22nd February 2022
At some point in your life you will have been faced with the question ‘do you have a loyalty card?’ for a while it seemed every single business had one, and whilst that wasn’t a bad thing, so many got their loyalty programme so wrong.
Personally, I don’t want to have to spend £100+ to get a free ‘small’ coffee, especially if there is a time frame given to achieve the free coffee status. Likewise, I don’t want to do unnecessary flights to maintain. A lowly bronze status with an airline …. And try to reach silver or gold, phewee, that’s some challenge and doesn’t necessarily feel like a reward for loyalty.
Some businesses however get it right, Paperchase springs to mind. Every time I shop with them the team ask if I have a loyalty card, which I do have but never have with me. It’s not a problem, they simply take my email address and let me know how close I am to getting my next free card. It’s just a card, but it doesn’t take long to qualify for one, nor do I have to spend ridiculous amounts to attain ‘free card’ status. And then, they let you know via email or when you are in the shop that you have your birthday £5 to spend. You get to spend the fiver in a month from the date of your birthday. It’s a great gesture and one that secures brand loyalty. Absolutely salons should be doing this as a standard practice when their clients come in before their birthday month, especially if they don’t have an appointment in that allocated time frame!!
But what about salons and their loyalty schemes? It’s a little bit hit and miss really; most don’t offer one and those that do expect a large spend for a little reward. To me that’s not a loyalty scheme it’s a put off so nothing has to be given away.
And yet, if you do create something that rewards loyalty and rewards it generously then your clients will absolutely buy into it. Think about all the different facets of your business that can generate points that can in turn generate additional visits and use your rewards scheme to boost business.
For example, if you have a colour promotion running, giving clients a large discount of their overall bill, adding on loyalty points is probably not the best idea from a financial perspective, but get the client to book in 4 weeks later for a top up toner or colour refresh and give double rewards, that makes perfect sense.
Reward retail purchases with points relevant to the cost of the product (the cost you pay, not the RRP) and build a rewards scheme based on the overall spend that gives the client a free product after spending a certain amount purely on haircare. If you give 1 point for every £3 and a product costs you £10 to buy in, the client gets 3 points. Do this calculation (as an example) across all your retail products and then calculate how much you want the client to spend before they are entitled to a free product. To strengthen the loyalty aspect of this kind of loyalty scheme, try and give the clients a product they haven’t used before, perhaps a corresponding conditioner to the shampoo they purchase, and let them know that when they purchase a follow up bottle of that conditioner they get double points as well.
Yes, I know this sounds like a lot of work and initially it might well be so, but if you want to get clients back into the habit of purchasing from you, if you really want to RECLAIM RETAIL you have to put some groundwork in.
That’s me off to paperchase, I have a £5 birthday gift to spend!!
