Social Media Marketing 101

Social media are highly interactive online technologies that allow individuals and groups to share content, often in virtual communities. Their best advantage is their ability to facilitate engagement, and I mean lots of highly valuable engagement I have often mentioned otherwise, like in posts about nurturing leads through x number of touchpoints down through the sales funnel.  Social media is the tactical side of those discussions. To put it otherwise, the whole point of social media is to network, ie to reach and engage with otherwise strangers.

The game changing aspect of social media is the fact that they are dialogic (ie they provide two-way communication) which varies considerably from earlier monologic (or one-way) forms of marketing communication like newspapers, television and magazines. For this reason, when using it, remember to harness its dialogic super power. If you can do that, you will be exploiting it far more fully than otherwise.

Uses & Benefits (of multiple social media channels. Beware however that, if you wish to use multiple channels, only select the few best fits. Avoid spreading yourself too thin.)

• Improve market reach. Reach as many portions of your market as possible by participating in multiple communities. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket, especially since many of your competitors likely limit themselves this way.
• Improve search engine rank. Your social media presence will be considered as part of the content that affects your rankings. Consequently, if you have your brand’s name on social media, and even multiple websites with their own high page rankings like Facebook, Twitter and so on, your business will piggyback off of those high rankings.
• Improve Customer Service & protect your brand's reputation against negative feedback in 2 key ways. First, social media platforms allow you to track what is being said about your brand. It also allows your customers to communicate with you directly regarding their grievances. You can therefore respond quickly to resolve customer problems. Your quick responses signal that you are willing and able to resolve customer concerns and are therefore a good choice.
• Follow your competition to platforms to reach their customers. Once your competition is on a platform with an audience, you will likely benefit from it also. Review their website or content for a list of all of their social media accounts.
• Go viral. If your content is well received, your audience actually does the promotion work for you. This is a marketer's dream because it costs considerably less that otherwise. Social media sites typically provide some type of function(s) that facilitate this. Examples include Facebook's 'share' function, Twitter's 'retweet' button, Pinterest's 'pin' function, Tumblr's 're-blog' function and so on.

Social Media Strategy

Do not post just for its own sake. Have a strategy instead. For for-profit businesses, you likely want your posts to convert leads through stages of the sales funnel. A social media strategy involves 1) objectives, 2) tactics and 3) performance measures. 

1) Objectives.  

1. Establish social media marketing objective(s) that align to business goals (like mission statements) and your corporate strategy plans.  Ensure these objectives are S.M.A.R.T, ie specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Common social media objectives include the following.
• improve brand awareness
• encourage engagment
• advertise your products and services
• sell your products and services
• measure how your market perceives your brand
• offer customer service over social media platforms. Example(s).
• To use [a platform, to be subsequently selected] for customer support to lower average response rate to under 1 hour by the end of quarter 2. 
• Track your brand's performance and adjust your strategy accordingly
2. Know your audience as intimately as possible. The better you know your audience, the more consistent and attractive you can curate your brand voice and tone.
3. Know your competitors. This includes looking closely at their offering and social media behavior. Can you create a type of mini marketing communication centric SWOT analysis (using Porter's 5 Competitive Forces and Pestle)? 
• Strength: You can use the special dialects of the small local towns community while the international market leader can not.
4. Select social media platforms that meet your objectives. Key considerations include whether your audience comprises customers (B2C) or businesses (B2B), the type of content you produce, whether you want the content to be  found via daily feeds vs audience searches over the long term. For instance, if you want to know what people are saying about your brand right now, feeds are more useful than search engines. Since pull marketing content requires keywords for search optimization, YouTube is a better option over Facebook. Consider the demographics of your audience. 10-year old YouTube content can continue to generate leads and engagement in ways that Facebook won't. See basic details about different social media platforms to consider when undertaking this step. 
5. Be sure to get your account verified as a safeguard against imposter accounts. See each platform's steps.  

2) Tactics.

