Loyalty points

[mikeyred]

Need some do's & dont's advice for the loyalty points. I have not been able to use them up to now because of my wholesale and private categories but now Rich has changed it to assigned categories (brilliant!) instead of global .... I will now be puting it up for the retail shop front side - just wondered if there is any pitfall to watch for, just tips in general

[Dave]

Make sure you don't set your value per point too high because it's very difficult to reduce it later. Obviously you would not want your customers to loose out so if you reduce the value per point you would need to manually adjust all your customers loyalty points. Fairly easy to do by export, fiddling the points and re-importing but is a job you could do without having to do.

Customers also don't like the fact they will get less points for their loyalty.

Much better to set your figure correctly at day one (wish I had!) or slightly lower as it's much easier to go up than down!

[john]

Loyalty points don't really work for us, we have stopped them and I can't really see that they would be effective unless you make them a high enough value that the customer is loath to let them lapse, say 10p per point.
When spread over the value of the two orders I suppose it's not a huge discount cost, depending on the 2nd order value, if it were the same as the 1st the net cost is 5% of both orders, it would be interesting to experiment but as Dave says it's easy to start and very difficult to stop or change.
Needs a lot of thought!

[Rich]

It's not so easy to change the value once points have been assigned, but it is possible to set loyalty points to "spend only" now - meaning that it's fairly easy to wind down the scheme if you want to in the future.

[Dave]

Loyalty points don't really work for us, we have stopped them and I can't really see that they would be effective unless you make them a high enough value that the customer is loath to let them lapse, say 10p per point.
When spread over the value of the two orders I suppose it's not a huge discount cost, depending on the 2nd order value, if it were the same as the 1st the net cost is 5% of both orders, it would be interesting to experiment but as Dave says it's easy to start and very difficult to stop or change.
Needs a lot of thought!

Loyalty points have been worthwhile for us and we do experiment with the two sites having different loyalty point values. As our customers are mainly business users we do get a lot of repeat business and every little bit of extra discount they get can be the difference between us getting the order or not.

Sadly, you have not ordered from us for a while but did redeem your £10 loyalty points on the 2nd order and have nearly £8 to spend if you place another order.

[Mike]

We use loyalty points and get a fair amount of repeat business.

Something to watch though. We wanted to do a promotion offering double points for a short period but when we changed the value of the points it automatically doubled everyone else's points already on the system so that didn't work. Eventually we just adjusted them manually during the course of the promotion

[john]

[QUOTE=Dave;10593
Sadly, you have not ordered from us for a while but did redeem your £10 loyalty points on the 2nd order and have nearly £8 to spend if you place another order.[/QUOTE]

Sorry, our main workhorse printer has been changed to a Kyocera, the other HP printers don't get used so much, will have to send our a full colour leaflet and use some toner!

[Dave]

Sorry, our main workhorse printer has been changed to a Kyocera, the other HP printers don't get used so much, will have to send our a full colour leaflet and use some toner!

We do Kyocera consumables so if you ever need any prices just PM me the details.

[john]

We do Kyocera consumables so if you ever need any prices just PM me the details.

I didn't know that! only read as far as the HP Toner Cartridges, thought the Crazy Toners referred to a Popular Beat Combo.

Will look deeper in future, most of the links on here come up with lovely underwear pics, so it's difficult to concentrate and best not to click!!

[mikeyred]

Just wondered what the general concensous is for the value when starting out. Default is set at 1p and I appreciate its "different horses for different courses" but just curious if with some of you guys you hit a value that kicked in the popularity of the LP scheme on your site as most have said start small as its easier to go up.

[petad]

Just wondered what the general concensous is for the value when starting out. Default is set at 1p and I appreciate its "different horses for different courses" but just curious if with some of you guys you hit a value that kicked in the popularity of the LP scheme on your site as most have said start small as its easier to go up.

Ours are set at 3p, and though it's not a massive incentive, they do get regularly used by repeat customers.

[icegems]

We give 10p back which means on a £50 order they get enough to pay for free courier delivery on their next order. However, we only give 12 months to use the points which is something we are going to review in due course.

I personally believe it has to be enough of an incentive or it becomes worthless and defeats the object.

[KayJay]

We have the default setting which is 1p I think. It's not a massive amount but have free delivery and our margins are very tight anyway. We then use the Loyalty Points for promotions such as 500 points a month are given to someone who leaves a review, or we will have a week where every order earns an extra 200.

[Laura@FYP]

We have the default setting which is 1p I think. It's not a massive amount but have free delivery and our margins are very tight anyway. We then use the Loyalty Points for promotions such as 500 points a month are given to someone who leaves a review, or we will have a week where every order earns an extra 200.

How do you have it set up so that you can run points promotions like that? Do you just change the main settings, and then change them back again at the end of the week- or manually give a reviewer extra points if you see theyve left a review?

We have ours set as 5p per point. I originally set it to 10p but reverted to 5p just before launch and am really glad I did as 10p would have been way too much in hindsight as our average order value is quite high.

[john]

We have the default setting which is 1p I think. It's not a massive amount but have free delivery and our margins are very tight anyway. We then use the Loyalty Points for promotions such as 500 points a month are given to someone who leaves a review, or we will have a week where every order earns an extra 200.

If they use the points on a purchase of similar value, the discount is half percent, not exactly an attractive incentive.