Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

our goal for this club is for the customer loyalty. We have prepared some promotional items (like t-shirts, caps..) and we would like to set up the club for their redemption. Basically, we just think of the point program (every dollar purchased = 1 point). Any recommendation? Thanks!

hi Adam

Thanks a lot for your comment. It's helpful....

Of course, we would like the loyalty program can achieve:
customer retention
sales growth
margin growth
new customer growth
increase corporate image

What's tool can we use then?

thanks....

Ada,

First off check the figures, then try to work out the life time value of your average customer.Having found out that you have to decide what portion of the net contribution of your average customer you want to allocate to marketing as a whole.Then you have to decide what percentage you want to devote to customer retention.Quite often it comes to 20% of the overall marketing budget but it depends on you, how much you want to spend on fairs,direct marketing, promotion etc.
That said you know where you stand and then can decide what tools to choose.It could be promotional products as you say, extra discounts( though I'm not very much for it), could be as well weekend trips to some fancy places, etc.The more your speak with your distributors the more you will find out which tools will make them tick.

Regards

Adam

Ada,

Sometimes, actually most of the time, simpler is better. As others have mentioned, make sure you have defined a goal or goals for your program. This goal or goals must be quantifiable. You must be able to measure the results in order to know if your program is truly the reason for your success.

To keep things simple, start out by just tracking the orders placed by your distributors. Know how much they order, how much they spend with you and how often they order. Then begin to use this information to make it easier for your distributors to work with you. In your business, you want to this with every one of your customers, so setting up a loyalty program per se, may not be necessary.

If you want to give your customers something for doing business with you, then set your thresholds internally and make sure your sales people have the customer’s history available every time they talk. If your “giveaways” are based upon the number of orders or number of items purchased, make sure the customer knows that “if you order X more items, we’ll send you a free “something”. Same scenario if you base it on dollars spent. My preference is more of a surprise and delight type situation, where the “gift” along with a thank you message is sent without their knowledge.

If you don’t have the internal systems to keep track of this, a company like salesforce.com should be able to help.

The bottom line is that you’ll be able to keep and grow these customers if you provide a good product at a good price (not necessarily the cheapest) and give great service. Anticipate their needs and contact them. We’ve helped a couple of manufacturing clients do this and add a marketing component to their sales process. We don’t send ads, but instead use the customer’s history to stay in touch.

Best wishes,

hi all

Thanks for your advise, i have got more ideas how to do it. By the way, could anyone give me the steps of how to set up the customer club?

thanks!