Sales Driving Partnerships… with your Customers (episode 107)

by Chloe Thomas

Jason is the Director of Partnerships at LoyaltyLion – one of the leading customer loyalty and engagement platforms. So who better to discuss how you can partner with your own customers to increase sales?

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Getting Into the World of Partnerships

Jason has been in the world of eCommerce for the last decade, helping small and medium businesses to grow online.

He first started out with Rangespan, a service provider for online retailers that was later acquired by Google. He then moved to Amazon, where his exposure to partnerships began.

When the opportunity to join LoyaltyLion came, specifically their partnerships team, Jason grabbed it and is looking forward to not only partnering with eCommerce agencies but also technology providers.

Partnering with Existing Customers

One way LoyaltyLion users are leveraging the power of existing customers is through friend referrals. Based on data, existing customers and newly-referred customers tend to be more loyal than other customer sets, and partnering with them is cost-effective.

Jason also highlights that loyal customers spend 67% more on average than new customers and that 89% of shoppers remain loyal to brands that share their values. In the same vein, friend referrals are powerful because you now have two people who share the same values, connecting with a brand they’re likely to be loyal to.

About Incentives

Jason shares a couple of effective incentive schemes:

  • Financial incentives for the referring loyal customer.
  • Experiential incentives, which can be more cost-effective but really valuable to the customer.

Adding a Sustainability Angle

A new integration for LoyaltyLion this 2022 is Verdn, and this allows them to use environmental pledges attached to products or services as rewards. Examples of pledges are planting trees and plastic cleanup.

This integration has been important for LoyaltyLion especially because it supports a significant cause that has a great impact.

More Integrations

Another new integration for LoyaltyLion this year is with Loudcrowd, which helps get more user-generated content from your own customers.

Lastly, they’ve also partnered with Okendo for customer reviews, which aims to build even more trust and loyalty.

An Extension of Your Brand

Your loyalty program is an extension of your brand, so the program name is important and the rewards should reflect the experience you want your customer to have. The mechanics of the program matter, but what’s more crucial is how it will make your customers feel.

As a last reminder, Jason says that loyalty programs are not something you set and forget. You have to work at it, but loyalty solutions and software can make things easier for you.

Insider Tips

If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with partnerships – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?

Jason’s advice is to complete the LoyaltyLion Academy, which provides you with the standard for loyalty marketing. It’s free and certification is provided upon completion.

He also recommends getting a copy of the LoyaltyLion Hall of Fame eBook that highlights the best loyalty programs and gives you strategies you can use for your own brand.

Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve partnerships performance?

Leverage friend referrals, because both existing and newly-referred customers have been shown to be more loyal than other customer sets.

Jason also mentions that with the LoyaltyLion system, you get a dashboard that’s full of data that’s clear and highly actionable. This information will help you in your retention and reward strategies.

If someone listening wants to learn more about partnerships is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?

Because it’s completely free and an effective resource, Jason suggests checking out the LoyaltyLion Academy.

Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in partnerships?

Jason says eCommerce brands have to prepare for various scenarios.

Relating to loyalty, make sure you have a program in place because retaining your customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Rewarding your loyal customers will keep your business thriving during this potentially uncertain period.

Interview Links

Jason on Social media:

Sponsored by…

Klaviyo is a leading customer data and marketing automation platform dedicated to accelerating revenue and customer connection for online businesses. Klaviyo makes it easy to store, access, analyze and use transactional and behavioral data to power highly-targeted customer and prospect communications.

The company’s hybrid customer-data and marketing-platform model allows companies to grow by fostering direct relationships with customers, without giving up their valuable data to popular big-tech ad platforms. Over 80,000 innovative companies like Unilever, Custom Ink, Living Proof and Huckberry sell more with Klaviyo. Learn more at www.klaviyo.com.

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