How Top Brands Drive Retention With Loyalty & SMS

So, what is one of the best ways to maximise retention? Integrate all of your marketing strategies together with your SMS marketing channel to create better customer experiences.

More than ever, consumers are on their phones. Every day, the average person spends over four hours on a mobile device and checks their phone more than 150 times. Consumers not only expect to shop via mobile — they prefer it.

A recent Yotpo survey revealed that more than 65 percent of online shoppers choose to browse or buy online from their mobile devices, as opposed to on a laptop or desktop computer. So, for brands looking to drive sustainable growth with retention, it’s essential to do so on the channel they prefer most — on their phones via text.  

Drive Action by Texting Loyalty-Related Updates

One of the most action-inspiring texts a shopper can receive after they’ve made a purchase is a reminder of an available discount, special offer, or reward balance they’ve accumulated and still have yet to use. More than 47 percent of consumers have said that receiving a text about their loyalty points or rewards would encourage them to make a purchase.

“Coming out of the holiday season, we always use our loyalty programme,” says Shawn McIntyre, Director of Digital at tentree. “We remind customers of their loyalty points or the dollar amount they’ve accumulated coming out of the holiday months of shopping with us.”

In addition, your brand can tailor mobile experiences with additional loyalty-centric messaging, like segmenting loyalty programme members based on VIP tier with exclusive benefits or sales, and texting shoppers when they’re a few points away from earning a reward to drive engagement in between purchases. 

With SMS marketing working together with your loyalty programme, your brand can drive real business value from the emotional loyalty you build. By incentivising shoppers to engage across the most personal channels, your brand can reduce churn, increase product adoption, provide better experiences, and ultimately, drive retention.

Collect Product Reviews and Photos Via SMS — Then Reward with Loyalty Perks

Additionally, brands can provide seamless, mobile-first experiences for shoppers by making it as easy as possible for shoppers to interact with your brand. If a shopper has made a purchase, send a follow-up via text asking shoppers to submit a review and photo. 

Rather than have to log back into their computer, a clunky and time-consuming experience, consumers can quickly leave a review from the palm of their hand, then move on with the rest of their day. In fact, our data shows that brands collect user-generated content, including reviews and star ratings, at a 66 percent higher conversion rate when requests are sent via SMS rather than email.

Plus, brands can sweeten the deal by rewarding shoppers with a discount, or even better — loyalty points, for leaving a review or photo. Brands can capture more of that valuable user-generated content while engaging shoppers with rewards — a win-win strategy that strengthens a shopper’s connection to the brand. 

Top Brands See Success with Retention-Focused Loyalty Strategies 

Bondi Sands

Australian sun care brands Bondi Sands launched their loyalty programme, Bondi Babe Rewards, amidst the pandemic in May 2021. Fully integrated with their CRM network, social channels, customer service helpdesk, and review platform, the Bondi Babe Rewards programme puts their customers front and centre at every step. 

“We wanted to know what our customers would like to see from us and our loyalty programme,” says Emma Quirk, Global Digital Marketing Manager at Bondi Sands. “So, we surveyed a group of our VIP customers, asking questions about what type of loyalty programmes they were currently using, what they liked, what they didn’t like and what they value most from loyalty programmes. This became the bones of our programme’s structure.”

Since launching in May, Bondi Sands has seen incredible results across the board, across all KPIs, especially overall programme ROI, which has increased by 348 percent. 

LSKD

For activewear brand LSKD, SMS marketing has become a game-changer, especially when it comes to engaging their most dedicated segment of customers: their loyalty members. They capture SMS subscribers across the buyer journey, including a pop-up (which has a notable 89 percent CVR), as well as from checkout, their loyalty programme, and through word of mouth via their Facebook group.

“We’ve seen higher conversions on SMS than on email,” says Will Bolton, Digital Marketing, LSKD. The brand now sees an average of 81x ROI on their SMS flows, including welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, and loyalty points reminder flows.

For more information on how brands can leverage SMS & Loyalty together to drive retention, check out Yotpo’s Ultimate eCommerce Retention Playbook.

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