Recent social and economic events, including Coronavirus, have shown the need for shopping malls to change their communication with customers. In this article, we’ll cover five tips for building agility into your customer loyalty program to minimise the impact of external factors on your company’s profitability during and after a crisis.
Let’s be honest; we all love a freebie! Whether that be a coffee, money off voucher, or samples popped into our shopping bag at the till. It’s in our human nature to yearn for fulfilment and gratification.
Loyal customers are vital for today’s businesses. Not only do they form an affiliation with a business, but they also recommend services and offers to friends and family, resulting in more sales. A Wunderman loyalty study revealed that 79 % of customers will only consider shopping with brands that show they understand and care about them. The Loyalty Report 2019 revealed that the average shopper is part of 15 customer loyalty programs. It’s no wonder why companies are pumping money into engagement because it’s critical to create a lasting personal relationship, not a transaction, in order to stand out with customers.
What’s vital for mall and outlet owners is to understand the sentiment of customers and determine what they need and want. It’s about rewarding the right type of customer behaviour and making them feel special.
Importance of engagement data
It is essential in the light of the increasing number of environmental and economic challenges that have been occurring that shopping centres have a technology platform that allows them to react immediately to a crisis. This can only be done with real time data collection rather than relying solely on historical data, which may be days or weeks old by the time it is ready to be analysed.
A shopping mall owner must have a single source of truth of what is happening at their various destinations and with their retail brands, plus a strong relationship between themselves, their brands and their shoppers. If this is securely in place, the centre can immediately react to any negative trends in the event of an incident.
Where a mall has best-in-class engagement software, real time data can be analysed to decide the best course of action. This can be communicated to their contacts seamlessly using their customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
Reacting to Current Issues
Online shopping has increased while people have become more reluctant to step outside, adding fuel to the ongoing battle of online versus physical retail. But, thinking positively, how can malls use these challenges to their advantage?
Using technology and data, shopping centres can quickly design, tailor and personalise a customer engagement campaign. Coniq’s CRM solution, IQ Reach can communicate campaigns with your shoppers by email, mobile/text, push notifications and social media.
Below, we’ll cover some of the ways you can build agility into your customer loyalty program:
1. Think like your customer and not just your tenants
Understand what your customer needs and deliver it. It’s about going deeper beyond a transactional relationship and providing an experience that puts the destination and its brands top of mind.
Respond to what is concerning the customer and give them what they need, for example, a pop-up grocery store within a mall. You have the space, so monetise it.
2. Tap into the huge surge in health and well-being
Malls need to communicate that they have clean stores to minimise contamination and make customers feel safe and secure. Host a pop-up pharmacy, health centre and/or talks on hygiene and best practices. Flip this current health situation on its head and embrace it.
3. Provide for your local community
Shopping centres and outlets need to become community and lifestyle hubs and more than just a retail destination. Why not provide a swap centre for essential items? Mall landlords can build partnerships to provide hard-to-come-by products.
4. Malls usually push out offers, and what they should also be circulating is insight.
Still offer the usual discount incentives and share health advice, travel updates, opening times for doctors, grocery stores, etc. During these challenging times, brands, both landlords and retailers, earn the respect and loyalty of customers.
5. Offer easy access to essential items
Make the shopping journey a super smooth process to obtain these items. Whether that be click and collect, delivery options or concierge services.
Turn passive shoppers into engaged customers with a customer loyalty program. Customer loyalty is a great way to not only keep shoppers active but also to increase your repeat purchase rate!
Help aid your customers with what they want during this uncertain time – it’s an opportunity, not a threat.
