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How to Improve Loyalty Programs with Cakes

Companies everywhere are looking for solutions to the question: how to improve loyalty programs? Learning how to build loyalty with customers and employees is as much of an art as it is a science. After all, many of the loyalty programs and initiatives you launch will need to be tailored to your audience specifically. You want to stand out, while also resonating with your current clients, customers, and employees. Being unique while remaining familiar is difficult, but it isn’t impossible.

Keep reading to get tips on unique ways to improve loyalty programs within your own company. You’ll also get ideas on how to build loyalty programs that entice new and old customers to stick with your brand. Here’s a hint: everything is better with cake!

How to improve loyalty programs with cakes: cake variety

How to Maintain Customer Loyalty

If you want to learn how to maintain customer loyalty, you first need to understand what your customers want. Beyond the product and services your company already offers, what are your customers seeking out that you might be able to offer? Offering unique discounts as part of your loyalty programs is a tried-and-true method of making shopping with your brand worth it.

The problem with just offering discounts is that everyone does it. If you’d like to enhance loyalty programs in a way that makes you stand out, you need to get creative. Even better, you need to get personal! While discounts are lovey, they’re as generic and impersonal as you can get.

You first need to start a dialogue with your customers. Try giving them a chance at least once a year to talk to you about the kinds of things that would motivate them to continue to shop with you – and not your competitors. Better, ask them about the kind of rewards they’d like to see when shopping with you.

Next – you need to budget for it! Make sure your marketing and sales teams have a budget designed for improving their loyalty programs.

Finally – you need to empower your team to implement it! No company can make things personal on a large scale, but you can if you empower key team members in customer service, sales, and marketing departments to make use of your customer loyalty budget. As the people that get to speak to customers one-on-one, they’ll know best how to improve loyalty programs in a personalized way.  For instance, sending your customers a cake on their birthday!

How to Maintain Employee Loyalty

Learning how to maintain employee loyalty is much the same as learning how to maintain customer loyalty. As a wonderful bonus, the process is actually much simpler! Maintaining employee loyalty through loyalty programs also boils down to making it personal. With employees, you and your management team have more opportunities to learn about them and figure out the kind of loyalty program that would work best.

While raises and company benefits are great, increases in wages aren’t seen by many employees as going above and beyond. Instead, aim for something tangible. Teaching your management staff how to improve loyalty programs with their employees requires listening to your team. Your first step should be empowering your HR staff and leadership to ask team members more personal questions, favorite snacks, hobbies, team events they’d like to see, and more. Then empower your staff to act on it by setting out a clear budget and guidelines.

Make a huge impact on team morale by rewarding them for completing major company projects or reaching a large financial goal. A cake or dessert party is a great way to unwind and show your employees they get to share in the company’s success. Take care to ensure your employee loyalty programs also include something personal. Rewarding team members for hitting personal milestones, such as their annual anniversary or getting a promotion, will ensure your staff feels seen and appreciated.

How to improve loyalty programs with cakes: variety of cake slices

What Makes a Good Loyalty Program?

So what makes a good loyalty program? To help you understand where and how to improve loyalty programs in your team we’ve put together a checklist of the must-haves in any loyalty program.

  • — Personalized rewards.
  • — Attention to key moments in employee’s/customer’s life.
  • — Transparent guidelines for universal rewards.
  • — The ability for staff members to implement unique surprises for personal situations.
  • — Unique surprises.
  • — Scaling rewards to go above and beyond for VIPs.
  • — Including personalized cards/notes/e-mails/phone calls to thank your customers or employees.
  • — Tangible gifts that go beyond raises or discounts.

If you can say your company includes all the above in your customer and employee loyalty programs, congratulations! No need to stress if you cant; instead, use what you’re missing as a checklist for where to start. Once you’ve created an open dialogue with your customers and employees, learning how to improve loyalty programs for them will come naturally. If you’d like to get some outside perspective, the team at Cakes Overseas is ready and able to help you launch a loyalty program that makes sense for your company and will help your brand build recognition as one that cares.

How to Improve Loyalty Programs in a Creative Way?

If you want to improve your loyalty programs in a creative way – be ready to try the weird. Sending birthday surprises, customer and employee anniversary gifts, and sending apology gifts are great. However, they’re also expected.

Instead, try the unexpected. Surprise your loyal employees with a random cake party at the end of the month just to blow off steam. Add something extra to customer orders simply to thank them for ordering. Or encourage your teams to get out in their local communities to host a dinner for clients, customers, and employees. After all, the best loyalty programs are about thanking people for their loyalty. The most memorable thank-you gestures come with no strings and when you least expect them. This goes double for loyalty programs.

If you’re ready to get started improving your loyalty programs with cakes and desserts – fill out this form to get matched with a gift expert to help you through every step of the process. The experts at Cakes Overseas are ready 24/7 to help you thrill and delight customers and employees with cakes around the world!

You’ve learned how to improve loyalty programs with cakes; now what?

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