Bringing customers back

The Loona.ai loyalty program offers its clients the most advanced technology for a reason. We always follow trends, go to different events, listen to experts and use their ideas in our daily work. So our team could not miss Sber's big event "Business Fest", which took place on October 27 in Moscow. There were several stages with talks and networking, where everyone could easily meet each other and the speakers of all stages. In one of the halls, they looked at real business cases of entrepreneurs picked right from the audience. But for us, the most important stage was the lecture hall, where the panel "How to work with customers so they come back? Best practices and loyalty programs" took place. The speakers were Alexander Glushkov, founder of the premium salon chain "Mone", Viktoria Shimanskaya, Sergey Buntsevich, founder of the coffee bar chain Coffee Way, and Roman Tarasenko, a marketer who works with celebrities.

The most important trend today, as this panel confirmed, is well-planned work with your loyal customers.

But not every business understands loyalty the right way. In this article, we share the main thoughts and ideas discussed at "Business Fest". A very surprising idea Roman Tarasenko shared in his talk: "The feeling of 'I know this' and the feeling of 'I like this' are the same feeling". Think of how many times you heard a song and thought "How awful!", but when you heard it a second, third time or more, you started to like it, and little by little you got used to it. All ads in the '90s and early 2000s were built on this, and most TV ads still work the same way. But what does this idea give a small brand that simply wants to work with loyal guests? To be liked, we first need to be recognized. That's why it's so important now to work on personalization and brand recognition. Make sure your messages to customers are easy to recognize among all the other messages. Our Loona.ai loyalty program lets you not only create your own card design, but also personalize push notifications and SMS campaigns. Sadly, many people see loyalty only as a regular discount. Sorry to disappoint you: a discount makes your guest happy only the first two times. The third time, they think you owe them this discount. So there is no loyalty here, only a habit, and a habit of paying much less. The experts said that a discount only motivates people when it's 12% or more. That's actually quite a lot, and for most businesses it simply doesn't pay off.

So what can we offer instead of discounts?

Don't buy loyalty! Where you can, try to replace discounts with a points system, because a simple discount doesn't pay off for your business, even in pure math. And of course, it's very important that customers don't just come back, but that you have customers at all, and that they are truly yours. If you give big discounts, you may attract the wrong customers: people who won't pay full price, don't value your brand, and come only as long as you sell cheaper. You won't make money from these customers. Some customers don't care what product they buy. They only go for discounts and will pick another brand as soon as they find a better price. So plan your loyalty program wisely and use different ways to give points or gifts. Our experts will help you with this. And if you already have a discount, you need to replace it with love for your brand. Win people over with your service, your product and your sincerity, so that they come back to you on their own. Customers become loyal only when they see that your brand respects their needs, their time and them as people. There can be no loyalty where it's "your call is very important to us, please wait 40 minutes" and so on. To keep customers from leaving, you need to stay top of mind. The business owner thinks about the business all the time, but customers can forget. So it's very important to remind them about you in a smart and effective way. Our Loona.ai loyalty program will help you with this too. We have push notifications, and now also email campaigns for longer messages. A good tool for building loyalty is creating a community: like-minded people talking in a comfortable space, a place where they can share ideas, get answers to their questions and take part in creating something new. Show real emotions. Everyone makes mistakes, but if you have your own community with your most loyal customers, you can always count on honest feedback. For example, restaurants can invite their most loyal guests to tastings or to help work on a new menu, collect reviews and feedback, and use them to create content your guests will surely like. If you are planning a renovation, a move or growing your business, let your regular customers help with some of the choices. The most loyal people will be those who took part in creating something, whether it's a product or a service. And of course, you need to surprise your customers. We know very well that surprising people is a challenge, but without surprise there is no real love. And your customers' loyalty is always about love!