Bonds Beyond Points: How Experiential Rewards Inspire True Loyalty

Read time: 4 minutes

Are you tired of your loyalty programme feeling like a mere transactional exchange, lacking the genuine connection your customers crave? Traditional rewards may boost spending, but they often miss the mark when it comes to building true loyalty.

Imagine a loyalty scheme that goes beyond the ordinary—one that creates unforgettable experiences and deep emotional connections. In a world where incentives are everywhere, an experiential loyalty programme could be the answer, transforming everyday interactions into lasting memories and engaging customers on a profound level.

By doing so, you'll not only delight your customers but also foster enduring loyalty, driving sustainable business growth in a way that simple points never could. Below, we explain how running experiential programmes and nurturing your brand fans is the best way to inspire true loyalty.

The problem with points-based loyalty programmes

Points-based rewards programmes are easy to understand and implement: your customers accumulate points by making purchases. These points can then be redeemed against future purchases, giving customers a reason to keep on spending with you.  They're one of the most common types of loyalty programmes.

And, up to a point, these schemes work. Customers can see a clear benefit to remaining loyal, and the more customers join, the more long-term value you’re driving to your brand. 

But, if all you have to offer your best customers is more and more points, these schemes offer diminishing returns.

Although points-based systems can be effective for initial sign-ups and maintaining a basic level of loyalty, these highly transactional programmes often fail to create the deep, emotional bonds that lead to lasting customer loyalty.

Advocacy data: How to find truly loyal customers

Before offering experiential rewards, ask yourself: Who's truly loyal to your brand? Who genuinely deserves a reward? This is where advocacy data proves invaluable.

Take Mention Me's Predicted ECR (Extended Customer Revenue) model. It projects who your brand champions will be over the next year, helping you identify which customers are poised to become your next great advocates. With this information, you can tailor experiences they’ll absolutely love.

Armed with advocacy data, you can craft a strategy that not only builds lasting loyalty but also surpasses customer expectations. Why guess when you can pinpoint who truly deserves extra appreciation?

By leveraging advocacy data, you can pinpoint and reward your most loyal fans, sparking powerful word-of-mouth referrals. This should help turn your loyalty programme into a smart, targeted, and truly engaging experience.

How experiential rewards can inspire customer loyalty

So if you want to build deeper bonds with your customers, what should you offer in your experiential rewards schemes? 

You’ve got a wealth of options to choose from, here are just a few examples:

• VIP Access to New Products

• Exclusive webinars or live-streamed events

• Bespoke or customised products

• Personal Shopping Assistants

• Surprise Gifts and Samples

• Loyalty Clubs or Member Communities

• Donations to charity and social impact initiatives

One way to really impress your customers with experiential rewards is to offer them something unexpected, so get creative with it! Think about your brand values and the places, personalities and interests that align with them. These should provide you with the basis for some unforgettable experiences for your customers. 

How to maximise value with an experiential loyalty programme

Experiential loyalty schemes aren’t the answer in all circumstances. Rewards can be expensive and time-consuming to conceive and implement. You also need a reasonable amount of customer data to put a worthwhile programme in place. 

You need to understand your customers well enough to know what kinds of experiential rewards examples are going to be emotionally valuable for them. 

Your data needs to be of a high enough quality to give you a picture of customer sentiment, letting you know what type of reward will work best with different groups of customers. 

And for an experiential scheme to be a driver of value, you need to know how much revenue your customers are generating for your business. That means you need advocacy data, which measures the totality of your customers’ actions - not just what they spend. 

If you can see how many people they’ve referred and how much these referrals are worth to your business in additional sales, you know how much overall value a loyal customer is bringing to your brand. 

With this knowledge, you can make sure your rewards are not so generous they’ll hurt your margins. 

How experiential loyalty schemes build advocacy

With experiential rewards, your loyalty programme becomes a powerful tool in your advocacy-building efforts. You can use your scheme to:

• Build loyalty tiers: You can use experiential rewards as part of a tiered reward scheme: reserve your best and most exclusive rewards for your best customers.
• Nurture advocates: With experiential loyalty programs, you can reward loyalty in a way that nurtures your customers into advocates, or inspires current advocates to take more actions. 
• Enhance personalisation: Offer rewards that adapt to customer preferences, ensuring that each reward feels personal and carefully curated.
• Build customer love: An unexpected gift, an action-packed trip or a thoughtful special offer creates a moment of customer delight, showing you’re ready to go above and beyond the call of duty to deliver value for your customers.

Using customer loyalty programme solutions to build advocacy amplifies the value of your loyalty rewards program. With a few thoughtful touches, you can transform everyday transactions into meaningful relationships and ensure your customers feel valued and understood. 

Deploying an experiential loyalty scheme as part of an advocacy marketing strategy unlocks greater value from your customer base, turning more customers into advocates and creating more passionate fans of your brand.

Unlock the full potential of retention and customer loyalty solutions with Mention Me.  Ready to transform casual buyers into lifelong advocates that spend more, come back often and bring their friends? Discover how with Mention Me. Request a demo.