The barrage of online content and advertising can make it difficult to attract and hold customer attention. Brands who are looking to start a customer loyalty program or increase memberships for their existing program have to contend with dozens of other companies and competitors looking to do the same thing.
With the average customer already belonging to multiple loyalty programs at once, their attention and energy are limited. However, having a valuable incentive offering for initial enrollment in your loyalty program can go a long way toward capturing customer interest.
One effective method of capturing customer attention for your loyalty program is by leveraging digital promotions such as sweepstakes or contests. As part of the entry process, you can give users the chance to join the loyalty program to earn an extra entry into the sweepstakes or promotion.
The chance to win a prize, especially one with a high value, is a great motivator for customer participation in any type of campaign. Even if you already offer some type of enrollment perk for new sign-ups, like a one-time discount code or a free gift, a sweepstakes prize can help motivate customers who need a little extra incentive to enroll.
Integrating these promotional strategies into a customer loyalty program can significantly boost enrollment rates, foster engagement, and ultimately enhance customer retention. The key is to be strategic about the type of promotion you’re running and the steps you want customers to take.
You can increase your success rate by following these tips for using sweepstakes or contests to generate new member enrollments in loyalty programs:
1. Make Prize(s) High Value
2. Offer Multiple Chances to Enter Or Win
3. Include The Promotion In Brand Marketing and Advertising
If you want customers to enroll in your loyalty program via your sweepstakes promotion, the prize or prizes they could earn need to be high-value. Using sweepstakes for loyalty program enrollment campaigns is different from using sign-up discounts or receiving cash back on a purchase. Those types of incentives provide instant gratification for the customer when they enroll in the program.
Sweepstakes on the other hand require entrants to first complete enrollment and then wait for a while before finding out if they’ve won.
To make the enrollment effort and wait worthwhile in the customer’s mind the potential prize should be of significant value. You’ll see more customer interest and higher participation numbers if one of your sweepstakes prizes is a $500 gift card versus a $5 gift card. Remember your first goal is to capture customer attention for your customer loyalty program - once that goal is completed your focus will switch to engaging and retaining program members.
If you want to increase the appeal of your enrollment sweepstakes campaign even more, offer customers the chance to receive multiple entries for certain actions either during or after the enrollment process.
For example, you could run a weekly sweepstakes that’s open to current program members and new enrollees. Each week members have to take a specific action or complete a challenge for a chance to win the weekly grand prize.
Studies have shown that the better we think our chances are to win a prize, the more likely we are to attempt to do so. Increasing your customers’ chances of winning by either offering multiple prizes or giving them more entry opportunities will help drive customer enrollment in your loyalty program.
If you run any type of loyalty program enrollment promotion, such as an instant win or sweepstakes, you should make sure the promotion and details are included in your brand’s advertising and marketing efforts.
Promoting the sweepstakes at multiple touchpoints helps to build interest and drive participation numbers up. You can advertise your sweepstakes on your brand’s social media pages, display promotional banners on your website, and even include sweepstakes details on your product labels and packaging in-store.
Existing customers who haven’t enrolled in your loyalty program yet are a perfect target audience for this type of enrollment campaign. You can include promotion details within email marketing and transactional communications such as order confirmations, shipping notices, and product review requests.
While there are numerous benefits to using sweepstakes or contests to drive enrollments in your loyalty program, these types of promotions do have their own challenges.
There are promotional laws and best practices brands need to follow when creating and executing certain types of promotions. Then after the promotion ends, new members need to continue finding value in participating and engaging in your program.
But when it comes to generating buzz and driving new member enrollments, using promotions such as sweepstakes and contests are powerful and effective method.
If you're interested in adding a promotions engine to your loyalty program or learning more about how Brandmovers can help increase enrollments in your loyalty program enrollments using promotions, contact us today!