Reward your customers â and boost sales

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“It’s all about psychology. When you as a customer feel appreciated, you want to give something back,” says Matilda Dorotic, researcher at BI Norwegian Business School.

Together with her research team, she monitored around 3,000 members of a loyalty programme for a total of 183 weeks The results show that activity among customers increased in connection with their redeeming their bonuses.

One decisive factor was that the loyalty programme was not associated with any expiry date or minimum purchase. “Those kinds of restrictions can instead have the opposite effect,” believes Matilda Dorotic.

“A person who loses his or her earned points or the opportunity for a bonus often feels tricked. That’s why it’s better to have flexible systems in which the customer can choose.”

Matilda Dorotic is convinced that loyalty programmes will become even more important in future. Modern consumers are aware and make tougher and tougher demands on the companies they choose to buy from.

“As a customer, you expect some kind of gratitude. Bonuses, discounts and other kinds of special offers create loyalty. SAS, Starbucks, Tesco and American Express are a few examples of companies that have been successful.

Bonus programmes and customer clubs also provide the companies with vital information about customers. Using the right tools, information can be used to produce more personally targeted information.

“As a customer, you don’t just want to feel appreciated. You also want to feel that the messages you receive are relevant. The companies that are most successful with that will also have the most customers,” says Matilda Dorotic.

But it’s not only what is communicated that’s matters, choosing the right channel is also important.

“More and more people are choosing to communicate digitally. Those plastic cards that many people have at the moment will probably be replaced by mobile solutions.”