Complete guide to customer loyalty in 2024

It has been a commonly accepted idea that building customer loyalty is one of the best things you can do for your brand. Doing so is not only cheaper than having to constantly acquire new customers but is also useful for overall long-term marketing. After all, the more your customers do business with you, the better you can understand what they are like. Unfortunately there never was, and likely there never will be, a timeless formula for customer loyalty. Customers' preferences, expectations, and needs change over time, and so have to change the various strategies brands use. So, let's take an updated look at customer loyalty and outline a full-fledged guide for 2024.

Understanding customer loyalty in 2024

It is first important to note that modern trends, technologies, and online habits all play a role in customer loyalty. So, to understand it, we need to consider each of them as an individual factor. By doing so, we will better understand specific strategies and how they reflect these factors.

Modern trends

While there are numerous trends active at this moment, the most important one for customer loyalty is personalization. Those of you already experienced in online marketing already have a decent idea of what personalization is and how important it is for any emerging brand. After all, personalization, as a trend, has been around for more than a decade. But, while it once was a novelty that grew in importance, now it has pretty much become a necessity.

Personalization, in a nutshell, entails gathering customer data and then using that data to segment customers into different groups. The idea is that you will create content and marketing strategies for each group, thus improving your online relevance. Ideally, you would segment your customers to such a degree that you would address every customer individually. And, as technologies advance with AI and big data, this might not be so far-fetched.

Technologies

Two technologies have had a substantial impact on customer loyalty. AI and mobile phones. AI has pretty much revolutionized the way we shop and research products online. It has also enabled brands to tackle customer service with far more ease and has made it possible to have an active response system 24/7. Meanwhile, mobile phones have made it so that people are constantly online viewing various marketing and non-marketing content. This has made it necessary to carefully study customer online preferences to gain their attention. If you simply set out to create marketing content and hope for the best, there is a fair chance that your content will simply get ignored. Meanwhile, if you look to address each customer on an individual level, there is a far better chance that they will pay attention.

Furthermore, the more you can manage to get customers away from standard platforms, the better. This is one of the reasons why having an app is so important as while your customers are in your app, you can enjoy their undivided attention. Mobile phones have fundamentally changed how people perceive online content. And you need to address this mobile-first approach if you wish to have a loyal customer base.

Online habits

Lastly, it is the habits of online customers that have a substantial impact on whether or not they will be loyal. Namely, each customer group has a certain habit when going through online content. The more your online presence is in line with their habits, the more their experience with your brand will feel intuitive. If you go against their habits, they will feel uncomfortable and frustrated. This, as you can imagine, will lead them to look for brands that know how to make customer's journeys enjoyable.

Building customer loyalty

While there is no blueprint on how to build customer loyalty, there are a lot of strategies that make use of the three factors that we've mentioned. The broad spectrum of customer loyalty strategies makes it easy to start building yours, especially if you have a clear idea of what your brand is all about. It is our advice, though, that you implement one strategy at a time. That way you can keep track of what works for you and, hopefully, build a lasting sense of loyalty between you and your customers.

Personalized marketing

As we stated before, personalization is key to modern marketing, customer management, and brand awareness. Therefore, you should look to incorporate it as soon as possible. On the customer loyalty front, you can look to send personalized emails and offers. A well-crafted email that reflects on customer behavior, purchase history, and preferences can be surprisingly effective in keeping your customers interested in your brand. If you have an app, you should also make use of it to send personalized notifications and offers. In fact, doing so will be easier through an app. However, creating a decent app and convincing your users to install it can be difficult. So, if nothing else, consider using emails as your introduction to customer loyalty through personalization.

Loyalty programs

It is important to understand that a big part of customer loyalty is based on whether or not they directly benefit from being loyal. This is one of the main differences between brand loyalty and customer loyalty. While people often mix them up, it is important to underline one of the main reasons why customers stay loyal. If being loyal gives them benefits over customers who aren't, they will be motivated. If their loyalty doesn't yield them any benefits, no amount of clever marketing or brand awareness will overcome that fact.

So, to improve customer loyalty, you ought to consider loyalty programs. For instance, customers earn points for purchases, which can be redeemed for discounts or free products. You can also offer different levels of rewards (e.g., silver, gold, platinum) to incentivize more frequent purchases and higher spending. Or you can provide exclusive experiences, such as VIP events, early access to new products, or personalized services. Some of your content can also be exclusive to a certain customer tier. Or you can have specific product offers for the most loyal customers. All in all, there are numerous ways to develop a loyalty program, and it is up to you to look for the one that best suits your business model.

