As brands strive to foster stronger connections with their customers, the power of personalised and timely incentives cannot be overstated. From celebrating brand milestones to delighting customers on their own special occasions – such as birthdays and holidays – rewards and promotions play a crucial role in enhancing loyalty and driving engagement. In this piece, we’ll explore the benefits of incorporating rewards tied to brand milestones and customer celebrations. We’ll draw inspiration from successful campaigns of ours for Superdrug, The Gym Group and Gala Bingo, plus, tiered loyalty programmes that celebrate customer relationship milestones.
Why celebrate milestones and with rewards?
The Element of Surprise
The element of surprise has a profound impact on consumer psychology. Surprise is a key driver of customer satisfaction and can lead to increased brand loyalty. In fact, 82% of consumers said they felt more positive about a brand after receiving a surprise gift or reward, according to research by MarketingProfs.
Using brand milestones to incorporate surprise elements, such as hidden rewards using interactive experiences like popping a virtual balloon, adds an element of excitement and novelty to the customer experience and leaves a lasting impression. This boost of joy and serotonin will be remembered next time your customer is looking to buy, and could give your brand the edge over your competitors. As a point of communication, this strategy may even remind them of you if you’ve dropped off their radar, and encourage purchase behaviour right then and there.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
Personalisation is paramount in enhancing customer satisfaction. A study by Epsilon found that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences. Offering rewards around specific brand milestones, like the customers’ first purchase with you, or their membership anniversary will create a feeling of importance and strengthen the bond in your relationship. Further, by tailoring rewards to match individual preferences and interests, brands can create meaningful connections with their customers.
Driving Sales and Engagement
Surprise rewards not only boost customer satisfaction but also drive tangible business outcomes. Research by Accenture found that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations. By leveraging customer data to deliver personalised rewards and promotions, brands can significantly impact purchasing behaviour.
Building Emotional Connections
Emotional connections are the cornerstone of brand loyalty. Emotionally engaged customers are much more likely to recommend a product or service and are also more likely to remain loyal. By celebrating brand milestones and customer occasions, brands demonstrate empathy and authenticity, developing deeper emotional connections with their audience. This resonance translates into long-term loyalty and advocacy, driving sustainable growth and profitability for brands.
The expectance of a birthday gift, or anniversary reward can encourage long-term loyalty as customers keep coming back for more. It can also lead to you being front-of-mind when such occasions come around.
Types of Brand Milestone Rewards
Themed Rewards for Cultural Events and National Holidays
Themed rewards for national holidays provide an opportunity for brands to tap into seasonal trends and cultural moments. Retail spend spikes around certain national holidays, making them the perfect opportunity to drive market share for your brand. By offering themed rewards aligned with holidays like Halloween, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day, brands can capitalise on increased consumer interest and drive engagement. Additionally, themed rewards create a sense of excitement and anticipation among customers, enhancing memorability.
Reactional marketing is increasingly popular and effective, so having a reward ready when a big cultural event, like Eurovision or the Olympics come around can ensure you don’t get lost in the crowd.
The Gym Group – Lucky Lockers at Christmas
To encourage members to use the gym more frequently, The Gym Group created Lucky Lockers, enabling users to discover a prize for 4 gym visits. The original programme was such a success, that The Gym Group created a Christmas themed version, incentivising gym-goers to visit more frequently during the winter months. This type of rewarding helped to increase membership rates, reduce churn and resulted in high engagement with email communications.
Gala Bingo – Moments of Joy
Celebrating moments together is a great way to foster a connection with your audience. Gala Bingo increased their member retention and satisfaction by creating monthly moments to share. In the Monthly Treats programme, a new rewards was given each month, themed around a British cultural moment such as Easter, and the King’s Coronation.
Customer Relationship Milestones
Rewarding your customers for their time spent with you will drive brand loyalty and appreciation. The feeling of appreciation goes both ways, and showing your customers you appreciate their business will come back around to you.
Nordic Spirit – Club64 Loyalty Programme
Creating a tiered loyalty programme, with the ability to move up into new categories drove engagement in Nordic Spirit customers. Able to move up through themed tiers – adventurer, explorer and navigator not only enhanced the narrative, but encouraged members to continuously engage to unlock even more appealing surprises.
Customer Achievements
Rewards can be used as a way to incentivise certain behaviour. For example spend X amount to get a free is a typical exchange. For certain platforms and loyalty programmes though, this can be used to encourage engagement and progression.
YouTube – High Five For You!
Look at our YouTube High Five programme. In order to increase engagement with the platform, and to encourage creators to publish more content, YouTube gave rewards for reaching X amount of followers, or posting X many times. This shows appreciation from the brand to its creators, as well as encouraging them to progress as creators, and benefitting YouTube in return by producing more content.
Customer Birthdays
Aside from brand milestones, you can further personalise by celebrating customers’ birthdays. Many brands do this by offering discounts, that not only require them to spend more money in order to redeem, but also require them to go out of their way in a short claim period. While this is a nice gesture, this will often go unused as people have busy birthday periods and don’t necessarily want to spend the extra to claim the offer.
What if, instead, you offered an entirely free experience, or branded gift? Set your brand apart from the rest, and create a memorable moment, placing you front and centre amid all the birthday communications.
Brand Anniversaries
Brand milestones such as anniversaries are the perfect time to ramp up your marketing and celebrate. Just look at Cadbury’s 200 year anniversary this year. A years worth of campaigning, with a focus on sentiment brings this classic brand to the top of everyone’s social media feeds, the fold of their newspapers and to their TV screens.
While not every brand can go this big, you can pull focus from the people who count: your audience. Give an anniversary gift to those who already are members or shop with you, and share the celebratory moment together.
Superdrug Studio London
This campaign celebrated a major brand milestone – the first birthday of Superdrug’s Studio London, by giving each of its customers the chance to pop a virtual Superdrug balloon and win a prize! By incorporating this branded game into CRM strategy, Superdrug brought their brand back into customer’s minds.
We’ll leave you with this…
Customer expectations are continuously evolving, meaning brands must keep innovating and differentiating themselves to stand out.
By leveraging the element of surprise, personalisation, and themed rewards, brands can create memorable experiences that resonate with customers, driving enhanced satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. These strategies not only contribute to short-term sales uplift but also lay the foundation for long-term relationships and sustainable growth.
Contact us for tailored strategies on your next milestone: lets.talk@tlcworldwide.com
