Careful selection of the best customer loyalty tools

By Nathalie Pouillard

Published: October 26, 2024

There are many customer loyalty tools available, using a variety of channels to reach targets where they are most receptive to small gestures.

Whether it's a question of old methods that are still effective or new digital levers, their strategic character is no longer in question, given that loyalty costs less than the acquisition of new customers.

But what are these tools for managing customer relations effectively and sustainably? Answers and examples in this article.

See all software Customer relationship management

What is a loyalty tool? Definition

For a company, loyalty means creating and maintaining a lasting relationship with its customers. Loyalty tools are the means available to achieve this effectively.

👉 The aim is to maximize profits and brand image, while ensuring sustainability and profitability.

Find out how your responsiveness to customers helps you build loyalty! Freshdesk and Appvizer have put together this free guide to help you:

What are the main loyalty tools?

Wondering how to build customer loyalty?

To implement your loyalty strategy, (re)discover the BtoB and/or BtoC loyalty tools (or loyalty levers) below

CRM

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the ultimate customer relationship management tool , particularly for tracking customer history and satisfaction. A CRM centralizes all your customer information, such as :

contact details and profiles,
purchase and request history,
payment methods,
sales operations, etc.

Knowing and tracking this information enables you to :

segment your customer base,
propose customized customer paths and personalized offers,
automate certain actions, such as sending email campaigns at key moments, etc.

🛠 monday.com CRM, for example, offers you a comprehensive, intuitive and easy-to-use CRM solution, with advanced loyalty features :

structure your customer data via visual, personalized files;
track your prospects' progress via real-time dashboards;
find customer information quickly thanks to seamless e-mail integration, etc.

🛠Sales Cloud is the CRM by Salesforce solution, ideal for managing your contacts. Among its many customer-focused features :

a global view of all your customer interactions, so you can get to know them better;
integration with your various social networks, tofind out what your customers think of your products and services;
a chat function, so you can talk directly to your customers and obtain valuable information about their needs.

🛠 Sellsy is a complete CRM suite designed to manage your entire sales cycle, from prospecting to customer loyalty. Aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, it integrates a host of interesting features to satisfy your customers and optimize your NPS:

fine-tuned contact management, with enriched data to identify your customers' needs and keep a record of exchanges with the company;
marketing tools, to automate the sending of targeted campaigns to your segments (satisfaction surveys, for example);
dashboards and reports to monitor your performance and improve your actions where necessary.

Omnichannel customer experience platforms (CDP)

If you want to offer your customers an unforgettable experience, but don't feel like (or have the budget for) a lot of software, turn to the global platforms known as Customer Data Platforms (CDP).

What's a CDP? We've got a full article detailing what it is, its benefits, how to use it and how to choose it! To understand CDP, click here.

💡 What you need to remember, in a very simplified version: it's a comprehensive tool that centralizes all your marketing and customer data, grinds it down, and comes out with customer profiles and personalized actions tailored to reach each target. With the help of your human intelligence, of course.

For example, Bloomreach is the 1st "sales experience" cloud that brings together all the features needed to create a unique customer experience, in a single tool. It offers a fully personalized customer journey to foster customer engagement and relieve your teams of their work by :

leveraging your customers' data with unique experiences across all your digital touchpoints (personalized e-mail campaigns, web personalization, etc.)
using artificial intelligence and predictive marketing to create quality, API-focused content (search intelligence, product recommendations, etc.)
creating reports, detailed statistics and dashboards to monitor your performance.

The newsletter or personalized email

Focus on personalized e-mail

Emailing can be used for many purposes, such as to communicate a gift, a promotional code or an exclusive event, as mentioned above.

Personalized (and it's not just a question of putting the first name in the header, but of taking into account the customer's history and recent interactions with the company), it tells the customer that the company is interested in him, his needs, his tastes and his habits.

Whether it's a welcome email, an anniversary email, a satisfaction survey or an account reactivation email, any occasion is a good opportunity to use loyalty tools!

Here, Vert Baudet uses humor and a childlike tone to take the temperature and avoid unsubscribing from its newsletter, not without praising its merits.

Focus newsletter

For a company, a newsletter consists in sending a regular email to a list of recipients, also known as "subscribers". Most of the time, these e-mails are sent on a monthly basis. Its purpose is to inform readers about :

your company's activity and/or news,
your events,
your commercial offers,
discounts,

It also enables you to promote your content (new article, white paper, interview...). The newsletter is therefore a genuine communication tool.

👉 According to the McKinsey Institute, its effectiveness is 40 times greater than that of Facebook and Twitter, in terms of customer acquisition.

👀 Subscribe to the Appvizer newsletter, at the very bottom of this page, to discover all our tips and the latest trends, and gain efficiency in your day-to-day work!

The loyalty card or loyalty program

The loyalty card is a loyalty tool that stems from the implementation of a loyalty program. This consists of offering your customer members a range of exclusive services and benefits, with the aim of building loyalty and encouraging them to buy.

The system is simple: the more your customers buy, the more their loyalty points increase, and the more gifts and rewards they receive. The loyalty card is therefore an optimal and effective way of tracking your customers' purchasing habits.

The advantages of a loyalty program are numerous:

a personalized relationship
a smoother shopping experience
customized sales recommendations to encourage purchasing decisions
enhanced brand image

After-sales service

When we talk about customer satisfaction, we sometimes talk about after-sales service, i.e. the way in which customer service handles complaints and settles disputes by taking customer feedback into consideration.

👉 Quality after-sales service is therefore an underestimated lever for customer loyalty.

Catching up with an unhappy customer and taking care of them can help retain them, and even build loyalty.

💡Little post-purchase attentions are also appreciated, for example sending tips on how to use or care for the last product purchased.

Sponsorship

Here, the stakes are twofold: loyalty and acquisition ! The customer is involved in finding new customers for the company. The sponsor is then rewarded, and sometimes the sponsorees too.

🤓 It can't be said often enough, a satisfied customer is often a loyal one (and in any case becomes your best ambassador).

What are the new loyalty tools?

The multi-channel, even phygital approach

The customer experience is paramount in building loyalty. The purchasing path must be increasingly fluid: click and collect, web to store, these practices enable you to build loyalty with customers who like to combine the two worlds, physical and digital, according to their desires and imperatives.

With online ordering and in-store trials, you can remove all the disincentives to purchase.

👉 If your main competitors have adopted it, go phygital before you lose your customers, who are increasingly volatile and demanding.

Federating and animating a community is essential to building loyalty.

Social networks are essential communication channels for conveying your brand image and paying attention to your customers, especially when it comes to after-sales service.

You can collect their opinions, respond to them, and showcase your ambassadors who speak out. It's the ultimate proof of their loyalty and attachment to your brand, and it's there for all to see!

It's also a good place to organize contests, which are always very popular, and to communicate offers reserved for customers.

Self-care tools

On the web, customers like to be autonomous, but find the information they need easily. How can you keep them informed, while ensuring the fluidity of their digital customer journey ? By integrating selfcare tools! Set up :

a chatbot on your website,
dynamic FAQs,
tutorials, etc.

In short, give them answers fast and offer them a quality of service so they don't go elsewhere if it's easier. This loyalty tool is ideal for long-term, committed customers.

👉 For example, with the BOTNATION.AI chatbot creation solution, you install a virtual assistant on your website, Facebook page, Instagram or WhatsApp, to nurture customer relations from the very first contact with your brand.

You establish a close bond with your customers and prospects, to create value while saving time for your customer service, and you design a unique and differentiating experience to engage your users.