1. Create a social media content calender. To this end, establish tentpole events that are most likely to appeal to your target market. For each tentpole, calculate all associated dates that require your action for each tentpole event. Use tools like Buffer to schedule your posts well in advance to different platforms (Twitter, Instagram, etc).
2. Determine what content is truly valuable and engaging for your target audience. If unsure or need inspiration, follow these tips.
• look at the content of closest competitors, direct and indirect. 
• Sometimes, a competitor is strong on one platform but weak on another. Analyze whether dominating the platform with their weaker performance is an opportunity for you to dominate that platform and attract a lot of the market.
• Use social listening tools. Social listening allows you to know what current and potential customers think about you and your competition. These analyses may uncover opportunities for brand (re)positioning, at the very least in your messaging.
3. Design brand voice and tone that appeals to your target market. Include it in your brand style guideline to ensure that your personality remains consistent, even across platforms.
4. Create content that will appropriately engage your audience. Examples include the following.
• answers to audience questions
• routinely seek out posts of other creators with a significant following. Make some meaningful and positive feedback that could get the attention of their followers. Various platforms have their means of facilitating this like Twitter's retweet feature, Instagram's @tag and so on. 
• In response to an article, you can say "I liked your perspective on X ..." (and NOT simply 'I liked your article"). 
• Demonstrate your expertise. However, for the sake of being relatable, post content that also shows your imperfections like mistakes.
• include images (NOT only text and links). For instance, businesses using inforgraphics generate traffic over 10% more than otherwise. Remember that humans process visual content faster than text. This is particularly noteworthy when considering the limited amount of time in which to capture the attention of an audience online.
• Kylie Cosmetics engaged its audience over 2 years of content in the form of selfies and home videos. They portrayed Kylie just as a luxury lifestyle brand with repeated, obligation-free touchpoints before the launch of her lip kit business. Read my full case study of Kylie Cosmetics.
• Gamification is fast becoming a great opportunity for encouraging customer engagement.  
5. ...

3) Social media audits.

1. Perform a social media audit of your accounts. Since specific steps are outside the scope of this article, read otherwise on how to perform social media audits. Example(s) of common metrics of social media audits include the following.
• engagement metrics. Focus on these metrics (over less meaningful types like vanity metrics) because engagement indicates actual engagement. They include engagement (like comments, virality behavior, etc), click-through, conversion and so on. 
• vanity metrics (number of likes, followers, )
• audience profile as planned? (demographics, demand, etc)
• Find and report imposter accounts that use your name to capture or mislead your target market.
• Useful analytics tools include hashtracking, Followerwonk, etc 
2. Have appropriate expectations for the results. For instance, brand awareness marketing is geared towards long term results like trust, loyalty, authority and so on. Consequently, do not expect immediate 'direct responses' like purchases, clicks and so on from efforts designed for brand awareness. Brand awareness is a more nebulous measure and usually takes several months or longer before sales occur. Here are some common examples. To ensure you are taking a strategic approach, list your metrics in a meaningful way. The stages within the sales funnel is an example.
• Brand awareness
• To drive traffic (with Linkedin) to your website, monitor click-throughs.
• To raise brand awareness (Instagram), track number of Instagram Story views. 
• number of followers, shares, etc
• Engagement (ie how much audience interacts with your content)
• Comments, likes, mentions, etc
• Conversions
• to advertise (Facebook), monitor cost-per-click (CPC).
• Relationship management
• testimonials, repeat sales, your team's average response rate, etc
3. Adjust your strategy accordingly.

Summary of most popular social media platforms

Among the most popular forms with over 100 million registered users include the following (listed in alphabetical order).