Subscription services

If you do not have room for a loyalty program you can at least look to offer subscription services. In this instance, your loyal customers will get subscription-based services that provide ongoing value, such as monthly product boxes, exclusive content, or premium support. A subscription service is a great strategy for brands that don't offer products as their main source of revenue, but focus more on providing an ongoing service (think of repair shops or wellness centres). By becoming a subscriber your customers will feel like an integral part of your company, which will encourage them to do business with you more often. You should also encourage customers to sign up for auto-renewal to ensure continuous engagement and repeat business.

Engagement on Social Media

As we've mentioned, mobile devices have become an integral part of our lives. Therefore, it is important that you engage your customers while they are on their phones. And seeing that in the U.S. this averages 4 hours and 37 minutes daily, you will have plenty of time to do so. Keep in mind that most of that time is spent on social media, which makes social media engagement a necessity for any brand. When it comes to customer loyalty, you can look to utilize quizzes, polls, and live videos to engage customers and create a sense of community. The more your customers feel that they have a say in your brand, the more inclined they will be to work with it.

Another thing to do is to motivate your users to create content. UGC is huge in 2024, as customers perceive it as more honest and unbiased. Even if you create top-notch content, you will never avoid the fact that you are a brand that is, essentially, trying to sell something. Meanwhile, if a customer makes content about your brand, they will be perceived as truthful. So, encourage customers to share their experiences and tag the brand on social media. By doing so you will go a long way in fostering a sense of community and trust.

‍Content marketing

Your customer engagement shouldn't end with emails and social media. If you truly wish to gain a dedicated following, you might to consider yourself as a content creator. But, instead of simply putting out generic marketing content, you need to give your customers something of value.

First and foremost, you need to use your expert knowledge to help customers. Create and share valuable content that helps customers make informed decisions and enhances their overall experience with the brand. If you have advice that relates to your industry you shouldn't shy away from sharing them with your audience. The main reason for doing so is so that you establish yourself as a part of a community. Your customers are far more likely to stay loyal if they see you as a brand that tries to help, and not simply as a money-grabbing business. On that front, you should also consider video storytelling. What this entails is using storytelling to create an emotional connection with customers, highlighting brand values, customer success stories, and behind-the-scenes content.

Exceptional customer service

If there is one thing that is likely to lose your customers it's poor customer service. Even if you have a decent loyalty program and have created an intuitive customer journey, you will still cause considerable frustration with subpar customer service. Unfortunately, what is considered sub-par has drastically changed over the years. While before the customers would be understanding and patient, now that is practically out of the window. Modern customers expect that you respond to their problems and solve them instantly. If not, you will not only lose a customer by getting a poor review.

To avoid this from happening, we suggest that you invest in decent customer service. First, set up an AI system that will respond to customers instantly. Experience will show that most of the problems customers face are fairly generic. Therefore, a rudimentary AI system should be able to handle it. For the more complex problems, you want to have a well-trained team of customer agents. They should be able to provide prompt, helpful, and friendly customer service through various channels (phone, email, chat, social media).
You can even look to implement programs that offer special support to loyal customers, such as dedicated customer care representatives or priority service. But, even if your customers aren't part of a loyalty program, they shouldn't feel neglected.

Surprise and delight

Having a stable online relationship with your customer base is a great basis for building loyalty. If you set up a system where your customers know when and how you will respond to their content, they will feel far more comfortable engaging with you. By having a distinct brand idea, and maintaining it throughout your online presence you will give your customers a clear, unfiltered idea of what you are all about.

Once you have that pact, you can look to capitalize on it by surprising customers with unexpected rewards, such as free gifts, handwritten thank-you notes, or exclusive discounts. Every now and again your customers should feel appreciated by you going the extra mile. Even something small given on a birthday or anniversary will pretty much guarantee that your customer stays loyal. Especially if what you give is personalized. But, remember that for these gifts to have the wanted effect you first need to set up a stable, trustworthy online presence.

‍Transparency and trust-building

True transparency and trust are hard to come by in the modern marketing landscape. Too many brands try to present themselves as something they are not solely to gain the customer's trust. While this can be effective to a degree, it is bound to crash and burn once customers get a hint of dishonesty. So, if you are serious about growing your brand, your best bet is to be transparent about pricing, product ingredients, and business practices to build trust with customers.

Even if you get the chance to cut corners, you should feel obliged to let your customers know what you are doing and why. If you state your case in an honest way, you'd be surprised at how many customers will be willing to hear you out. In fact, this is one of the ways in which you can leverage poor customer ratings by responding to them. The more you build your brand as a part of a community, the more your customers will feel the need to stay loyal to you.

Final thoughts

To finish our guide to customer loyalty we would ask you to take the three factors we've outlined and see how they are reflected in each strategy. By doing so, you will get a better understanding of what strategy will better work for your brand. Ideally, you would implement all of these strategies simultaneously. But, doing so would be both costly and difficult to manage. So pick one that you feel best reflects your brand and see how you can develop it with the three factors in mind.

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