Are reward cards the solution?

The idea of a reward card has been around for while. You issue your customers a card and if they come back you will provide them with rewards. This has been a time-tested way for businesses of any kind to save on marketing expenses to get new customers while diverting some of that money to incentivize existing customers to come back. Returning customers are the most reliable source of recurring income and they do a great job of spreading the word of mouth.

However, reward cards have downsides. Remember that time when you spontaneously decided to pop into your coffee shop only to find out you do not have the card with you?

What if you would always be able to carry the loyalty card with you, in a manner of speaking then? This is where digital loyalty programs come in. You can always access them on the one device everyone carries with them all the time: their mobile phone.

We are bringing reward cards to the digital age by providing hotels and restaurants with a mobile rewards app that they can easily self-brand.

Spend less on platform apps to get new customers and offer better rewards to returning customers.

Any hotel that can work without platform apps? Booking platforms, discount apps, coupon apps. Sure these are great to get your name out and great for bargain hunters. They will get you new customers through the door. In return, you give them a hefty discount, or a two for the price of one deal, and on top of that perhaps a hefty commission for the privilege of being on the platform?

You expect the discounts to make it profitable for you – ultimately. They might order that extra bottle of wine, items that are not discounted, and you hope they will like your place so much they will keep on coming back. Money well spent to get them through the door … the first time.

But you know, often these customers will not return, they are on the platform after all. And the platform offers 1000’s of deals at many different places. Many are one-time customers.

Now, we are not saying to avoid these platform apps altogether. They are a great way to get new customers.

But then? Shouldn’t you try everything possible to get them to come back? After all a returning customer is a profitable customer.

Is a loyalty program the answer?

Yes it could be!

Instead of paying a platform app – stay in touch and reward your loyal customers. You get them to book rooms or make reservations through your app and you give them incentives to return to your hotel, its outlets or restaurants.

Because you save on their commissions you instead can pass on the savings partially to your returning customers. You save and your customer saves.

This is ultimately why most of the big hotel and restaurant chains offer these in the form of a loyalty program app. 

But the smaller hotel and restaurant chains mostly do not. It is costly and time-consuming to figure out what works best and then to develop the software to support it. 

That is where Loyaltier comes in. We have developed a mobile loyalty program app for Android and iPhones that can be easily reskinned by us for your own brand. The app will use your brand colors and your app icon and will have its own listing in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

So how will your loyalty scheme work?

The best loyalty program in the world are those that are kept simple, so that customers immediately understand how rewards are accumulated and can be used. 

We have implemented this principle as follows:

Every time a customer spends, whether on a restaurant bill, a spa bill, a room bill, he accumulates points. How many points? That is up to you. For example for every $100 spent you can reward 20 points. The 20 points are equal to $20 and these can be redeemed as a discount on the next visit to the hotel.

Now, what is easier than that to understand? The first time a customer visits he is invited to download the app upon being presented with the bill. He can immediately accumulate points that he can use during a next visit.

You can hand out promotional cards with a QR code on it together with the bill that they can scan and redirects to the App or Play Store to download the app.

Becoming a member of your membership program is as easy as logging into the app with a Facebook or Gmail account (or if desired an email address). The membership number is created immediately.

When the customer returns he opens the app, a staff member types in the bill amount, the receipt number, and an authorization code. The bill is then reduced accordingly and the rewards redeemed.

In order to incentivize the customer to not postpone the return visit for too long points expire after a year.

Are there any other benefits of having a digital loyalty program?

Yes, when you use our app as the platform for your loyalty program that is…. The app offers much more than bare-bones points collection functionality:

• In the hotel app you display information about your hotel & its outlets, room rates, members-only discounts, outlets deals and menu items. In the restaurant app you display information about your restaurant, your current promotions and your menu items. You get access to a content management system (CMS), through a web portal, where you can upload the images and the promotional texts, and validity periods. 
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• You can stay in touch with your customers by using our web frontend to send push messages to your members, attending them to current promotions. In this way your members will keep o returning to the app.
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• You can even display promotions and send notifications in multiple languages. Your members will see the content and messages you sent in their language of choice. You get contact information from your clients: emails and telephone numbers (if provided), which you can use for other marketing purposes, such as email campaigns. All data can be exported to excel, as the data are yours and not ours!
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• For each member, you have points collection and redemption information which will tell you who your most valuable customers are. You can target these customers separately if you want.

You can submit any technical support request. We will continuously monitor performance, investigate crashes, and release new versions to address any bugs or to do required updates. From time to time we will also release a version with added functionality based on industry feedback. You are responsible for monitoring reviews in the stores and responding to them.