• Facebook and its associated Facebook Messenger.  
• Audience profile: teens to grandparents for B2C
• Your method(s) of use: business pages; groups; host events)
• Usage: brand awareness, conversion campaigns, B2B, B2C, retargeting campaigns.
• Useful features: targeted advertising; live broadcasting; offers continuously / dynamicallly evolving results for current trends
• Facebook Messenger
• Feature: Businesses can respond directly and personally with target customers who download the app.
• Instagram
• Audience profile: a bit younger than that of Facebook, gen Z, millenials; mainly used as a mobile app
• Business content type(s): visual, photos, short videos, live streams and stories that disappear at the end of each day.
• Usage: brand awareness, visual-first platform, B2C, influencer marketing.
• Useful feature(s): influencer marketing is  potentially much higher on this channel; Interactive questions in 'Stories' make the feature exceptionally good for engagement; Up to 30 hashtags are allowed per post as a means of potentially appearing in the continuously trending search results; @ tags of other accounts are useful for shoutouts for non-competing companies with the same market for new customer acquisition / market penetration.
• Pinterest
• Audience profile: mostly women, millennials.
• Usage: brand awareness, e-commerce, shopping, website visits, retargeting, campaigns, travel, food, B2C, influencer marketing.
• Quora
• Useful features: ranks highly on Google search results pages. It is also a search engine itself. This is powerful for creating backlinks and therefore boosting SEO. Consequently, it is ideal for business promotion. Users select specific topics and can therefore find you if you offer something in which they are truly interested. Your content can be shared and liked by users to rank it higher on results pages. You can enter your credentials in your profile. in order to plan your questions strategically, you can search for questions with the highest number of followers.
  
  
• Tik Tok
• Business content type: short viral videos, creative.
• Audience profile: mainly popular among young viewers.
• Useful features: some of the videos get shared on other sites as well.
• Twitter 

• Audience profile: Males; between 35 and 65, especially below 49. 

• Business content: microblogging (NOT as visual) so best for news and B2B; starting conversations; images, links (back to your business website) and other types of popular social media features

• Usage: brand awareness, retargeting campaigns, politics, news, B2B, B2C, mobile-first marketing efforts.

• Useful features:  polls; retweets (ie virality potential technology); paid private publishing
• LinkedIn  (to boost professional networks)

• Audience profile: B2B professional clients;

  ---

• Usage: brand awareness, recruitment, B2B

• Your content: business-oriented; general posts that showcases your expertise, long-form content, and even job listings; great if you are a startup or entrepreneur looking to boost their professional networks, to reach out to B2B clients, to reach investors or to boost brand recognition 

• YouTube
• Business content type(s): video content; tutorials or demonstration (very popular).
• Usage: brand awareness, educational content, how-to videos, SEO-focused content (NB.YouTube is the second most popular search engine), influencer marketing.
• Useful features: share videos on non-YouTube sites; create playlists; interact with audience on the YouTube platform; content is optimized for search.
• Audience profile: Varied, even including persons over 55; over 2 billion monthly logged-in users and even more viewers without accounts, fastest growing demographics. B2C and even some B2B. 

WhatsApp

• Content type & useful feature(s): text, voice or video messaging mostly to audience's mobile devices; 1-on-1 or group chats (group chats may allow or block audience participation);
• Audience profile: U.S. and globally; especially younger groups.
• Telegram
• (similar to WhatsApp)
• Snapchat
• Audience profile: young audience
• Content: photos, short videos or text messages that remains available for 24 hours.
• Features / benefits: useful for raising brand awareness among adolescents.
• Pinterest
• Business content type: visual; posts of products, blog posts and a variety of other content; fashion; home decor; food; DIY content.
• Feature: search engine
• Audience profile: young people; women.
• Reddit
• Chat bots

CONTENT RELATED TO USING MULTIPLE SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

• Sales funnel 101. Social media is useful for the all important 'engagement' phase of the sales funnel.
• Brand voice and tone
• Social media 101
• Instagram 101
• Facebook Groups
• WhatsApp Business
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Chatbots
• Tawkto
• Social media management 

• Social listening
• Use tools like Buffer to schedule your posts to various social media platforms well in advance.        

• Be guided by where in their purchase decision process your customers are. This will help you to create appropriate posts, advertisements and other engagement content. 
• Summary of other social media platforms: https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/09/social-media-channels-marketing.html 
• Internal links
• Details of the most popular social media platforms to be considered when selecting social media platforms. 

• Social media content ideas 

Nudge customers closer to buying decision by asking questions like:  

• 'Which do you prefer between A, B and C?, Which is your most favored or hated disliked option?

