Loyalty programs are a popular customer acquisition tool—65% of companies use them to attract new business. When done well, loyalty programs also encourage customers to spend more, buy more often, stick with a brand longer, and recommend the brand to others. These behaviors increase the customer lifetime value (CLV)—the most valuable metric for analyzing a business.

But shoppers are suffering from loyalty program overload. The average customer belongs to 15 programs but is active in less than half of them. Clearly, consumers love discounts and other loyalty program perks, but somewhere along the way, their enthusiasm dims. When that happens, all the behaviors that boost CLTV drop off.

To increase CLV, brands need a way to bring high value customers into their loyalty program and nurture their relationship in a way that ignites long-term engagement.

How to Boost CLV with Identity Marketing

Leading brands are enhancing their loyalty programs by using a verification platform to acquire new customers from high-value consumer communities, like students, teachers, medical workers, and the military. Marketers use the platform to launch an exclusive offer to these groups and verify their eligibility to receive it, and then tie these campaigns to their loyalty programs. 

Identity marketing campaigns bring new members into a loyalty program and drive their purchase behavior.

7 Ways Identity Marketing Increases Loyalty

1. Greater Customer Acquisition

Exclusive offers attract new customers. A recent survey of consumer communities revealed that an exclusive offer would motivate 66% of members to try a new brand. When you create a compelling offer and require shoppers to sign up for your loyalty program to redeem it, you gain new customers and increase membership.

2. Stronger Engagement

Identity marketing triggers a sense of belonging in customers because it taps into deep aspects of who they are. Eighty-four percent of teachers, 85% of the military, and 92% of students identify more strongly with those roles than they do their family roles or their religion.

Identity marketing also creates a strong emotional connection, which experts say is essential for an effective loyalty program. In fact, 56% of students said receiving an exclusive offer would make them feel excited, and 63% of teachers, first responders, and the military said it would make them feel appreciated. 

3. Increased Purchases

Identity marketing delivers personalized offers that increase purchase behavior. When given personalized offers, half of teachers would buy more, and 61% of the military and 69% of students would shop with a brand more frequently.

4. Better Customer Insight and More Chances to Leverage It

Knowing someone is a nurse or teacher or first responder provides you with greater insight into who they are than data like their gender or zip code. Having this richer understanding of your customers enables you to develop more meaningful promotions to engage them.

This zero-party data also gives you more chances to build loyalty. Holidays that celebrate a consumer community, such as National Doctors’ Day or Teacher Appreciation Week, give you the opportunity to create Black Friday campaigns year-round. For example, arts-and-crafts retail giant Michaels honors military members by offering them a greater discount on Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

Finally, storing the information you collect in your loyalty program makes it available to all the systems in your organization that your program is tied to. Research shows that when companies effectively use data to personalize their loyalty programs there is a 6x lift in member satisfaction.

5. Word-of-Mouth that Rapidly Scales Loyalty

Members of a consumer community share deep-seated values and experiences, and they go out of their way to support each other. This includes passing along a good deal. Research shows that more than 95% of students, teachers, healthcare workers, first responders, and the military would share a personalized offer, turning nearly every customer into a brand evangelist.

6. Customer-Friendly Experience

A verification platform instantly verifies consumer eligibility for a personalized offer as a seamless step in the loyalty enrollment process. Once customers are verified, your rewards program automatically redeems any subsequent offer they’re eligible for—whether they shop in-store, online, or in-app.

7. Program Optimization

A verification platform enables you to continually refine your loyalty program with A/B testing. You can optimize the kinds of offers you provide, the consumer communities you market to, or the times of the year you run campaigns. Gathering performance data on these tests lets you fine-tune your program and more effectively nurture long-term customer relationships.

Get More Out of Your Loyalty Program

More than 90% of companies use a customer engagement or loyalty program, so making your program stand out in the crowd is a challenge. Integrating a verification platform into your loyalty program gives you more insight into your customers and helps you make more relevant and effective engagements. This leads to stickier customers and greater CLV—the ultimate measure of your loyalty program’s success.

Incorporating identity marketing into your loyalty program is easy. Download our infographic to see a step by step guide.