How To Leverage Your Rewards Program For Bigger Baskets This Holiday Season

June 17, 2024

October 12, 2022

•

6 min read

The holiday season is almost upon us, which means we’re soon to see online shoppers arriving in droves to fulfill their money-saving desires. One thing that is sure to be at the top of e-merchants’ minds is how to make sure these holiday shoppers’ baskets are as full as possible.

A rewards program can be an excellent catalyst for this. After all, who wouldn’t love the promise of extra savings, special gifts, and exclusive promotions? In this article, we’ll tell you why you should be using a rewards program as part of your strategy and show you how you can utilize it to get shoppers to spend even more over the holidays.

Why Rewards Programs Are Great For The Holidays

Lots of top-tier retailers have made a loyalty scheme an integral part of their business. They craft the retention program in a way that makes it just as recognizable and popular as the brand itself. Sephora’s Beauty Insider, Amazon Prime, and Starbucks Rewards are some examples of rewards programs that need no introduction.

Why are these top brands putting so much effort into their loyalty schemes and how do they impact holiday shoppers?

One of the best things about rewards programs is that when constructed with careful thought, they have a real positive influence on brand affinity.

Awarding customers specially-curated privileges makes them feel appreciated, recognized, and important. It can also foster a sense of belonging and community. Meaningful relationships between the consumer and brand form an emotional connection. As a result, customers are much more likely to keep coming back to your store.

(Source: Hubspot)

Rewards programs directly influence a store’s bottom line, especially during the holiday season.

(Source: Hubspot)

The promise of points and special offers are so attractive to consumers that 63% are prone to modify their spending to maximize loyalty benefits. This is exasperated in holiday shoppers, with 87% of them saying they bought from brands simply because they were a member of its loyalty program.

You’ll also see these consumers spending more, particularly if you’ve put in the work to form an emotional bond. In fact, you could see your order quantity catapulting by 319%.

Holiday shoppers just simply want to save and see their money go further. If you implement a rewards program that gives them additional discounts, the vast majority will sign up. That means you can begin reaping all the rewards of the shopping habits of loyal customers.

How To Create A Conversion-Boosting Loyalty Program For Shopify Store

So, how can you build a rewards program that will see shoppers filling their baskets to the brim? For Shopify store owners, it’s simple! There are plenty of apps that can equip your store with a loyalty program in no time.

That being said, it’s important to find one that will allow you to optimize your program to the fullest and help you form a conversion-boosting emotional connection. Growave can be the perfect partner to achieve that.

There are plenty of options out there for building a loyalty program on Shopify, and the key is finding one that integrates well with the rest of your tech stack.

One such option is Influence – a loyalty and referrals app that’s part of the clearer.io ecosystem alongside Boost. With Influence, you can reward customers with points, create customizable earn/redeem rules, and set up VIP tiers to drive repeat purchases and bigger baskets.

It’s a great fit for merchants looking to create flexible, tiered loyalty experiences with deep personalization and seamless integration across their store.

Another powerful app that helps you build a loyalty program is Growave.

Who Is Growave?

Rating: 4.8 stars

Price: $9/month to $299/month with a 30-day free trial

Growave is a multi-purpose app that equips e-merchants with some vital marketing tools. On top of being a great solution for building loyalty programs, the app can also help you collect photo reviews, add wishlist capabilities to your store, build a referral program, and add social UGC to your homepage.

Thousands of merchants across the world trust Growave to power their rewards program and have found tremendous success. With this app at hand, building a winning rewards program couldn’t be easier.

Why Growave is a great choice for BFCM rewards

Shoppers can sign up in no time

A huge turn-off for consumers is long, time-consuming sign-up forms. You’ll fail at the first hurdle if signing up for your loyalty program takes more than a few seconds.

Growave completely erases this obstacle. Rather than manually inputting their details, shoppers can register with just one click by connecting via their social accounts.

Visitors can sign up for Kappa Rewards by connecting via Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and more.

Complete power to build an engaging rewards program

A standout feature of this app is the variety of options you’ll have for awarding points and the abundance of ways customers can redeem them.

The array of interactions and actions that can trigger points as Growave is an all-in-one marketing app.

Want to use points as a hook for leaving product reviews or sharing your products on social media? The app has reviews and social commerce in-built, so no need to worry about third-party app compatibility. You can do it all right within Growave.

You can also give out points for other high-value interactions like purchasing, signing up, or even add a more personal touch by rewarding points on your customers’ birthdays. What’s more, new members can be rewarded for their past actions. This makes the prospect of becoming a member more appealing as new members can get instant access to savings.

Plant Essentials makes it easy for anyone to start and continue earning points by providing plenty of options.

A big pull for holiday shoppers seeking out a loyalty program to join is exclusive deals. To help you lure these shoppers, you can use Growave to hand out percentage discounts when they gain a set number of points. You can also give them the option to directly exchange their points for discounts.