Use a snippet of the most powerful part of a testimonial in a graphic. Then place the entire testimonial in the description of the post (of Instagram for instance) 

Transparency: Show behind the scenes, where ingredients come from, etc especially if not usually made public knowledge.

Quick tips:

FAQs:

Before & after: results after you helped.

Other related industries:

User generated content:

Long form content (apx once monthly)

Community issues

Direct sales offer 

• Abovementioned case studies in other content
• Instagram 101 | Instagram
• Kylie Cosmetics

Incident Reports for Risk Management

What is an incident report & why is it necessary?

An incident report is a formal record of the facts related to an accident, near miss or injury. This document is an integral part of risk management, (particularly the management's response and monitoring & control stages of risk management). Its primary purpose is root cause analysis (aka fishbone diagram analysis), ie to discover the circumstances that led to the occurence of a risk so as to prevent future incidents.  

Incident reporting is NOT intended for comparisons. For instance, if different reporting units are compared for safety based on incident reporting volume, a unit with more reports of adverse events may be incorrectly marked down when, in reality, the converse may be true. For instance, that unit may simply be more vigilant, have a better culture regarding safety-consciousness and preparedness for submitting reports. That unit may well be conducting more double checks than its counterparts.

Incident reporting is NOT intended for measuring performance (like safety, brand awareness, etc) like number of medication errors issued by a hospital to determine that hospital's safety. As seen from the earlier example that highlighted why a high volume of incident reports is not necessarily the sign of bad performance, incident reports are much better for identifying risks and root cause analysis. Besides, statistics show that just over 5% of all adverse events in health care are reported at all. In other words, units with more reports of adverse events are possibly more worthy of one's trust.  

Incident reporting is NOT intended for tracking the changes over time of reporting. This is due to reporting bias. For instance, the healthcare industry sometimes saw very significant increases in reports after its communities implemented improved reporting systems. As the earlier discussions already illustrated, a higher number of reports does not necessarily denote higher risk levels.

The contents of an incident report

As recommended by SafeSite Solutions, EVERY incident report should have the following as a minimum.

• Type of incident 
• Events with an undesirable outcome: injury, property damage or theft
• Events with no undesirable outcome, this time (because a hazard was exposed): near miss
• Location of the incident (and or any other context-specific detail that might determine liability. While 'location' is useful for OSHA-type reporting for protecting workers in the workplace, conditions in which products and services are used may require other customized fields.)
• temperature (if it is a factor that ensures and determines safe use, like temperature logs of meat storage facility where meat went bad and caused illness) 
• Date of incident
• Time of incident
• Name of an affected individual * (Also include qualifying details related to individual's membership in a population, segment, etc of at-risk individuals)
• Jane Donut, aged 5 (if age is important to segment definition) 
• A narrative description of the incident, including the sequence of events, results of the incident and response.* (Considering the definition of 'risk' where a deviation occurs from the expectation and the concept of an 'inciting event' that changes the normal business as usual course of any story that would have been otherwise too uneventful to tell, describe the event from which the deviation occurred.) 
• Example: Hazel's X-blade scissors fell from her desk onto her lap (the 'inciting event' described plainly and objectively) while she was stitching an item A25 (the normal story that would have been too uneventful to tell otherwise). Suspecting a deep lap wound, her boss (Jackie Mason) called 911 (business representative's response). Hazel reported feeling a sudden and overwhelming feeling of exhaustion that made her "nod" for a second. (The version of the injured party). 
• Description of Injuries, if any & severity in terms of the business context. 
• Example: broken right index finger. Injury will require at least x weeks for recovery, resulting in downtime in the typing role for that period.
• Example: Bruised forehead. Jim returned to work within 5 minutes. 
• Treatments required, if any
• Witness name(s)
• Witness statements
• Other workers involved
• Video and/or 360-degree photographs of the scene

Add contextually relevant items like the following.

