The best advertising you can have is a loyal customer spreading the word about how incredible your business is -Shep Hyken.

What is Customer Loyalty?

Customer loyalty is the positive relationship of customers with a brand that culminates them to stay connected and choose the brand over its competitors. Let me give you a clear insight on the significance of customer loyalty with an example. A survey conducted among 5000 customers of iPhone revealed that 92% of them want to stick to the brand in their future purchases too. This is the impact of loyalty that the customers of Apple have on the brand.

Customer loyalty is initiated on customer retention, which is when a business does everything it can to keep customers coming back and prevent them from shifting to another brand. Giant companies like Amazon, Titan, and Club Mahindra have already unleashed the potential of customer loyalty programs.

After the pandemic, several businesses lost their customer databases, emphasizing the value of consumer loyalty. Customers have shifted their preferences, making it difficult for businesses to retain them. Such circumstances highlight the importance of consumer loyalty and retention.

Having discussed enough customer loyalty programs in our previous blogs, let’s now find more about hybrid loyalty programs and their advantages.

What is a Hybrid Loyalty Program?

Hybrid loyalty programs focus on combining different loyalty schemes rather than experimenting with a single customer loyalty scheme. For instance, a point-based loyalty program can be merged with a rewards scheme so that the customers benefit from both programs. Based on the nature of your business, two or more number of loyalty programs can be clubbed together to create a hybrid customer loyalty program.

Vital Elements in a Hybrid Loyalty Program

What are the things to consider while designing hybrid loyalty programs? How to create the best hybrid loyalty program for your brand? Let us find out the significant factors to be considered when you plan hybrid loyalty programs.

Research and Planning 

Designing a customized hybrid loyalty program demands intensive research and planning. The business should think from the customer’s perspective and understand their expectations. Template-based hybrid programs will not suit every business, unless designed according to the customer behavior.

The nature of the product or the service plays a crucial role in creating hybrid loyalty programs. Design the loyalty scheme that add value to your business, offering the best returns to your loyal customers.

Competitor Analysis

Customer retention is all about beating your competitors and retaining the customers of your business. Competitor analysis plays a significant role while tailoring a hybrid loyalty program. There should be a detailed study on the competitor loyalty schemes and their limitations. Your aim should be to offer a perfect hybrid loyalty program mix that overrides the competitors and convey your brand message.

Budgeting

Budget planning is another vital element that determines the success of hybrid loyalty programs. The loyalty schemes selected for the mix should fit perfectly with the budget of the business. Small businesses may not be able to create high-budget hybrid customer loyalty schemes like giant brands. Understanding customer behavior could help any business develop a trending loyalty program mix that sticks to the budget.

Expertise 

Offering a hybrid loyalty solution requires the expertise of a professional to design programs that sync with the marketing trend and competition. Developing blindfolded hybrid programs can never help the business to achieve its business goals. Hiring an experienced loyalty partner could help you design an effective hybrid loyalty program that balances your brand value and customer expectations.

Monitoring

As hybrid loyalty programs involve two or more loyalty program strategies, they need constant monitoring and gathering feedback from the customers. The impact of the hybrid program should be tracked using appropriate channels like surveys and feedback forms. This would help the business understand the customers’ expectations and design a better hybrid loyalty mix.

Why do Hybrid Loyalty Programs Work?

Customer retention is the main target of any customer loyalty program, and any scheme designed should satisfy the customers to the core. It should make the customer feel valued in every step of their purchase. Why hybrid loyalty solutions are a better option? The benefits of hybrid loyalty programs are as follows.

Multiple Benefits

Hybrid programs provide multiple savings benefits to the customers for being loyal to the brand. Offering different schemes trigger the customers to make repeated purchases with the business.

Higher Satisfaction Level

Getting multiple levels of returns and benefits provides a higher satisfaction level to the customer. They feel that the brand understands their expectations and rewards them with higher benefits.

Flexibility

Hybrid programs are flexible compared to traditional customer loyalty programs and support the brand better. It is possible to modify the scheme at any time for better performance.

Competition

Hybrid loyalty programs help your brand stand out from the competitors. Offering multi-level benefits to the customers helps you stay unique and beat your competing brands.

Create Brand Awareness

It helps to create brand awareness better than a traditional customer loyalty program. Hybrid loyalty schemes spread brand value among the public in a robust way.

Enhance Brand Positioning

A hybrid loyalty program strategy is a proven way to enhance brand positioning. The brand is perceived as favorable and credible to the customer database with various customer loyalty programs.

Gathering Customer Analytics 

Consumer purchase patterns and demographic data, such as age and gender, can be collected through loyalty programmes, which can give businesses important insights into their customer base.

How Can I Design My Customized Hybrid Program?

When creating a custom-designed hybrid loyalty program, keep your brand value and client preferences in mind. Point-based loyalty programs and tier-based customer loyalty programs are the most typically blended loyalty schemes to produce a hybrid loyalty program. Customers are granted points or credits in custom-made loyalty schemes, and they are also eligible for tier-based loyalty programs. When a consumer spends money on purchases, he is eligible for points and advances to the next tier in the tier-based program.

There are also successful hybrid loyalty programs, where membership-based loyalty programs are clubbed with special discounts, rewards, and recognition schemes. How to select the type of loyalty schemes to merge into a hybrid loyalty program? Let me grab your attention to certain factors you should consider while designing custom-made hybrid loyalty programs.

Customer Churn Rate

The rate at which customers stop doing business with a company over a set period is known as the customer churn rate. For instance, the rate at which the customers cancel a subscription or don’t renew the membership reflects the churn rate. This is an ideal method to pick the right loyalty programs to be merged to retain the customers to your business and to access the gaps in the existing loyalty schemes

Customer Retention Rate

The number of clients a business retains over time is measured by its customer retention rate. Your customer retention rate can help you better understand what keeps consumers coming back to your business and can also help you design a creative hybrid loyalty scheme.

Repurchasing Levels

It’s the number of customers that have come back to your store to place another purchase. Measuring repurchasing levels will help you gather data on the ups and downs in customer retention. Depending upon the repurchasing levels, you can merge loyalty programs and execute a new hybrid version.

Customer Loyalty Index (CSI)

The customer Loyalty Index is the standardized tool to measure customer loyalty to a business. It considers all the factors mentioned above and Net Promoter Score(NPS) to evaluate the loyalty of your customers to your business.

How to Improve the Effectiveness of hybrid Loyalty Programs?

Designing an effective hybrid customer loyalty scheme does not mean that it would satisfy the customers. Hybrid programs that involve multiple loyalty schemes should be customer-friendly. The pooled schemes should go hand-in-hand, helping the customers reap the benefits quickly. The following are the three essential tips to improve the reach of your hybrid loyalty program.

• Provide clients with a single login gateway where they can view all of their touchpoints.
• Ensure an error-free transition for combining reward points.
• Give customers easy access to customer service.

Hybrid loyalty schemes are undoubtedly the best choice for any brand. The secret ingredient of the recipe would be the types of loyalty programs you club and how well it reaches your customers. Get to know more about the best loyalty programs for 2022 from our previous blog. Hire the best loyalty service agency and create a customized loyalty program for your brand.