Build strong connections with your customers

Establishing an emotional connection with your members is a must for your rewards program to drive big sales. Growave offers all the necessary tools to do exactly that.

Its analytics feature helps you make sure that your program is bringing value to your members. It provides a clear idea of how many points are being earned and spent over a set period of time. You can then decide which methods are working and which aren’t. This information is crucial when you adjust your program to match the desires of your members.

Plant Essentials’and SM Global Shop’s experiences with Growave are true testaments of how the app powers engagement with your loyalty program.

Plant Essentials was able to grow the redemption rate of their points by 41%. This is mainly down to the structure of its rewards. Members are never too far away from the next one.

SM Global Shop was also all smiles as in just 10 months the brand dished out 27 million points with over 5.2 million of them being redeemed already.

VIP tiers in Growave helps to make your most valuable customers feel extra special. Users can customize these tiers for their own businesses based on the points earned, the number of orders, or the amount spent. You can then express your gratitude to your big spenders with exclusive perks.

Aside from making high-value customers feel appreciated, the VIP tiers can be used to drive spending too. Giving rewards to your members as they climb up the tiers acts as an incentive for larger orders. You can propel this effect even further by showing the pathway to different tiers and the perks they bring on a separate page or in the tab.

Looking for a loyalty solution that’s part of the same ecosystem as Boost?

Influence - also part of the clearer.io family - is another powerful loyalty and referrals app that lets you reward customers with points, set custom rules, build tiered programs, and track performance with ease. If you’re already using Boost or REVIEWS.io, it’s a smart, streamlined choice.

Quick Tips To Build A Winning Rewards Program

Growave can clearly bring immense value to your Shopify store over BFCM. To make sure your rewards program with Growave is optimized to the fullest, we’ve compiled some winning practices that you can implement right away.

Tailor initial rewards for new and existing customers: a lot of your BFCM customers will be new to your store. They won’t be able to cash in on previous purchases, so give them instant access to a reward. This could be an additional % saving or free next-day shipping when their basket totals a certain amount. For your existing customers that tend to spend more, consider giving them exclusive early-bird deals on high-ticket items.
Be personal: to foster an emotional bond between your brand and your customers, you need to connect with them on a personal level. You can use Growave’s built-in templates to send personalized emails when customers earn and redeem points in addition to leveraging analytics.
Build a community: one of the secrets behind the most successful rewards programs is that its members feel like they’re a part of a community. Use your loyalty program to go beyond just earning and redeeming points. Supplement this by giving them access to exclusive content based around the ethos of your brand. It’s also a good idea to provide members with a platform to share experiences.
Offer small incremental rewards: according to Harvard Business Review, customers prefer small repeated gains over big infrequent ones. So, make sure a reward is always in sight and within close reach of your members. This will work to keep your members engaged and participate by making more frequent purchases.

Take Your Rewards Strategy Further

Pairing your loyalty program with personalized product discovery and strategic email flows can supercharge its impact - and that's exactly what you get with Boost's integrations with REVIEWS.io and Klaviyo.

Boost x REVIEWS.io

This integration helps shoppers feel confident about their purchases by surfacing review data and star ratings directly in product searches. Combine that with Boost’s AI-powered product filtering, and your customers can easily sort by top-rated products - giving your best-performing items the spotlight they deserve. The result? Higher trust, more clicks, and bigger basket totals.

Book your free demo with REVIEWS.io and see how you can get closer to your customers.

And if you’re looking to layer in loyalty and referrals?

Influence, which integrates seamlessly with REVIEWS.io, makes it easy to reward customer behavior, incentivize referrals, and drive long-term loyalty - all within the same tech stack.

Get started with Influence today and drive retention with loyalty.

Boost x Klaviyo

Email is still one of the most powerful tools during the holiday season - and this integration takes it to the next level. With Boost’s product recommendation widgets now embeddable in Klaviyo emails, you can turn every message into a personalized shopping experience. From abandoned cart flows to loyalty point reminders, each email becomes an opportunity to upsell, cross-sell, or reward customers based on behavior - all in real time.

Whether it's guiding customers to high-value products through trusted reviews or nudging them with personalized recommendations in their inbox, these integrations let you leverage every touchpoint to increase order value and reward engagement.

Wrapping Up

As the holiday season approaches, we’ll see brands pull out all the stops to draw consumers to their online stores. Most will rely solely on their BFCM deals, so you can stand out from the crowd by focusing on a loyalty program.

With Growave, you can easily create a rewards program that holiday shoppers can’t get enough of. Not only will you encourage them to spend more over BFCM, but you’ll also establish a meaningful, long-term relationship with them.

Waste no time, give Growave a try, and watch your revenues soar, even after the holidays.

Ellie Bradford

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In-Product Marketing Lead

October 12, 2022

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6 min read

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