There are dozens and dozens of marketing strategies that seek to create new customers, generate new leads and reach people that your business has never reached before. It’s an important part of business to find new customers, after all, that’s how a business grows. However, wouldn’t it be nice to do something good for the customers that already exist and wouldn’t it be exceptionally nice if you could do something good for those customers and generate a few more sales at the same time? This is the guide to rewarding your customers and boosting your business at the same time.

VIP Schemes

Businesses who are offering a service rather than products will be the ones who can benefit most from a VIP scheme. These schemes are excellent for making your valued customers feel, well, valued. VIP schemes set apart customers who regularly spend money with you, from those customers who only spend occasionally. Often VIP schemes are on a pay to enter basis, with the customer paying a small subscription fee in order to access the VIP perks. There are lots of different sectors that operate VIP schemes, from health clubs to supermarkets, but for today’s example we’re going to look at online casinos. This review of Spin Casino shows not just how important a VIP club is for frequent players, but also goes into detail about how it works. Casino Reviews provides this kind of run down for each of the casinos that it writes a review for, giving its own customers a thorough breakdown of all of the attributes of each site. This piece for spin Casino explains that there are three different loyalty programs, Bronze, Silver and Gold. It also explains that players accrue points at a rate of 1 point for every $10 wagered. Creating a points scheme like this one is a simple way to give back to customers who spend their money with you, in a very similar way to how a loyalty card works.

Loyalty Cards

Unlike VIP schemes, loyalty cards shouldn’t have a ‘buy in’ fee. The card is free and every time the customer makes a purchase, or uses a service, they’ll generally receive a stamp, or some points. These points can be added up to ‘buy’ something else from the business, whilst the stamps will generally fill up a card so that a free gift can be given. Most of us will have a loyalty card in our purse for at least one business. Lots of businesses in the hospitality sector use them, for example Nando’s restaurants have a very popular loyalty card scheme, as do almost every high street coffee shop. These cards work brilliantly for customers that would be buying a daily coffee anyway and can now enjoy one on the house perhaps once a fortnight. They also work well for businesses because sometimes customers who wouldn’t necessarily buy those ten coffees end up doing so as they want to get the eleventh one free. Not only this though, having a loyalty card in your wallet increases your familiarity with that brand. People who have a Starbucks loyalty card are part of the Starbucks ‘club’ whether they like it or not. They see that logo every day, they know if they buy their coffee there then they’ll be on their way to a free one and that might stop them nipping into a competing coffee shop for their morning latte. If you’ve got a business that sells relatively low ticket products or services then a loyalty card should be high on your list of marketing techniques to consider implementing. 

Refer a Friend

Finally, if there’s one kind of marketing that trumps all others in terms of conversion rates, it’s a word of mouth recommendation from a friend. It’s great if these come naturally, but one way to help them along is with a refer a friend scheme. There are all kinds of different ways that these can work. Airbnb, the apartment vacation rental company, has a great scheme where if you refer a friend then you earn $16 off one of your stays, when they book a stay of their own. Many gyms offer a scheme where you can bring a friend along for free one day of each month. If they decide to join then you both might get a month half price, or a month free, or they might waive their joining fee. Working out how your referral scheme works is going to be the fun part, but they’re a hugely successful way of both finding new customers and rewarding your most loyal ones.