LOYALTY PROGRAM LANDSCAPE FOR 2021

2020 was a challenging year for businesses across the globe. Customer experience was severely impacted, causing shifts in customer behaviour and accelerating certain trends. With lockdowns in place across the globe, brick-and-mortar stores were badly hit; the United States alone witnessing 25,000+ store closures. On the other hand, online and e-commerce stores in certain industry verticals witnessed a dramatic increase in their web traffic and sales.

With customer habits changing drastically in 2020, businesses need to renew their insights and align their strategies accordingly to stay relevant. Sales have slowed down, and marketing budgets have shrunk considerably; and this has led to the increasing importance of customer retention. E-commerce businesses which witnessed an increase in sales must focus on customer retention to maintain that momentum. Never has customer loyalty, and the importance of the repeat customer been as important as it is now!

Pre-COVID, customers had to show loyalty for them to reap their rewards. Now, it must start with the brand, and the customers’ overall engagement with it. The more a loyalty program can engage with the customers at multiple levels, the higher the chance of top of the mind recall and that all important repeat purchase! Towards that end, loyalty rewards programs of the post COVID world must change from a transactional loyalty model to a 360-degree loyalty engine.