• Whether or not proper personal protective equipment (PPE) was being used
• The root cause(s) of the incident
• Associated hazards raised and resolved following the event
• The affected individual’s version of the events
• Actions taken by concerned individuals after the incident

Key Considerations

*Create a separate report for each individual even if more than one person is injured. While it is acceptable to duplicate general details across reports of this nature, each report will need details specific to each individual, like the event from their point of view or medical records.

*Include quantifiable measurements where possible. Example: The ladder capacity is 250 lbs and the victim was hoisting 300 lbs.

Review good samples of incident reports on SafeSite Solution's website.

Best Practices for Implementing an Incident Report System

• Design the reporting system to provide value to risk management. The system should be able to generate in-depth analysis and result in strong interventions to reduce risk. A very well designed system has several versions of the incident report. For instance, one version is specifically designed for near misses, falls, behavior incidents, specific types of injury, etc. 
• Encourage all persons to report all incidents, however small, even if "nothing happened!" (aka a near miss). 
• Make the process meaningful to the reporter (as a means to incentivize their best use). Allow the process to give reporters a sense of empowerment. Really stress appreciation for the reports. Follow up on reports to show that the reporter's time was not wasted.
• For instance, allow incident reporters to recognize that they are contributing to the improvement of the product or service they sell.
• Foster a no-blame approach to reporting. Where that is difficult, consider making the reporting process anonymous.
• Make the process as simple and convenient as possible. 
• Some templates offer electronic contact forms. 
• Electronic forms have become popular. The OSHA offers Excel spreadsheets with fields that can be filled in over time.
• Consider your reporters. If they are the type of people that will be turned off of completing incident forms, consider another medium they are more likely to use, perhaps a telephone number they call so that someone else completes the form. 
• Define the event as well as possible.
• Injury, near miss, etc  
• Define the at-risk population as well as possible. Example: A market has segments like children below 5 that are at risk of injury for products with certain features like harsh chemicals. 
• Consistently monitor the at-risk population, especially if it exhibits risk-inducing behavior.
• Encourage persons writing reports to be objective and to avoid blame games. Mangement's response should show gratitude for the chance to implement measures to prevent similar events in the future.

Integrate Incident Reports into your Risk Management

• Identify and assess the hazard(s) 
• Identify the risk(s) whose occurrance it is a possible or even probable cause (using root cause analysis example using a fishbone diagrams)
• Considering the level of exposure of the hazard and the consequent probability of the risk, (re)assess the risk rank.
• Adopt the appropriate risk response.

CONTENT RELATED TO INCIDENT REPORTS FOR RISK MANAGEMENT

• Risk management 101
• Hazards 101
• Other types of risk management risk documents include checklists.
• SafeSite allows you to signup for a free or paid account. They offer many resources that promote worksite safety like incident report examples, templates, checklists, workflows, inspections and so on.
• Free downloadable and customizable templates (SafeSite)
• A near miss aka close call, near accident, accident precursor or injury-free event is an event that could have been an accident had things played out differently. It occurs because of exposure to a hazard like a nut-flavored snack, a hazard (for those with nut allergies) is unlabeled and provided as free samples to the public. Thinking the item is nut-free, the public is exposed to the hazard and persons prone to anaphylaxis begin to sample it, thereby running the risk of anaphylaxis. A near miss report should lead to hazard resolution and preventative measures. In this example, the hazard resolution involves labeling the snacks or removing them from the reach of the public. However, if the event isn’t reported or addressed, a serious injury could easily result, possibly only hours later from the same or similar circumstances. Other examples include nearly getting Covid-19 by wearing inadequate protective personal equipment (PPE).

   

Notes:

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). With the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the US Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to ensure safe and healthful working conditions by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance.

Measure Success: Loyalty Rewards Programs: Monitor & Control

A loyalty rewards program is designed to promote repeat high value sales. It creates a type of marriage with your customer that aims to keep them from looking elsewhere. Consequently, if your customers are not seeing value in buying again or even enjoying the rewards, your program is likely failing at its objective. 

Measuring customer loyalty is necessary to ensure that you are meeting your goals. Use different metrics to evaluate and adjust your program to ensure that you are growing a staunchly loyal customer base.

