How do you turn one-time customers into regulars? Loyalty programmes are a simple, reliable, and effective way of incentivising customers to come back and spend more with you again, again and again. Give a little something back to show how much you appreciate their business, and they're likely to stick with you for a very long time! But, as with all the best things in life, getting it right takes time...

To help your business stand out in a sea of sameness, you need to adopt a personalised approach that treats your customers as individuals and gives them perks they really want. To give you some inspiration, we’re going to share some of the best loyalty programmes around.

1. Nike

Members of the Nike loyalty programme spend three times more than guest customers on their website. With a variety of different training apps and regular rewards to help customers reach their goals, Nike’s offering fuels engagement and prompts the customer to think about their own fitness differently. Feeling this kind of affinity with a brand whose support goes beyond sales makes customers more likely to come back again, again and again.

2. Deb Skincare and Hygiene

Deb Skincare and Hygiene has been a world leader in occupational skin care and hand hygiene for more than 80 years. Incentivesmart designed a channel partner loyalty programme whereby distributors could earn points for submitting new deals and providing information in the form of case studies. These helped aid other distributors in their sales process thereby sharing best practice ideas. One of the biggest successes of the programme was the crucial data and insights into end-user behaviour. Prior to the loyalty programme, this information did not exist. The data set unveiled new industries in which the product was popular thereby opening up new market opportunities and ideas for future product innovation.

3. McDonald’s

From the golden arches to the gold standard in rewards programmes, the McDonald's annual Monopoly scramble is one of the biggest and more iconic customer competitions there is. If you collect all the red “squares” (no easy feat, trust us, we’ve tried!), for example, you have the chance to win an iPad or iPhone, a holiday, or even a car - not a bad swap for some fries! They also have a nice, simple coffee rewards programme where customers collect stamps to get a free hot drink. 

4. Subway

Customer and user experience is all the rage when it comes to learning about how, when, where and why your customers and prospects want to engage with you, enabling you to ensure you get it right. "Rewarding Champions" was an Incentivesmart creation for Subway, a programme with the aim of improving their mystery shopper score through promoting exceptional overall service, standards and sales. The programme started with a small selection of 47 stores across the UK growing to beyond 2,000. It increased mystery shop scores from 86% to 96% showing that you can increase your customer base by listening, caring and providing a great level of service.

5. B&Q

No one knows your brand better than you. Take your cue from B&Q - a trusted brand that goes the extra mile for its customers by sharing valuable content related to their needs; a video about precisely how to lay artificial grass, for example. This kind of gesture is a small investment; big value for your customers. You may be plugging your products, but you’re also giving valuable information to appreciative customers. Additionally, they also allow customers to earn rewards and benefits for purchasing items in their stores.

6. VMWare

The programme built by Incentivesmart rewarded loyal customers for sales of VMware education solutions. It focused on helping distributors build a sound knowledge on course delivery, selling points and certification pathways. Using Incentivesmart’s suite of learning tools, VMware helped their distribution partners to exceed customer expectations with modality training and routes to deep dive into advanced VMware training and certification.

7. Lenovo

As one of the world’s largest and most favourable electronics manufacturers, Lenovo was dead set on hanging onto IBM’s business partners when it took over the giant’s X86 server division back in 2014. Its “Learn and Earn” strategy gave partners the chance to receive points every time they completed two educational modules on servers, while “Earn and Sell” gave them the ability to track their sales performance and turn the sales they made into points which they could then redeem as rewards. As a result, Lenovo smashed its targets by more than 40% - and their business partners were kept happy and engaged.

 8. Telarus 

US-based telecommunications sales agency, Telarus, has a B2B loyalty programme for partner retailers, giving them an extra push to sell Telarus services. Avoiding automation, the programme issues loyalty points directly on an individual basis, with rewards tailored to the partner and deal. There are also partner-centric benefits including sales training, marketing consultancy, experiences and gifts.  

9. Mailchimp

Mailchimp devised an insider programme to help agencies and freelance marketing experts learn all about how to use the platform. The concept was simple enough; the marketing professionals would manage their clients’ business via Mailchimp and be eligible for exclusive perks and tips such as, access to tools that helped them work with their multiple clients, as well as in-depth training and hot tickets to members-only events. Once they had been with the company for a defined period of time, members were then invited to buddy up with Mailchimp, where they could receive more personalised 24/7 support as priority customers and even a first look at upcoming features. 

10. SeikoVision

SeikoVision’s B2B reward programme wasn’t getting the results the team wanted. Worse yet, its website’s bounce rate touched 90%. By redirecting B2B visitors to a different domain for its reward programme and showcasing the features and benefits of its loyalty programme instead of product descriptions, this quickly fell to 20% - showing how important a few minor tweaks can be!

Looking to launch an engagement and loyalty programme? Check out our customer and channel loyalty guide. We'll help you learn how to design an effective loyalty programme, along with some of our methodology.