Retail Loyalty Rewards Programs – Holiday Season Essentials

eMarketer forecasts the total US holiday retail sales will climb 3.8% to $1.008 trillion this year: the first-ever trillion-dollar holiday season. Ecommerce sales this holiday season is projected to increase 13.2% to $135.35 billion. This means ecommerce will represent 13.4% of all holiday retail sales this year, this has been growing steadily. Mobile commerce will grow 25.1%, and it will represent 47.5% of holiday ecommerce sales this year.

The above reflects the massive opportunity for brands to woo their loyal customers to maximize sales efforts and create a retail marketing mix that addresses the needs of their most loyal customers. As per the Pareto Principle 80% of the profits come from just 20% of existing customers. A loyalty program enables brands to achieve a stronger connect with customers.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to be star events for retailers every year. Starting from last week of November to the first week of December, shoppers flock to social media to track and post about the best deals or to simply update friends and family on their progress.

Some unique features to offer best retail rewards programs with a modern loyalty platform:

• Data Sciences & Analytics: Customer data can offer different insights to retailers. The key lies in how efficiently this data is used and processed. It is important to analyze past purchase data to deliver a perfect fit rewards program optimized for your business.

• Machine Learning for User Segmentation & Targeting: Machine learning techniques can be used to segment loyalty members into actionable clusters. The profitable clusters can be identified before the holiday season and targeted loyalty campaigns such as tier upgrades, bonus points, double points, and other point's incentives can be run against actionable segments to derive revenue from a retail rewards program during the holiday season. With segmentation retailers can build custom audiences and target consumers who have been frequently purchasing from them and run paid ads on different social platforms. Incorporating machine learning this holiday season will offer deeper insights into your customers and eliminate labor-intensive merchandising activities.

Customers are expecting more personalized offers from brands for providing their personal information. Personalizing offers based on recent behavior, past holiday season behavior, and current behavior, such as online browsing information, to personalize communications is key. Product recommendations can also help retailers tailor the shopping experience and drive sales by understanding the shoppers' preferences with past data and presenting alternatives accordingly. Personalization is poised to improve brand loyalty and create more enriching experiences for customer loyalty programs in retail.

As retailers gear up for the 2019 holiday season, it's important to tailor campaigns where their audiences spend most of their time online and place consumer needs at fulcrum of their social strategies. With data sciences and segmentation brands can offer more personalized and meaningful campaigns for their special customers during the holiday season. Example- Kohl's new marketing campaign, ‘New Gifts at Every Turn', will recognize and reward the gift giver's effort, excite customers with product newness and spotlight Kohl's cash, fueling the holiday shopping journey. A simple red cup has become an icon of the holiday season because of clever marketing by Starbucks. The #Colorfilled campaign allowed Oreo customers to choose package designs online and digitally color them in to create a personalized holiday gift.

For retail rewards programs during the holiday season the essence is in harnessing customer data, creativity & personalization.