This post is concerned with the monitor and control of your loyalty program. Specifically, it discusses different ways of measuring your program's success and offers suggestions for optimization.

Repeat Purchase Rate (RPR)

The repeat purchase rate (RPR) is the percentage of customers that return to make another purchase. The RPR is a great measure of customer loyalty. This information is also useful from the perspective of reducing advertising costs and increasing your bottom line because research shows that repeat customers convert at 12 times the rate of new ones. See how to calculate the RPR below.

It is ideal if you already have a database of customers. Otherwise, your loyalty program will give you that opportunity to begin building one. 

To calculate the RPR, establish the number of repeat buying customers, ie ones who purchased from you again. Divide that number by the total number of ALL customers in your database. Then multiply the result by 100 to arrive at the RPR expressed as a percentage. 

BENCHMARK: 20% to 40% RPR is generally considered a good range. Consider this metric along with the average order value (below). 

Average Order Value (AOV)

The Average Order Value (AOV) refers to how much in dollars customers spend on each order. Some nickname it the measure of 'customer love'. Retailers can benefit a lot by tracking and increasing this metric. For instance, the AOV allows you to see how well you offset customer acquisition costs. Specifically, increasing AOV reduces acquisition cost and therefore improves your return on investment (ROI) re marketing. This metric is ideally considered along with others like the repeat purchase rate / RPR (above). After all, what benefit is there of having high repeat purchases that are too low in value to justify your service? Within the context of the Covid19 pandemic during which time brick and mortar retail businesses worked fewer hours, increasing this metric is helpful in raising overall revenue. 

All the same, the AOV is sometimes useful in evaluating how well your customers are spending on each order. Calculate this metric by dividing total revenue in dollars divided by the number of orders. The AOV is expressed as that dollar value.

NB. Also use the AOV for creating future success. For instance, if they can afford it, marketers may use the AOV as the base for establishing the value of rewards / reward points to offer advocating customers for referring friends. Ideally however, offer this reward to new referred customers only AFTER they have made purchases to ensure that you break even. In other words, the AOV will not only be the reward but also the minimum value of a new customer's purchases required for earning the rewards.

Redemption Rates (RR) for Loyalty Rewards Programs

The redemption rate for a loyalty reward program is the percent of points that have been redeemed for rewards, ie out of all those that had ever been previously earned. See the formula below. The score for 'total points spent' should include ALL points redeemed since the program's launch. That number must be divided by the total of ALL points ever issued since the program's launch, even those that expired. Then multiply the result by 100 to arrive at a percentage.

Example: 

Redemption rate = (15,700 points redeemed aka spent / 103,000 points ever issued, including expired points) X 100 = 15.24%.

BENCHMARK: The average redemption rate for loyalty rewards programs vary around 14% to 20% and above. If yours is lower, consider making improvements.

Average Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of Loyalty members

An effective loyalty rewards program should boast an average customer lifetime value (CLV) that is higher for loyalty members, ie over the CLV of non members. 

If you have the wherewithal, I would suggest running statistical analyses that compare independent groups like T-tests (for 2 groups) or ANOVA (for 3 or more groups). Although a group will invariably have a higher CLV than another, eyeballing differences is not always useful because such differences are not always to a statistical degree and therefore may not always warrant attention. For help with this, write me, referencing this post and specifying that you need to statistically compare groups.

A statistically higher member CLV suggests that the current program is performing well and deserving of further investment. Otherwise, the program may be based on an outdated approach and need to be redesigned to better adapt to modern consumers.

Active Engagement Rate (within the loyalty rewards program)

As previously discussed, including engagement in loyalty rewards programs has been shown to engender more meaningful loyalty than the old 'earn & burn' purchases-only based loyalty program. The active engagement rate (AER) indicates how many customers are not only participating but 'actively engaged' with your loyalty program. Engagement relates to non-purchasing activities like referring friends and using social media to review your products, comment on your posts and so on. 

To calculate this metric; divide the number of customers who engaged within a period over the total number of customers within the program. To express the result as a percentage, multiply by 100.

