Implementing a loyalty program in your e-commerce business requires that you use the best software. Why is this important? Simple. Ecommerce evolves very fast and to stay on top of the curve you need to make sure that your marketing strategy is always ahead of the competition. Having the best marketing strategy will give you tremendous benefits and competitive advantages as you will be able to retain your customers a lot longer. Therefore, the right loyalty program solution will have a considerable impact on your retention, revenue and benefits.
There are a ton of loyalty program solutions available for retailers. However, this article will compare two solutions: Woocommerce Loyalty points and the Beans Loyalty program. By the end of this post, you should understand how they differ and possibly choose based on which one performs better.
Beans Loyalty Program vs. Woocommerce Loyalty Points and Rewards
Marketing Oriented Platform
Loyalty and rewards programs are essential marketing strategies for eCommerce businesses. They are the surest strategy to put in place if you want to increase loyalty to your brand and retain more customers. They are the icing that attracts customers to your products and services and causes them to keep shopping at your store. Hence, the loyalty program plugin you use must be well optimized for marketing. It shouldn't simply be about incentivizing customers with rewards. Still, there should be other essential marketing elements that ensure that customers are catered to from their first visit to your site till they become brand advocates.
WooCommerce Loyalty Points and Rewards Plugin enables users to reward customers for making purchases and taking specific actions; however, it is not precisely optimized for marketing. WooCommerce uses a gamification system, meaning the plugin concentrates on encouraging customers' purchasing behavior by rewarding their actions. Therefore, customers will be pushed to repeat a particular profitable behavior, such as repeating a purchase or hitting a threshold when they see that they earn more points and stand to win a reward. While this approach is excellent, it does not incorporate a lot of marketing elements.
On the other hand, the Beans Loyalty program offers e-commerce business owners the opportunity to create an integrated marketing experience. Users are not only limited to setting up rules and rewarding customers with points. Beans enables brands to build rewards program pages that match the brand's identity and clarifies their message. It also ensures that rewards and points are tied to other marketing-oriented activities such as social media, emails, data-based personalization features that will increase engagement and boost loyalty to the brand in the long run.
Email Notifications
As seen in the above point, a good rewards program keeps customers engaged at all levels. If customers do not participate in your loyalty scheme at the end of the day, it is a waste of resources. Therefore, another fundamental goal of a good loyalty program is to serve as bait to keep customers returning to your store to make more orders. And the best way to constantly communicate and get customers to do this is through marketing emails and notifications.
With the Beans Loyalty program, users can activate rewards program balance reminders for their clients. Once they are set up, these will constantly remind customers of their rewards while purchasing from your store. These reminders can quickly push customers to revisit your store to make more purchases or redeem the points they have earned so far.
With the WooCommerce Loyalty points and rewards plugin, users cannot send out these notifications. Instead, they can update the points balance for customers. These changes are then automatically displayed on the customer's My Account page when they log in.
Therefore, the difference between the two programs is that Beans makes it easier on the customer by reminding them and giving them the nudge to check on the points earned. In contrast, Woocommerce allows customers to check their points at their convenience. Assuming that customers have dozens of other loyalty offers and sites they may visit, Beans does a better job sending these email notifications, so your brand rewards program is not forgotten.
Analytics
If you're familiar with the e-commerce world, you'll realize that loyalty programs are not just about rewarding customer points. Though it may be central to the entire process, there is a greater purpose behind these rewards. Ultimately, business owners want to increase revenue when they opt to implement a loyalty program in their store. They understand that these programs can help them grow their customer base and build a solid emotional connection. To achieve this, retailers need to understand the kind of impact a rewards program is having on their revenue and business in general. Apart from tracking its usage, they should also track the amount of revenue generated through the loyalty program and how it impacts their Customer Lifetime Value. Therefore, a good rewards program software should provide analytics to give the retailer insight into how effective the program is.
While WooCommerce's plugin does not offer an analytics tool, the Beans Loyalty program gives its users access to analytics tools that can enable them to track the success of their rewards program.
Social Integrations
The benefits of incorporating social media platforms in modern-day eCommerce businesses cannot be overemphasized. Millennials live on social media; hence, businesses equally need to appeal to them via these platforms. Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways of acquiring new leads and gaining referrals for your online store. A good loyalty program needs to utilize this power and increase customer engagement with the brand's social media platform. People will usually patronize what they see other people patronize. To gain more traction on social media as a brand, you need to reward customers for engaging on your platforms. For instance, rewarding a customer a $10 discount for following your Facebook page or posting a comment is a great way to keep them engaged. The inability to reward customers for taking social actions is a disadvantage.
Beans Loyalty program enables users to set rules and reward customers for following brands on their social media channels. The platform integrates seamlessly with any of the brands' social media channels so that when a customer takes action, they can earn points for them. WooCommerce loyalty points and rewards plugin, on the other hand, mainly focuses on rewarding customers for making purchases and not for any social interaction.
Tiers System
A tier-based system is highly effective for loyalty programs because it allows you to organize customers better and reward them based on their purchasing behavior. With tier-based programs, members are categorized into specific groups or ranked depending on certain metrics. These ranks or tiers are defined by various benefits or services that increase in worth as customers advance to the next level. The tiered system gives retailers a new way to engage with customers. Retailers can take advantage of this to project branding names, colors, and associated benefits that evoke a higher sense of loyalty in clients. Another reason tier-based loyalty programs work is that members can quickly get frustrated when their points expire. Once you introduce benefits based on levels, customers can continue to enjoy the benefits associated with their rank without fearing points expirations. Finally, tier-based programs help retailers segment their customers better and reward them accordingly. When this happens, top-tier customers and brand devotees feel more appreciated for their patronage. It also encourages other customers to fulfill specific requirements so they can also reach the top tiers.
