A complete guide for building a loyalty app

According to the report, 60% of customers are likely to buy from brands that offer loyalty programs.

Loyalty apps help businesses improve their customer engagement and boost revenue. 

There are multiple apps available through which businesses can run their reward distribution programs so their loyal customers can receive reward points.

However, instead of depending on third-party reward distribution apps, creating an exclusive app for your business is best, as you can control your platform completely. 

Full control will enable you to customize your reward program to offer a better experience to your users. Moreover, there are many reasons you should create your rewards distribution app. 

How an app can benefit your loyalty program?

These are the top 4 benefits of an app for a loyalty program. 

1. Get more customers 

Customers expect rewards from businesses for their loyalty, such as bonuses, offers, and others. These programs help companies to retain old and gain new loyal customers.

Also, according to eMarketer research, 58.7% of internet users believed getting rewards on their purchases encourages them to shop more due to getting a better shopping experience with these programs. 

2. More sales

According to the report, the probability of making sales from existing customers is 3x to 35x higher than from new customers. Also, according to the experts, existing customers spend 67% more than new customers. 

As per Vilfredo Pareto’s 80/20 principle, a large portion of business profit comes from 20% of its loyal customers, who are most like to come back and make purchases.

3. Brand promotion 

Offering such a program gives a better brand experience to customers. Moreover, these programs encourage customers to refer their favorite brands to their families and friends. 

Also, as per the report of BusinessWire, the average American consumer is likely to tell 11 more people about specific brands when they face positive experiences.  

4. Customer insights

Understand your customer better with analytics and insights-based features in your app. Knowing your customer will help you offer them a great experience by modifying your product and services based on their needs and desires, which will benefit you in the long run.

Now let’s understand how to create an app for your business.

What are the steps to create a loyalty program app?

You can check the given steps.

1.  Knowing your customers 

Before moving to app development, the team will study your customers. Researching your customer will help them identify features and offers to be added. 

Moreover, when studying your customers, they will study:

• What products do they mostly like to buy?
• Can we sell them other products with programs?
• How much profit do they earn on their purchases?
• How much discount should we provide on our every offer?
• What marketing strategy should I implement to encourage my customers to engage with my programs?

2. Preparing your customer loyalty program

The team will find the satisfaction level of your customers that will engage with your program, such as surveys, interviews, and monitoring customer comments. They will take out the list of customers who frequently purchase products from your platform and take their feedback for your programs. 

Offering better experiences to such customers through your program will help you scale your business potential by targeting many of your loyal customers. 

3. Engage your users with simple UI

The team will create a prototype of your app to get an exact idea about your app’s user interface once it becomes ready to launch. 

Ask the team to go for a minimalistic app design where users can easily navigate to all the required features and functionalities to access the reward distribution system you will offer regarding your business.

4. Selecting required SDK and APIs

You can ask app developers to select from the given SDK and APIs to implement the functionalities of loyalty programs in your app.

I. Smile.io APIs

You can use this API to implement the following features in your app:

• Reward points
• Referrals
• Differentiated rewards for special customers

This API will let you create beautiful mobile designs and Enable you to integrate them into your existing loyalty programs. 

Also, the platform offers an analytical tool that can help you measure the success of your reward program.

II. SDK.finance APIs

The other best API for creating your loyalty program. By using this API, you can implement the following features in your app:

• Loyalty functionalities;
• Payment gateways integration;
• Easy integration with 3rd party APIs for ’Know Your Customer, (KYC), OAuth, etc.;
• Compliance with PCI-DSS and other key security standards;
• Reward programs management;
• Customer profile management;
• Reporting, and analytics.

III. Talon.One APIs

It is a promotion program platform where the company provides its APIs by which you can create your loyalty program app. You can implement many features in your app, such as easy scaling and quick launch of reward distribution programs, creating customized programs, and much more.

4. Building decided features 

All these program apps include the following features: onboarding, reward system, payment gateway, personal offers, analytics, purchase history, and much more.

The team will build and implement features, like

• Integrating popular third-party payment services to allow users to buy products and services with multiple options.
• A feature-rich dashboard through which users can track their reward points
• Social media integration through which users can share your offers with their online friends 

Also, to minimize your app development budget, it is suggested that you create an MVP of your app that will include only the selected features to make it ready to use and launch.

5. Testing and deploying the app

The team will test your app multiple times to ensure it is free from all the technical glitches and drawbacks.

Also, they will perform beta testing where a few selected users will test your app and submit their experience while using it. 

Based on their feedback and reviews, you can make a few changes to offer them a great experience, so you can quickly scale your app to a wide range of audiences.

When launching your app, you can promote it by email marketing by contacting your existing customers and telling them about your reward distribution system.

Must have features in the loyalty app

The given features offer your users the best business reward experience.

1. Onboarding

Make your user easily join you by offering them a simple onboarding process. Offer both options to your users to join your platform through their e-mail addresses or social media accounts. Moreover, you can offer them an option to join your platform with their existing loyalty card number.

2. Customer profile 

Help your customers to access and customize their profiles on your platform. Offering profile modification will help them to add updated details on your platform, such as their new home address, E-mail ID, and other required information. 

Their up-to-date information on your platform will help you provide a better experience by offering them personalized offers through your reward distribution system.