Redemption Cycle Time

This metric refers to the amount of time it takes for customers to move from earning to redeeming awards. The rewards must appear attainable.

To calculate this, consider using a calender calculator. Calculate the number of days between the first awarded rewards and first redemption.

Redemption Cycle = Date of redemption - Date of first awarded reward(s) 

BENCHMARK: Your high-value customers should be able to redeem a reward within 3 to 6 months. However, your next most valuable tier should be able to redeem within 6 to 9 months.

DO's & DON'TS 

• Analyze how well your rewards catalog has been curated. 
• Implement monitor and control systems for your loyalty rewards program, not only as a whole but also its components, like the in-built referral program, free shipping and other forms of subscriptions and so on.

Example: Implement some form of data collection. The ideal for those with a sufficiently large budget is to integrate a CRM with the point of sale that tracks all data required to run the analyses.

• To increase the average order value;
• 
  

  establish minimum purchase thresholds that qualify customers to enjoy desirable benefits. 

  Example. Free shipping on orders over $100

• 
  

  offer volume discounts. 

  Example. Get $3 off if you spend $30.

• offer product bundle. 

  Example. Rather than buy only product x, also buy products y and z for an overall lower price of $105.

• cross sell. 

  Example. With that hair brush, you can also get a bag that was custom made to hold it perfectly.

• To improve a low repeat purchase rate (RPR);
  

  Make the program as appealing as possible with multiple ways to earn points and redeem rewards. Also see how to adapt your program can adapt to modern consumer, how to enjoy the advantage of a tiered program and how to design a program so you give more to higher value customers and do not break the bank.

For instance, beyond rewarding for transactions. also reward customers for engagement, interactions, social sharing, health or other goals related to your brand's core values. 

• Provide cues that remind customers to redeem their rewards. Cues may include visual reminders on your website or brick and mortar store. Cues may also include verbal reminders at checkout or other points of contact.

• Encourage frequent participation. The earning rate and frequency of participation in general have been shown to relate to a customer's redemption rate. 

  Example: Send messages to customers who have been inactive over an extended period. 

• Just as you would with new or pre-existing products, promote your loyalty rewards program. Ensure its memory is alive and well in the minds of your customers.

• Make the process clear and easy to follow. Get tips on how to make an explainer page.
• Ensure that rewards have perceived value. Some examples include the following.
• Personalize rewards as much as possible. In fact, this was the single most desirable factor identified in one research study (by Wells Fargo. 77% surveyed consumers agreed).
• Allow customers to select their rewards whenever possible. This is why I personally like the idea of having a rewards catalog.
• Collaborate with other complementary brands to create rewards. Ensure collaborating brands share your core values and honor your target market's lifestyle. (Wells Fargo found that 70% of consumers agreed with this).
• Offer rewards that are exclusive.
• Remind customers of their total available rewards. Ideally, use email services that integrate with your points database to automatically insert the total points within the body of emails. 
• Reward customers for mentioning their redemption over social media. By rewarding evangelists, you also motivate them to resume the process of earning points.
• Conduct market research on your program to get customer feedback that can inform how you can improve your program.
• Recognize that, outside of your efforts, many other variables impact on the redemption rate. They may include industry, location, ease of redemption, program awareness, the perceived value of rewards and the age of your loyalty program. 

CONTENT RELATED TO MEASURING THE SUCCESS OF THE LOYALTY REWARDS PROGRAMS

• Why the old 'earn and burn' loyalty program model is failing and a new approach for modern consumers.
• Tiered loyalty programs
• Use spend-based loyalty rewards programs to give greater rewards to customers with the highest customer lifetime value (CLV) ... and reduce costs while you are at it. 
• A great loyalty rewards program can not help your business if customers can not understand it sufficiently well to sign up. Create a loyalty rewards program explainer page.
• Incorporate a referral program into your loyalty rewards program. These 2 types of program complement each other. While the loyalty rewards program seeks to retain customers, referral programs seek to acquire new customers.
• Analyze how well your rewards catalog has been curated.