Ultimate guide to setting up your loyalty program with Joy
Set up your Shopify loyalty program with Joy. Follow our ultimate guide for easy installation, customization, and promotion to boost customer loyalty.
There are countless ways to start an eCommerce business. Whether it’s dropshipping, print-on-demand, or selling local products online, the beginning often feels like an uphill battle. But as you spend more time in the market, you’ll realize that success isn’t just about selling a few products. It’s about building a brand that truly connects with your customers and cultivating a loyal customer base. This loyalty is what give you an edge and ensures your business thrives for years to come.
So, how do we build this loyalty? A great way to start is by setting up a loyalty program. However, you might find it challenging to know where to start and how to create a program that truly converts. Follow our guide today and see how you can begin your loyalty program with Joy.
Table of Contents:
Determine goals for your program
Before diving in, we need to begin with the question "why" first, before getting into "how" and "what". Because you are setting up this loyalty program, it is best that you lay out the goals of this upcoming loyalty program clearly so that we can share it with your customer in your most convincing voice and track whether it is on track or not. So first, come up with your goals:
Connect with customers: You want to find a proactive way to connect with your buyers whenever they visit the store.
Increase sales metrics: You are a metrics guy, you want to increase Average Order Value, Customer Return Rate, etc. Good with the metrics, you are more likely to track its performance.
Giving back to the community: You love your customers so badly. You want to give back value to your community for their contribution and loyalty.
Once we are good with the purposes all noted. We can now proceed with shaping our loyalty program.
Setup how your customers earn points
Next, decide the actions that will earn your customers points. The more opportunities you provide for earning points, the more engaged your customers will be. See our detailed guide for each program.
Setting up an account
One of the most basic ones is the account creation. Without an account, it would be hard to manage a customer profile anyway, because even without the loyalty program, we still want your customer to register an account for better management. This can also help you to grow your email list and initiate the connection with your potential customers with a good impression.
With an account, a customer can now be treated as a "Member" inside the Joy Loyalty Program app. Even without one, all customer activities and point balances can still be recorded as long as the orders include the corresponding email.
For example, you can reward 100 points for account registration.
Making a purchase
You can offer customers points for every amount of cash they spend. This is a way for you to implement cashback to your customer in the form of points, just like the popular 2% cashback of your credit card.
This will encourage your customers to plan their future purchases to make use of the cashback you gave them. Also, design your redemption program to target how much money customers need to spend so that they can begin to exchange for a discount.
With Joy: Loyalty Program, you can choose to rewards points "After the order is paid" or "After the order is fulfilled". This would depend on your order processing flow.
Engaging with social media
Selling your products these days on social media is a must-have. While not rewarding your customers for following you, or sharing your post on Instagram, or TikTok. This would help you drive how customers interact with your brand on social platforms.
Reviewing a product
You can showcase social proofs such as collected reviews as a way to help your customer with their purchasing decisions by providing indirect pieces of advice from trusted sources.
Finding product review apps these days is not so hard, many of those have an integration option available in the Joy Loyalty Program app:
Try rewards to suggest your customers leave organic reviews, and opinions on the product that truly reflect the customer experience. Gaining that over time also helps you to gain your credibility over time.
Furthermore, you can stay out of the box by not relying on the integration connection available. If you want to launch a "Best Review of the Month" campaign on social media, you can vote the best review, announce it on social media and then deposit the points directly to the customer account via "Admin adjust points"
Choose how your customers can redeem
Once you've set up how customers earn points, determine the rewards they'll receive via redemption. Offering a variety of attractive and within-the-reach rewards can encourage customers to repeat their purchasing activities, or increase the order value for more points in balance.
Free products
Offer a selection of free items as a reward. This can be an excellent way to move overstock or promote new products. With Joy, we implement the Shopify Function to make sure that the discount logic for the free product works well with Shopify Standard.
Free shipping
Remove the shipping cost for loyal customers. Free shipping is a highly valued perk and can encourage repeat purchases.
X amount off discount and Percentage off discount
Straightforward discount direct to the price of the product or cart. This is the best way to reward your customers because it is super easy to understand. Customer can easily set their buying goals to gain more discounts in the long-term purchasing plan.
