4 Giveaway Ideas to Improve Customer Loyalty

Are you looking for a way to improve customer loyalty this holiday season? Business owners work hard every year to keep consumers committed to their brand when there are many competitors in virtually every industry.

Shoppers spent a whopping 850 billion dollars last year between November 1st and December 24th. When you consider how much consumers spend during this time of the year, it’s no surprise that businesses want to keep people loyal to their product or brand.

These festive months are excellent opportunities to bring in new customers and keep them engaged with your company for years to come. We are going to share four gift-giving ideas you can implement as part of your marketing strategy to improve brand awareness and increase customer loyalty.

Let’s dive in!

Offer Exclusive Discounts to Email Subscribers

Email marketing is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to give personalized gifts to your customers. There are several routes you can take when you want to give something to a consumer that’s subscribed to your email list.

You can send out a discount email that applies to both email subscribers and customers that make a new purchase. Here’s a great example from Tower Housewares:

You can take this idea and create two separate campaigns. The first segment would target customers that bought something from your store within the last three months. Your second email would say something like, “We wanted to give you something special for being a subscriber!”

The key to getting consumers to act on your offer is list segmentation. Your email list has a variety of consumers with varying interests and buying habits. Observe your analytics and sales data to uncover the different personalities that make up your target audience.

Once you’ve figured out your customer personas, you can create offers for each group that is personalized based on their experience on your site. Segmenting your lead list can improve your conversion rate by 100 percent, which opens up more opportunities for you to build customer loyalty.

Create a Loyalty Points Program

There’s a good chance that you’re familiar with loyalty point systems. Starbucks, Uber, Mcdonald’s, Papa John’s pizza, and thousands of eCommerce platforms give customers points based on their purchases and the amount spent.

Research shows that 87 percent of consumers want a loyalty program from businesses. If you’re not already giving customers points or rewards for shopping with your brand, they will find someone that offers more value for their hard-earned money.

Let’s look at an example of a rewards program from Happy Crafters:

These programs encourage customers to come back and spend their points. When there is no minimum or maximum amount to redeem, customers are likely to spend over their point value, which gives them more points for future purchases.

Promote Your Brand with Giveaways

Giveaways are an excellent way to expand your audience while keeping current followers engaged. When you host a holiday event like this, the first thing you’ll have to consider is the contest prize for the winner.

In general, contests are great for keeping customers loyal, but the giveaway prize you choose will depend on your intent. If your goal is to grow your followers by reaching a broad audience, you could give away something that most people would use, like a gift card. Here’s a contest where the prize was an Amazon Echo.

Business owners that want to reach their niche should consider giving away one of their products or access to their services. The people most likely to enter this type of contest is someone that’s already invested in the topic. For example, the only consumers that will enter a contest for a “Pamper Your Pet” supply crate are those that have pets — which is your target audience if you have an eCommerce website that sells animal supplies.

Spreading your giveaway across social media will help improve customer loyalty and improve your website traffic. Consumers want to interact with businesses that give back to their fans. Additionally, social media drives 31.24 percent of all website referral traffic, which is helpful if you want people to see your latest products or blog posts.

Create an Information-Packed Lead Magnet

Lead magnets are another great way you can grow your email list while improving customer loyalty. Essentially, lead magnets are pieces of content like ebooks, checklists, or webinars that are designed to educate or entertain your target audience. In exchange for access to your content, consumers have to subscribe to your newsletter.

When you’re creating content specifically for this audience, you have to make sure that you make it worth their while. If someone subscribes to your marketing emails only to find out that your ebook was common knowledge and filler, they are not going to remain loyal to your business.

Focus on creating valuable content that will give people a reason to come back to your website after they’ve subscribed. If all goes according to plan, you can use the first tip we offered as a way to strengthen their loyalty.

Conclusion

Many of the tips we listed today will overlap with each other. Building customer loyalty this holiday season isn’t about a single attempt; it’s a collection of actions. When someone enters your giveaway, they will likely visit your website. If they see a lead magnet that catches their interest, they will subscribe to your email list.

Now that they are subscribed, you can send them exclusive discounts. Once they see your email discount, they spend money and earn reward points that they can use later. Keeping consumers committed to your brand is far from easy, but it will help you develop new products, learn more about your customers, and grow your business this holiday season.