributable to their welcome automation! 

3. By identifying VIP customers and rewarding them

75% of consumers say that they favor companies that offer rewards. Integrating a rewards program with your POS system will make it easy to identify and reward your already-loyal customers. 

VIP programs are effective because they target customers who already have buy-in with your brand. Our Bralette Club runs an effective rewards program that makes this process extremely easy.

Through their all-in-one system, customers can sign up, earn rewards and in-store loyalty points and be part of the Peach Party community. The Our Bralette Club VIP loyalty program has an impressive reward redemption rate of 71% (in 2020) and has resulted in a 278% increase in revenue.  

4. By providing a convenient customer experience

According to a study by eMarketer, the only thing online shoppers like more than customer reward coupons is a quick and easy checkout process. 83% of shoppers marked this as their top priority for loyalty. 

This is why your POS system is so important for building customer loyalty! It doesn’t matter how good your discounts and loyalty program is if the user experience doesn’t deliver.

Different ways customers can redeem loyalty coupons through a POS system

Your POS system can encourage loyalty in many different ways. From in-store points to purchase order value increase, there is a loyalty coupon system to suit every business. 

1. Through a points-based system

A points-based system is one of the most common types of loyalty coupons for retailers. 

A rewards point loyalty program encourages certain customer behaviors. They can earn points for things like 

• • • Signing up for your loyalty program 
    • For every dollar they spend 
    • Sharing your brand on social media
    • On their birthday

For example, boutique dog brand SmackBang has an on-brand widget for their loyalty program. It seamlessly integrates with their POS system and lets customers see how many points they have and how they can earn more. 

Their points system has generated $8,200+ for the brand, sees a 100% loyalty engagement rate, and a reward redemption rate of 38%.

Building loyalty with points systems works best when it benefits your customer as much as your business. Rewards create loyalty when you give your best rewards to your best customers. 

2. Through an automatic voucher system

An automatic voucher system is where customers automatically qualify for a voucher when they meet certain requirements. 90% of consumers use coupons so it is an effective way to increase loyalty and amount per spend. 

For example, you could add an automatic voucher when someone has made a purchase, reached a certain threshold, or joined your loyalty program. 

If you are going to use an automatic voucher system, it is best to do this directly through your POS system. Physical vouchers incur production and distribution costs, whereas POS systems allow customers to easily access vouchers without delay

3. By providing discount vouchers

Everybody loves a good deal! Discount vouchers can be a great way to entice new customers, reward existing ones, and boost revenues for a short period. 

However, offering discount vouchers too often can actually have the opposite effect. It can make it seem like you are a discounted brand.

For effective discounts, vouchers should:

• • • Have a time limit or expiry 
    • Be combined with personalized or targeted marketing campaigns (e.g. for first-time customers) 
    • Be easy to use online or in-person (i.e. integrated with your eCommerce and POS system)

Instead of just discounting prices you could also add value.

For example, skincare retailer Sigi Skin ran an email campaign for Mother’s Day where instead of slashing prices they added a free makeup pouch. Their email campaign had an impressive open rate of 37% and a conversion rate of 19%, and, in the first 7 days since it was sent, the campaign saw a revenue increase on their usual daily sales of +48%.

4. By purchase order value

Loyalty coupons for purchase order value is a system where customers can qualify for rewards when they reach a certain amount in their cart or in-store. 

24% of consumers would spend more to qualify for bonuses like free shipping. This benefits them as much as your revenue! 

There are several ways you can use purchase order value as a loyalty reward:

• • • • $ amount off total cart
      • % off total cart 
      • $ or % off a specific item 
      • Get a free product 
      • Get free shipping 

The best part? All of these loyalty rewards can be integrated directly into your eCommerce or POS system with Marsello!

5. Through promotions

Running a points promotion is a great way to get a boost in loyalty points and sign-ups. Even your best customers need a little encouragement sometimes! 

Your POS system will allow customers to easily earn and redeem points earned during your promotion. This positive user experience maintains a positive relationship over time. 

An example of a points promotion was the double points promotion run by bCode. This shoe brand started a loyalty program for their existing business and wanted as many people to sign up as possible when it launched.

When they launched the online version of their loyalty program, they ran a points promo called “Double Perks weekend” which enabled members to earn double points on all purchases over a three-day period.

This resulted in a 94% increase in loyalty points spent by both new and existing loyalty club members.

Final words on redeeming loyalty coupons through a POS system

Loyalty coupons give your best customers even more reasons to rave about your brand. Whether you choose rewards points, loyalty programs, discount vouchers, or promotions, customer coupons will benefit your customers and increase your overall revenue. 

Marsello lets you integrate simple, on-brand loyalty coupons and reward points directly into your existing eCommerce and POS system. Whether you sell online, in person, or a mixture of both, you can easily reward your most loyal customers with Marsello integrations!