Increase Repeat Purchases with Website Reward Point Programs

Article By LDA Interactive Staff

Reaching new customers on your Magento website can be a time consuming and costly task.  This makes customer retention incredibly important and an ongoing struggle for businesses of any size. There are a number of strategies that can be employed to work towards this effort, but we’ll focus on Magento extensions that offer reward point programs. 

Offering reward points can be a great incentive to promote repeat purchases.  There are various ways you can structure the rewards.  They can be used as a credit towards a purchase, to claim eligible “rewards” products, towards the use of a discount code or free shipping. There are a large number of extensions available for your Magento website, you just need to think about how you would like to structure your rewards program and pick the best fit.

In addition to offering reward points for making purchases, online store owners can also offer Magento reward points for a variety of other actions.

Website user actions that can be rewarded with rewards points

  • signing up for an account
  • subscribing to a newsletter
  • referring friends that complete an action (purchase, signup, etc.)
  • adding as a friend/posting/sharing on social

According to a study conducted by ClickFox, 54% of participants would be encouraged to make repeat purchases from a e-commerce store if reward points were offered by the seller and 46% of the participants said that they have already earned and used reward points.

It is no secret that running an online store has a lower overhead cost when compared to physical stores. These savings have been typically passed onto the user through discount codes, but this strategy doesn’t work in the long run because it only brings customers back when a store offers a discount. There are number of reasons why setting up Magento reward points program is a better long-term investment for Los Angeles business owners. The cost of offering reward points is much lower than what you would spend on other methods to retain customers. Setting a reward point usage threshold motivates customers to make another purchase to reach the threshold just to be able to use the reward points they earned from their first purchase.

Reward point programs keep customers happy and excited about their next purchase from your store. They are similar to the points you earn on your credit card. Over a period of time the increase in repeated purchases will bring down your cost of customer acquisition and customer lifetime value (CLV). There are a number of Magento extensions to help you manage your loyalty program, take a look at the top 5 extensions .

The top 5 Magento extensions for reward point programs

  1. J2T Reward Points + Referral program (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/j2t-reward-points-referral-program.html): Give your store an incentive points-based loyalty system with J2T Points & Rewards.
  2. Sweet Tooth Loyalty & Reward Points (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/sweet-tooth-loyalty-reward-points.html): Create a loyalty and rewards points program with Sweet Tooth. Reward customers to increase loyalty and sales!
  3. Points and Rewards by aheadWorks (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/points-and-rewards-by-aheadworks.html): Points can be awarded automatically (and manually by the merchant) and later redeemed for discounts.
  4. Punchtab Points (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/punchtab-points-1.html): Add a loyalty program to your Magento site, instantly. Reward purchases and incentivize social sharing.
  5. Reward Points Program – Loyalty Extension (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/reward-points-program-loyalty-extension.html): Reward points Extension for Magento is the best way to create customer loyalty program. Free Update & Support!

The research for this article was done by a staff writer for LDA Interactive, a Los Angeles based web design agency.  Contact LDA at info@ldainteractive.com or call (213) 342-1770 for a website consultation from one of our specialists.