Category Archives: Making a lasting impression

6 Benefits of Having a Loyalty Card Scheme

Loyalty Card

Here at 123 Print UK, we want our customers to have the best possible knowledge of our products and how they can benefit your business. We offer a range of colourful loyalty cards to suit any type of business in any industry. If you have never considered introducing a customer loyalty card scheme to your business before, here are six reasons why you should.

  1. Customer Loyalty & Happiness

Picture yourself as one of your customers. You have been loyal to the company for an extended amount of time and have purchased a variety of products across the price range. However, your loyalty seems to be being ignored as all you can see across the company website are offers to entice new customers into making a purchase. How would you feel? My guess is frustrated and ignored. You may think that attracting new customers is vital (and you would be correct!) but rewarding existing customers is just as important to ensure that they remain loyal to your business and do not take their custom elsewhere.

Remember: A rewarded customer is a happy customer, and a happy customer is great for word of mouth referrals!

  1. Increased Profitability

A recent study by BIA Kelsey showed that a repeat customer spends 67% more than a new one. With these figures, it seems obvious why more and more companies of all sizes are introducing loyalty cards into their businesses. Coffee giant Starbucks praised their loyalty program as the main reason that they had a 26% rise in profits and an 11% jump in total revenue in 2013 (loyalty360.org). Having increased profitability means that you will be able to use new and improved resources to spoil your customers even more, and enable your business to grow and go from strength to strength!

Profit

  1. Attracts New Customers

Any company that is known to have a loyalty card system is always going to look appealing to potential customers. Knowing that they will be looked after once they have made a purchase will be just as enticing as those all important new customer offers. In a recent survey, 93% of consumers think that rewards are a very important part of the customer experience. This is especially beneficial for smaller or newer businesses as having a reward system in place can mean the difference between a potential customer making a purchase or going elsewhere.

  1. Customer Relationships

Having a loyalty card campaign in place means that you can get to know your customer’s spending habits and product preferences and enables you to offer a service that is personally tailored to suit their individual needs. Providing your existing customers with a service that is more personal means that it will be easier to form and maintain relationships with them, which will ensure that they keep using your company again and again. According to a recent survey, 29% of customers like to change brands for the sake of novelty. Building and maintaining relationships with customers will help to minimise this brand hopping and ensure customers  want to use the same brand again and again.

Customer

  1. Reason for Contact with the Customer

Having a loyalty card means that your customers will most likely be entitled to more special offers, and this is a great reason to have more contact with your customers! As we all know, communicating with your customers is a key part of relationship building and profitability, so the more reasons you have to contact them, the more engagement you will have from them, and the higher chance there is of them making a purchase. Customers that feel entitled are more likely to be enticed into buying a product, so make sure that you let them know that the offer is only for customers that have a loyalty card.

  1. Stand Out from the Competition

Offering a loyalty card scheme will make you stand out against other businesses that do not offer this service. For example, if you were a loyal customer being tempted to buy from a competitor due to an enticing welcome deal, an existing loyalty card scheme could be just the thing that inspires you to make the purchase from the original company. Having a professional looking loyalty card that is pleasing to the eye, like the ones we offer here at 123 print, is essential for making your business stand out from the competition and sets you on your way to becoming the go-to company for customers, every time. We also give our customers the option to upload their own loyalty card template, to make it even more unique to their business.

 Did you know…

Here at 123 Print UK, we offer a professional loyalty stamp bundle to get you started! As if that wasn’t enough, you can also choose your own loyalty stamps from a range of different designs. Having unique stamp designs makes your loyalty card stand out even more!

The Importance of Making a Lasting Impression

You’ve more than likely heard the saying that ‘first impressions count’ and it’s true; if you don’t give a customer or client the right first impression your chances of developing a lasting impression, and working relationship, become slim to none. We all go to great lengths to make a great first impression, whether it be developing websites with an elegant design and spectacular usability, or dressing in a tailored Versace suit with matching high gloss, raised print business cards.

However, in today’s fast and furious world we spend so much time worrying about how our first impression looks that we somehow seem to overlook the fact that if we don’t make the right lasting impression with our customers we’ll lose them forever. Keeping an existing, loyal customer is far more cost effective than winning over a new one. You should be aiming to leave each and every one with a positive, lasting impression or your business, service or product.

And that’s what it’s all about, retaining the customer.

Fact: On average it costs 7 times more to find a new customer than it does to keep an original one.

Cracking this nut is harder than it looks as the world moves into hyper-speed. Our businesses becomes automated and our lasting impression becomes nothing more than a bland blanket strategy, built around utilitarian research taken in the hope of pleasing the majority of our customers. It’s no surprise that they’re less-loyal than ever. However, investing the time and effort to make a lasting impression upon every customer becomes hard work and sometimes money and effort can be better spent elsewhere.

But for the majority of small businesses, retaining customers is critical. It’s unreasonable for us to think we can continue spending thousands of pounds every month to attract new customers when retaining your original customers can cost very little.

All it takes is the right lasting impression.

Customer Service

For us at 123Print UK, we spend many hours, sleepless nights, days and months thinking and perfecting our strategies to ensure we make a great lasting impression with our customers. One of our key areas is customer service.

For a small business, having a great customer service strategy is one key area you can make a difference. Every business is going to have its occasional mistakes or misunderstandings with its customers, so ensuring you interact with your customers in a personal, human way is crucial in retaining them. We never use robotic answer or auto reply emails, and we always ensure we have a member of our customer service team available to talk to you about your order. For a small business this is a great area to develop a lasting impression, as with the number of smart phones, tablets and even smart watches available in today’s world,  keeping tabs and in touch with your customers is easier than ever before; especially when you’re on the go.

Idea: Take advantage of smart technology by promising customers you’re always an email or phone call away. Deliver on the comments or queries made by them to ensure you make an effective, lasting impression.

Personalise it!

We touched on this briefly in our blog ‘Personalising your business’, as personalising certain areas of your business can be a boundless way to make a lasting impression. From the ‘thank you for your order’ email to delivering your product, there are hundreds of little ways you make your business more personal and stand out from the crowd, as it is the businesses who are delivering a personal experience that are leaving an excellent lasting impression and retaining their customers.

Idea: For us as a business stationery company we love the idea of dropping in a little handwritten note to say ‘Thank you for your order’ or creating personal discount codes which we randomly generate to surprise our customers!

At the end of the day it’s all marketing to us, but to the customer it is a gesture to show you’re a real person who is determined to impress and keep them coming back to your services.

Social Media

As you’ve probably heard by now, social media is a great way to keep in touch with your customers; and businesses are starting to discover and fully understand it’s a real tool for success.

Fact: 71% of people are more likely to buy from a service or brand they follow compared to its competitors.

For leaving a lasting impression with our customers we love to showcase (with their permission) their business stationery designs via our social channels. Not only do we love to see the different designs they create, but we love displaying the high quality of our products and designs. It really works in securing new clients as they can physically see our previous and current designs, but more importantly it gives our customer the chance to interact with us after the buying process with us.

All in all, making a lasting impression is something every business owner needs to take upon themselves and apply to their business. There is no silver bullet for retaining your customers and it takes hard work to meet the majority of your customers’ expectations. It’s important to remember as hard as you work to provide that great first impression which secures your customer, it’s just as important to remember to provide the work and effort that goes into developing a long last lasting impression which will motivate customers to keep coming back and using your services.