WooCommerce Loyalty Points and Rewards plugin does not enable users to build a tier-based program since it only rewards points. This could limit the program's effectiveness if customers are not satisfied with the points earned or often see their points expiring without redeeming their rewards. On the other hand, the Beans Loyalty program allows retailers to offer extra perks and bonuses to VIP customers. Retailers can set custom rules that provide additional rewards to customers who reach a certain higher threshold or tier within the rewards program. Again, since the Beans loyalty program is easy to customize, companies can create a program that matches their brand identity.
Referral Rewards Support
In eCommerce, a single satisfied customer can be your greatest asset in generating more leads. People will often patronize products that people close to them recommend. Sometimes, they only need to see a product review or a social media recommendation to make a purchasing decision. Therefore, eCommerce businesses need to take referral rewards seriously if they desire to attract more customers. Ideally, when a customer is satisfied with a product or service, they may naturally recommend it by word of mouth or share the information with a person in need of the same product. However, due to intense competition and distraction, people can easily forget to recommend or ask their friends to try a product unless there is motivation. This is where rewards come in. Retailers can incentivize their customers to refer their friends and family by offering them extra rewards or perks. For example, if a loyalty program member receives 300 extra points for referring one member, they will indeed be motivated to invite as many as possible. If this cycle continues, your customer base will increase in no time, and eventually, your profit will increase as well.
With WooCommerce Loyalty Plugin, users cannot reward their customers for referrals. However, the Beans loyalty program offers more flexibility to reward customers for various actions, including referring a customer. For example, you can set a rule to award specific points to a customer who refers another person to join the loyalty program. This is beneficial to both the customer and retailer since they both earn their reward and revenue, respectively.
Integration with Other Tools
One of the significant differences between the Beans loyalty program and the Woocommerce plugin is that the Beans platform allows users to integrate various tools that make the entire marketing process more manageable. To achieve tremendous success with your loyalty program, your loyalty program provider should be capable of integrating with various technologies. This will give you the flexibility of switching some of your tech stacks when needed in the future. Even better if the provider allows you to integrate with the technologies and apps you already use.
Some of the key categories you may consider integrating include the:
- Ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce
- POS systems
- Payment hardware and software
- Customer Relationship Management or Marketing Platform
All these integrations will enable you to achieve the highest Returns on Investment from your loyalty programs by simplifying the entire marketing and customer experience. When choosing a loyalty program provider, you must inquire if they have integration abilities and determine if the technologies you already use are on their list. The Beans loyalty program integrates seamlessly with several technologies across the key categories. Suppose you use Shopify, Woocommerce, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Judge.me, etc., you can easily integrate those platforms into your rewards program to achieve better results.
Support from ecommerce marketing experts
Creating a successful marketing strategy for your ecommerce business is no easy task. This is why companies need to rely on ecommerce experts and agencies for a sure-fire method. Most of these experts are willing and able to provide customers with the necessary support and excellent strategies to help them grow their businesses. In addition, there are several benefits of working with these experts:
- These teams have gained immense experience working with myriads of retailers and, as such, have a good knowledge of the trends customers are interested in and the strategies that are effective or not based on your industry.
- They can be instrumental in educating you on the newest technologies and software that can save you more resources and benefit your business immensely.
- eCommerce marketing experts are aware of the changing trends in the digital world.
As such, they can advise you on the most effective strategies you can implement to boost lead acquisition, sales, ROI, and gain customer loyalty. In choosing a loyalty program provider, you need to ensure an available support team that can provide solutions that give your business an edge in a competitive eCommerce industry.
Beans specializes in providing retailers with guidance on their eCommerce marketing strategy. Beans has a team of readily available experts that can advise on the best solutions to increase your online store retention. In addition, business owners can have access to their email, chat, and phone support throughout the week. WooCommerce also has a team of experts and agencies that business owners can consult with for complex issues in their online business. However, they are only available for hire at a fee.
Cross-platform support
Having access to cross-platform support means that retailers can track customer's communications and purchasing behavior across various platforms.
Since Beans is a cloud-based solution, if a retailer decides to migrate their online store from BigCommerce to Shopify, customers' marketing data are portable.
Beans Loyalty Program Vs. WooCommerce Loyalty Points and Rewards Plugin at a glance
WooCommerce
- Reward customers with points-based discounts
- Customize product page, reward name, and checkout pages only.
- Not optimized for marketing
- No Email notifications
- No access to analytics
- Inability to reward customers for social media engagement
- It uses a gamification system but no tier-based system
- Inability to reward customers points for referrals
- Inability to integrate with other marketing tools and technologies
- No Cross-platform support
Beans
- Well-optimized for marketing
- Integrates well with other marketing tools and plugins
- Reward customers for more actions, including signing up, repeating purchases, birthdays, social media interactions, product reviews, and referrals.
- Built-in templates that allow for easy customization
- Provides analytics to track the progress of the rewards program
- Uses reminders and email notifications
- 7day email, chat, and phone support from eCommerce marketing experts
- Cross-platform support
Conclusion
Whenever loyalty programs are discussed, most people only think about the traditional "give-get" relationship between businesses and their customers; but it can and should be more than that. Loyalty programs allow business owners to establish a continuous conversation and bond between the brand and the customer. It should be designed to enable the retailer to understand their customers better and provide the customer with excellent reasons to keep engaging and transacting business with the brand.
As seen from the above comparison, both platforms can enable retailers to design loyalty programs that reward customers with points for their actions. However, if you need a provider that allows you to create a more integrated experience and use features that ensure your loyalty program's success, Beans is the better option. You can make the switch or start building a great rewards program for your online store.
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