By Samantha Litfin | Marketing Consultant
Customers can be fickle with their loyalty, and long with their memory. A single negative incident could potentially ruin a customer’s perception of a venue and see them move on because there are so many viable alternatives. Yet a member or visitor that feels valued through a relationship with a venue is more willing to continue this relationship in spite of any disappointment.
The best way to develop a strong relationship with your members and customers is to know them. Not so much who their best friend is, what car they drive or the name of their budgie, but more in terms of your business; how often they frequent, what they do within your venue, how they spend their money and what experiences they enjoy during their visit.
The best part is that you already have access to most of this information and the rest is within easy grasp! So how can you use the information you have at your fingertips to form stronger relationships and greater loyalty, and why is it important? We have outlined the top 5 reasons why your venue should care.
1. Retain existing customers
The effect of the customer retention rate on actual, bottom-line customer numbers cannot
be over-estimated. A great tool for customer retention is the Loyalty program. It provides a practical, hard reason for people to continue visiting your venue and it also provides information about your customers that allows their needs to be met more efficiently and effectively. This in turn makes them more likely to remain customers. In addition, once a member starts redeeming their rewards, both their enthusiasm and engagement increase.
2. Target to increase profits
More than simply retaining customers, the data provided from your loyalty program can be used to better cater for their varying needs. You can use this data to segment your customers for the purposes of marketing, sales and customer service.
You can then use this data to split your customers into more defined groups according to factors such as spending patterns, entertainment and gaming predilection, food and beverage preference, and more. By deeper segmenting the psychographics of your members, over and above the standard demographics, you can work out who your best or ideal customer is. You can then target your marketing spend to where your most profitable customers are most likely to see those messages and develop new products (or repackage existing ones) to suit different segments.
By analysing your records, you can identify important information about key customers and use this information to increase on-site spend, time in venue and even bottle shop or product sales.
3. Acquire new customers
Using the information gained from your existing members also gives you a clearer insight to who your customers are. Using the profile of existing members who are the most profitable to your venue gives you the perfect roadmap to follow when targeting new customers through your marketing and advertising efforts.
Tailoring your messages via the profile you have gathered of your existing “ideal” members, means you can focus on where these people are looking, what they enjoy and how they will respond to your marketing advances, thereby streamlining your spend, time and effort.
4. Decrease your marketing & advertising spend
Because advertising based on segmentation of a loyalty database can be highly targeted, significant savings can be made. There is no need to send out thousands of flyers, create a whole internet digital campaign, or take pages of newspaper space that is irrelevant to many of the readers. Research and profiling takes away the need for “scattergun” marketing, allowing you to hone your message and your distribution platform and most importantly…save you time and money! Targeted advertising works measurably on two fronts, increasing your bottom line and reducing your ongoing expenses.
5. Increase customer lifetime value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is increasingly being recognised as one of the most important measures of the worth of a customer. It takes into account not only the customer’s value now, but the expected value over their projected lifetime as your customer. It is arguably the best way a marketer can demonstrate unequivocally that a program is working.
By researching your members and developing an accurate picture of their behaviours, attitudes, needs and wants and combining these with your existing demographic profile, you can measurably increase the CLV of existing and new clients through offering them value that is relevant to them, as well as ensuring they feel valued by you for their ongoing patronage.
We offer a range of research types for venues; from online surveys, in-venue programs, desktop data analysis and wider market profiling to give venues the best idea of what’s going to be the most effective for their market. Contact us today on (07) 3878 9355 or @dws.net.au to discuss how we can help you successfully access and utilise the goldmine of information hidden within your data!
