Call a sales representative: 1-877-331-2900
(PaymentsMarket.com) –When the economy takes a downturn, the ripple affect can hit a small business more than any other.
Challenging economic times force each business to evaluate their operations, services and base of loyal customers to see how to get better results with fewer dollars. Local merchants and restaurants have an even tougher challenge when trying to compete with larger franchises or big box players with deep pockets and more resources.
To local merchants and restaurants, the community they serve provides the foundation for long term success based on new customers and repeat customer visits. These are respectively known as customer acquisition and customer retention.
Customer acquisition is one of the highest costs of doing business, but is nevertheless a necessity. Traditional approaches include advertising programs such as radio, print, television, web and loyalty rewards programs. Customer retention is the lifeblood of profitability, providing the long-term return on investment for any marketing dollars spent.
Some signs your customer retention is failing includes less repeat customers, fewer word-of-mouth referrals and of course, less traffic in the store. Recognizing you have a problem is the first step to fixing it.
During a down economy, local economic development groups such as a chamber of commerce, downtown districts and even groups of merchants should reconsider their approach to single-store loyalty rewards and take a look at multi-merchant reward and loyalty programs. Multi-merchant reward programs take traditional loyalty programs to the next level of participation and incentives, while distributing the cost and benefits across multiple businesses with a vested interest in the community succeeding and retaining more customers.
Multi-merchant rewards programs generally include many of the merchant business in a community or downtown district. The businesses can be complimentary in service or located near each other. The rewards card is issued to a cardholder with benefits available for each participating business. This is a win-win-win scenario where card issuing costs are spread between multiple merchants, while each merchant supports their reward incentive and consumers only need one card across all participating merchants.
Consumers get more meaningful rewards and the local community thrives with repeat visits from happier customers. Customers appreciate the added flexibility of multi-merchant rewards programs and see more value than traditional programs that tend to get stale and lose consumer interest. According to Michael Breetzke, Marketing Manager for Opticard, a multi-merchant rewards service provider, “consumers like having a choice. The option to be a part of a non-competitive network of local businesses helps companies win new customers who may have otherwise chosen a non-participating competitor.” Studies even confirm this, stating nearly 62% of consumers prefer a multi-merchant card over a traditional single retailer card.
The good news is that service providers do include flexibility in how the programs are designed, delivered and supported. This allows the network or community to create programs to meet the technical and business needs of all participating retailers and businesses. As Breetzke of Opticard states, “as a service provider our programs aren’t designed to play matchmaker between merchants. We help facilitate the benefits and value of a community driven, multi-merchant rewards program to consumers and the stakeholders.”
Multi-merchant cards offer a viable option businesses can pursue as a way to get new customers and keep those you already have. To find out more about loyalty and rewards programs you can visit Opticard online or visit their Virtual Booth on PaymentsMarket.com
