Remember that customer who sent you a thank you note, but never made a purchase again? Does that sound like a familiar story of customers who make first-time purchases, but don’t visit your store again to use their loyalty points?
You’ve invested resources into converting these customers, so how can you re-engage them? How do you encourage them to use their loyalty points to make purchases?
At S Loyalty, we’re always thinking about how we can help you re-engage and retain existing customers to improve sales. Today, we’re excited to launch the S Loyalty automatic points expiration tool.
Benefits of having Automatic Points Expiration
Give your customers a reason to spend now
Inform your customers that they still have a chance to make the most of their points by redeeming rewards. By setting an automatic expiration date for your customers’ points for each given year, you can create a sense of urgency for customers to revisit your store and make a purchase. Points expiration gives you another opportunity to reach out to existing customers.
For example, you can set the expiration date for all points earned between January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017 to expire on July 1, 2018. Points accrued in subsequent years will also expire automatically according to the same schedule.
Bundle reminders with limited-time offers to re-engage customers
With a fixed points expiration date every year, you can conveniently craft a series of e-mail reminders for all your customers. These reminder e-mails can also be bundled with limited-time offers that reward existing customers and increase sales.
For example, you can set your points expiration date to July 1 each year, which can be timed with a mid-year sale. Customers with expiring points can receive an e-mail reminder with the points they are entitled to redeem that includes limited-time offers before July 1. E-mails bundled with offers can be sent out 2 months before, 1 month before, and 2 weeks before July 1 to engage different types of customers.
How It Works
Activate Points expiration on your S Loyalty account
Setting up your automatic points expiration is as simple as three button clicks and a confirmation.
Setup your Automatic Points Expiration Schedule
You can turn on your automatic points expiration schedule at the bottom of the Earning Points page of your S Loyalty console.
Click on the link to activate automatic points expiration.
Email your customers
After activating your automatic points expiration, you can use your third party marketing tool to send personalized reminders to your customers.
You can download your Customer CSV on S Loyalty and import the CSV file to the platform of your choice, such as MailChimp. S Loyalty’s Customers CSV file will include a report on the points expiring for each user at your designated time.
For example, if your customer has earned 300 points in 2016 and 2000 points in 2017, the customer has a total balance of 2300 points. Only the points earned in 2016 will expire on 1 January 2018, so under the column Points expiring on Jan 1, 2018 you will see 300. You can use this number to remind your customers of the minimum points they should spend.
You can upload the points from this report to your e-mail list on your third-party marketing tool. On MailChimp, you can add a new field for your Points expiring on MMM D, YYYY to the data associated with each customer.
After this, you can use the *|MERGE|* tags function to to customize the information you send to each customer.
Source: https://kb.mailchimp.com/merge-tags/use-merge-tags-to-send-personalized-files
You can set your *|MERGE|* tag to any name you like. In the exported CSV file, you will see a column for Points expiring on MMM D, YYYY, which you can set to be called *|POINTS_EXPIRING_MMDDYYYY|* into your campaign e-mail template.
Source: https://kb.mailchimp.com/merge-tags/use-merge-tags-to-send-personalized-files
Finally, you can insert the the *|POINTS_EXPIRING_MMDDYYYY|* merge tag into your campaign message to your customers. You may refer to this Mailchimp support article for detailed instructions.
Make use of this new automatic points expiration tool to remind and delight the customers you worked hard to gain! Get started with a simple few clicks to activate automatic points expiration.
Available to all S Loyalty merchants.