Choose your currency
Decide on a points system that fits your brand. A common approach is offering 3-10% back in points for every dollar spent. For example, if a customer spends $100, they might earn 300-1000 points, depending on your rate. Consider what percentage makes sense for your profit margins and what will be most appealing to your customers.
Fit your brand
Since you are using an app to create your loyalty program, so if you are not customizing the branding of your program, you are likely to be "another loyalty program". So make sure that you style the program with your branding that makes customers feel familiar and connected. This will help customers have a seamless experience with your brand.
Name your currency
You are not going to name the next cryptocurrency in the world so there is no need to overthink it. Choose a name that makes your customer feel relevant, and instantly think of your brand.
Use related notion: HyggeB - a brand for cozy bed sheets -call their loyalty point Hug. It is quite related to their products and services. Another example is a brand with the name: MailingMouse can call their point currency Cheese.
Use catchy combination: Use a catch combination of your brand with synonyms for money like coins, bucks, and crowns. For example, you can call it: "BearBuck", "LocoBuck"
If you want to get more inspiration, visit the so-called best loyalty program on the planet: Starbucks loyalty program with their currency called: "Star".
Name your program
Create a catchy and memorable name for your loyalty program. A unique name can make your program more appealing and memorable. Consider something like "Eco Warriors Rewards" or "Fantasy Club"
Choose your fonts, color
Don't go with the default fonts and colors, Joy allows you to customize the fonts and colors to match the design of your store. If you find it hard to do so, our customer support can help you along the way with recommendations and custom styling using CSS.
Use matching icons
The floating button of the widget is probably the first thing customers see about the loyalty program while browsing the site. You must keep it noticeable with good contrast, eye-catching icon and label would be necessary. Even if you want to customize the shape of the button, hover effect further, feel free to reach out to the customer support team within the app.
Loyalty page
Our Loyalty page feature supports the OS 2.0 theme only. You can find our detailed guide to the Loyalty page.
Set up a dedicated loyalty page on your website. This page should clearly explain how the program works, how customers can earn and redeem points, and the benefits of joining.
An Overview: Briefly describe the loyalty program and its benefits. Explain why customers should join and what they can expect.
How to Earn Points: Detail the various actions customers can take to earn points. Use bullet points or icons to make this section easy to read.
How to Redeem Points: Explain the process for redeeming points for rewards. Include examples of rewards and how many points they require.
FAQs: Address common questions to help customers understand the program. This can include details on point expiration, how to check point balances, and any terms and conditions.
Besides the above-supported app blocks, we can leverage the power of Shopify OS 2.0 blocks to add customer image blocks, and slideshow blocks from your theme editor. Sometimes it is better to design customly tailored banners representing your program details in your fashion.
Launch your program
Enable the embed widget
Once you are ready, go to Theme Editor from the Shopify admin enable the Joy Loyalty - Widget, and hit the Save button to implement the change.
Adding menu links
Add a link to your Loyalty page or this link can simply open the loyalty popup widget. In some cases, you might want to use only the menu links instead of the floating button.
Marketing activities
Promote your campaign on social networks, and ads to announce and urge customers to join your loyalty program. Design a few banners, and post content with Canva. Or even a video will do it justice showing your customer how easy it is to opt-in to your program.
Our loyalty page is SEO-friendly, make sure you implement all the SEO best practices for this page. This landing page can be the target of your ad and social post, so be sure to make it as stunning as possible.
Email marketing is also a good option. Send a marketing email campaign to inform customers about the launch of the loyalty program.
Improve your program
Nothing can be auto-pilot all the same and guarantee the outcome. You should pay attention to the in-app performance metrics to see the redemption rate to see how your customer is interacting with your program. Are they buying more? Are they spending the points as they should be? Even directly talk to them to gain their feedback.
Retain over acquisition
The acquisition cost of a customer in eCommerce is significantly higher than retaining one. Building a customer loyalty program is necessary for sustainable growth and long-term business. The market is more and more competitive. If you find it easy to start a business, then it means there will be more and more people selling similar products and services as you do. Building a strong customer base will create a foundation for your future growth. Furthermore, this will enrich the customer shopping experience in your online store.
Thank you for spending your time reading our guide to setting up a loyalty program. Happy rewarding!
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