Your Loyalty Program Post-Launch Checklist

Once you’ve officially launched your loyalty program, you might be overly focused on making progress. You make plans to expand and incorporate some exciting new ideas. You're tracking milestones to evaluate your progress and further improve your program.

Yet every once in a while, it’s good to check back in on the basics. You want to make sure you’re not wandering too far down any complicated roads that could actually hurt your progress.

To help, we’ve put together some quick “check-up” questions you can use to assess your loyalty program's overall health.

1. Is The Sign-Up Process Still Simple?

Simplicity is key. No matter how your loyalty program grows after launch, your sign-up or opt-in process should remain easy, functional, and straightforward.

Even if you’ve built your loyalty program to be the pinnacle of excellence in consumer rewards, new customers won’t go near it if signing up means jumping through elaborate hoops.

If you find your new sign-up numbers are less than you’d expect, take some time to revisit your sign-up process. Make sure there are few to no barriers to opt-in. Also, double-check that your loyalty program benefits are clearly listed for potential members to review.

2. Are You Paying Attention To Current Loyalty Members?

Acquiring new customers is fantastic, but retaining them is even better in the long term. Take a look at your promotional activity and see if you’ve rewarded any current loyalty program members recently. If you haven’t, then now is a good time to plan a little “surprise and delight” for your long-time members.

Don’t skip tailoring the reward to individuals as best you can! Custom rewards have a greater impact on long-time loyalty members. It doesn’t have to be centered around any events like calendar holidays or anniversaries. Surprising your customers — “just because!” — is a good way to show them your appreciation for their program participation.

3. Are You Proactively Announcing Program Updates?

As your program grows, you're likely looking to build new features and enhancements that will (hopefully) improve the customer experience. However, you need to ensure all changes, big and small, are communicated effectively to your customers. Consider changes in point values, new features, adding new rewards, or removing old rewards from the customer’s point of view: what potential issues or confusion could arise?

Take the time to draft external communications informing your customers of any changes. Brainstorm a quick list of potential FAQs that could come up, and ensure you have clear, concise answers for each.

Some easy ways to inform your customers about exciting enhancements are through an email newsletter, internal messaging on your platform, or social media announcements linking to a new landing page with details. Your customers will appreciate the heads up, and they’ll know you’re aware of their questions and concerns.

4. Are Your Rewards Still Valuable?

Every loyalty program needs to stay relevant to changing trends. As your customers' demands shift or remain the same, you must ensure your program remains valuable to them. Customers remain engaged in your program so they can take advantage of the unique and meaningful rewards you offer.

If the quality of your rewards declines over time, customers will find fewer reasons to choose you over a competitor. Review your customer activity regularly and note which recent promotions and rewards resonated most with your customer base. Also, make sure to reach out to your customers for direct feedback through surveys. You can offer them a small incentive to participate, such as a program reward.

If your loyalty program comes out with a clean bill of health, then you’re on the right track! 

If you find that one or more of these areas need a little TLC, then we can help! Contact the customer loyalty and rewards experts at Brandmovers today!

This post was originally posted on 3/2/18. It was revised and updated with new content on 3/10/20.