The Benefits of a Tiered Rewards Program for Your Customers

Blog Articles
30 November 2022

These days, it feels like everyone has a rewards program. How can you stand out from the crowd? A new trend popping up is the tiered loyalty program. What is it, how can it help your business, and how can you implement it? Let’s see:

What is a tiered rewards program?

A tiered rewards program refers to a loyalty program where members get different benefits based on their “loyalty level”. It could be something like bronze, silver, gold, or having a VIP member level. Typically members get into different tiers through how much they spend and build rewards. Basically, customers are rewarded for their loyalty, and those rewards improve the more loyal they are!

Benefits of a tiered program

There are many benefits to implementing a tiered rewards program, including:

Create better customer relationships

Using a tiered system ensures a long-term relationship with the customer built on loyalty. By recognising customers for their support, you build an emotional connection that means they want to shop from you more. This also allows you to understand customers better, which in turn means you can tailor content to them and strengthen that relationship further.

Build a sense of competitiveness between customers

With tiers to reach, competition naturally follows. If a customer is in a specific tier, they are inclined to spend more in order to get up to the next tier. This makes it essential to systematically assign higher-value rewards and perks to the top tiers.

Compete with other brands

While a lot of companies offer tiered systems, it’s not the most common rewards program, and for some companies, there is no rewards program at all! By offering something unique, as well as benefits like free delivery or extended returns tied into the program, a potential customer is likely to choose you over the competition.

How to create a successful program

A tiered rewards program is only as good as its implementation. You need to encourage members to climb the ranks. So how do you set it up for success?

Keep It Simple Stupid

You’ve probably heard the term K.I.S.S. many times and there’s a good reason it is. Everyone wants to get benefits without too much work, so don’t create barriers – just keep it simple! Building rewards should be easy and clear. Show members how to rise up and while it should be a little bit of a challenge, anyone should be able to move up.

Make it feel exclusive

While it shouldn’t be impossible to “level up”, it should require some work. By giving goals packaged into a premium look and feel, you can create exclusivity in the program, which in turn creates desire for customers to be a part of this special group.

Name membership levels

Alongside the exclusivity should be names for the various membership levels. These titles should reflect your business’s personality and really speak the language of your target audience. This also helps build community within your brand.

Add something different

Experiential rewards and hidden tiers make rewards programs feel unique and valuable. Whether it be an invite to a product launch, meet-and-greets with the brand’s CEO, or special tiers for influencers and brand ambassadors, this all adds up to a group people want to be in!

Establishing a tiered rewards program is no small job but can reap great rewards. If you need help getting started, talk to My Rewards today.