BackOne of the most important factors to sustain and grow a business is customer retention. No matter how many new customers you have, if the customer attrition rate (number of customers who cancel or leave) is greater than customer retention, you will experience a loss in revenue. It is more cost effective to keep a customer than it is to gain new ones. This loss in customers is often referred to as customer churn. While churn is a normal part of business, it’s important to keep it within a healthy range.
Loyalty programs are popular in various industries and are designed to build a steady flow of repeat customers while simultaneously reducing churn. Providing a loyalty program is a strategy that rewards customers for their repeated purchases and engagement with your brand. It can help you increase customer retention, loyalty, and referrals and generate more revenue.
The Benefits of Adding Travel Rewards
Travel rewards programs are loyalty programs run by membership organizations. They can include frequent flier programs, travel rewards systems, and cruise line reward programs. A travel rewards program aims to provide extra incentives for customers to stay loyal to a specific brand.
Types of Travel Rewards to Offer Members
There are several ways travel rewards can offer members incentives.
Incentives with Co-Branded Credit Cards
Co-branded credit cards are a popular way to bring in new members. However, the incentives they offer vary. Usually, cards involve a zero to a small annual fee and resonate with members’ travel goals, earning more for travel-related purchases and offering maximum rewards for loyalty program purchases.
Welcome Bonuses
Providing a sign-up bonus is valuable for attracting potential members. Time-sensitive spending offers and sign-up bonuses for travel purchases are attractive incentives for new loyalty customers. In addition, the immediate point accrual helps members feel they’re making headway toward their travel goals.
Airline Miles
One popular perk offered to travel club members is earning airline miles as a bonus. This incentive is highly favored because it allows members to accrue flight credits quickly. Airline incentives can include benefits such as seat upgrades, access to airport executive or VIP lounges, free baggage, free flights, and more.
Hotel Upgrades
Hotel upgrades are an easy way for members to feel valued members of an organization. You can offer upgrades in the form of complimentary stays, complimentary meals, discounted or free parking, room upgrades, spa services, or offering other redeemable points which members can use during their next trip.
Rewards Tiers
Reward tiers are gaining popularity among loyalty program members. For example, members can take advantage of the loyalty club’s VIP-tiered offerings based on perks that reward members every time they hit the next reward tier.
Referrals
Incentivized referrals benefit customers by spreading the word about perks through referral links personally with their friends and family. Even though this trend has been around since social media first took off, it is still one of the easiest ways to earn extra benefits and boost point balances.
Measuring the Impact of Travel Perks on Churn
Churn analysis could have uncovered early indicators for each customer who churns. There are several avenues to consider regarding data measuring the impact of travel perks on churn.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This metric captures how willing customers are to recommend a brand, product, or service to someone else in their inner circle. Customers often respond to simple survey questions on a 0-10 scale: those in the 9-10 range are considered “net promoters,” while anyone averaging a score of 6 or below is a “net detractor.”
Customer Retention Rate (CRR)
CRR captures how long customers stay with your brand from the moment they make their first purchase until they have essentially stopped making repeat purchases. In most cases, the longer customers stick around and buy, the less motivated they will be to test out other brands. Customer retention is also a byproduct of customer satisfaction and customer happiness. If you continue to provide top-notch loyalty perks and services to your customers, combined with a comprehensive end-to-end customer experience, they will have much less of a reason to leave.
Purchasing Habits
It is also essential to understand how long it takes for customers to make a repeat purchase, how many customers are processing returns, and a variety of other purchasing behaviors that indicate how soon or how likely a customer might churn. By comprehending how your customers engage with your brand, you can adopt a more proactive approach to identifying obstacles they may encounter throughout their journey as a customer. Additionally, this knowledge can assist in crafting a more personalized experience for them, ultimately leading to greater customer satisfaction and happiness.
How Arrivia Can Help Your Business
Providing something that elevates the customer experience with your brand is the key to customer loyalty. For example, designing a travel perks program that allows customers to earn points based on their purchases or engagement with the brand, and convert those points into some benefit towards travel, can go a long way with customers who have their sights set on travel.
Arrivia can help your business develop a cost-effective yet advanced membership travel perks solution for your company.
Arrivia works closely with your business to provide a customizable travel web portal best suited to your customer’s needs and goals. Learn how arrivia’s products and solutions can benefit your business by requesting a demo today.