3. Reward system 

You can add multiple reward programs to your apps, such as discounts, bonuses, internal currency, special offers, reward points, e-wallet points, etc. However, if you have an existing loyal program, you can move them to your mobile application to offer your potential customers the same program with a better experience.

4. Integration of social media 

Improve customer engagement on your platform by offering integration to their social media accounts on your app. You can offer extra reward points to the users who have integrated their social media accounts into your platform. 

For such users, you can offer them specific tasks such as sharing your deals and discounts on their social accounts’ timelines and online friends

5. Push notifications

Make sure your users get all the offers on your platform. With push notifications, you can offer them new bonuses and special offers, which can eventually help boost customers’ engagement levels on your platform through your app.

6. Payment gateways

Offer multiple payment options on your platform by integrating a wide range of payment gateways into your reward distribution system. 

Giving great flexibility with multiple payment options will enable your users to purchase on your platform based on their preferences.

7. Personal offers 

Offer your customers personalized offers based on their reviews, feedback, order history, and other personalized data. 

You can use artificial and machine learning technology to gather overall data from your platform and make precise analytical reports with required demographics to help you better understand your audience.

8. Purchase history 

Help your users to get the list of their past purchased products on your platform. With such a feature, they can buy their favorite products without needing to search for them again on your platform.

Moreover, this feature will help you keep records of their purchased products so you can remind them about new ongoing offers that are running relevant to their purchased products.

9. Analytics

Know your audience better with analytics features by implementing them into your program. 

The analytics feature will enable you to understand how your audience interacts with your platform, such as their average app sending time, most viewed products, and other required and relevant demographics.

10. Maps and geolocation

The location-based feature will enable you to target your users based on their availability in specific areas. Moreover, you can remind users about ongoing offers when they are nearby to your stores and business.

11. Gamification

Boost customer engagement on your platform by introducing a gamification feature. You can add multiple elements to your platform, such as points, badges, and creative games.

Offering a fun-like experience to your platform will encourage your users to engage more with your platform. Check the best apps offering their loyalty programs from where you can take ideas and inspiration for your app.

Best examples of loyalty program apps

You can check examples of the best apps that succeed with their loyalty program.

1. Sephora beauty insider app

A beauty shopping platform that offers a wide range of beauty products and accessories for skincare, haircare, and much more. This app has created an excellent record for being the most downloaded in the loyalty app category. The app is famous for its loyalty program known as “beauty insider,” which offers points on each purchase and makes it available to redeem for their users. 

Their reward program is perfectly integrated with their website and its official app. 

Launched in	1969
Available on	Android, iOS & web
App downloads	5M
App rating	4.7
Founded by	Dominique Mandonnaud
Industry	Beauty care

2. Starbucks app

The app provides multiple features to its users, such as scanning and paying, customizing orders, earning loyalty rewards, and much more. 

After earning rewards from the loyalty program of the Starbucks app., the user can get free drinks and food on their purchases.

Launched in	1971
Available on	Android, iOS & web
App downloads	10M
App rating	4.5
Founded by	Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl
Industry	Retail coffee and snacks store industry

3. Amazon app

One of the most famous e-commerce brands, Amazon, has a loyalty program that rewards its users. The sellers on this platform can integrate this loyalty program to increase engagement levels and sales. The sellers can choose from a wide range of loyalty programs to offer reward points to their customers.

Launched in	1994
Available on	Android, iOS & web
App downloads	10M
App rating	4.5
Founded by	Jeff Bezos
Industry	e-Commerce

4. The north face app

The platform offers the latest hiking clothing along with expert-tested outdoor gear. For every 100 earned points, the brand offers a $10 reward that users can use on their next purchase. Also, it offers its XPLR pass for free, where users can avail of 10% off on their first purchase. 

You might be wondering about the investment needed to build your app. But what factors will determine the cost of building your app? Let’s check.

Launched in	1968
Available on	Android, iOS & web
App downloads	10K
App rating	3.7
Founded by	Douglas Tompkins, Susie Tompkins Buell
Industry	e-Commerce

How much does it cost to build a custom loyalty app?

Multiple factors can affect the cost of building your reward distribution software:

1. Project complexity

The cost of building your app will affect if you are going to implement some complex features. The complexity can be associated with building algorithms that take too much developers’ effort and time. 

2. Tech stack 

There are multiple technologies available to create such apps. However, the cost of using such technologies will determine your overall app development budget. 

Hiring the best app developers will help you select an appropriate tech stack to help you economically adjust your app development budget. 

3. Third-party integrations

Multiple third-party integrations like payment services, geolocation-based features, and others can enhance your platform experience.

Some of them may charge fees for enabling you to offer their features on your platform. It would be best to less dependent on third-party integrations to minimize app development costs.

4. Development team’s hourly rate

The charges can vary depending on the location of your development team, and each team has its charges. 

Compared to western countries, it would be best to hire developers from Asian countries like India as they offer complete development services at an economical rate.

Follow the given practices to get the best return on your project. 

How to improve engagement on your loyalty app?

You can improve the engagement level of your app by following the best practices given below.

1. Entertain your users

Engage your customer by offering entertaining activities to your app. To offer a better experience, you can:

• Notify about special events by using push, location-based, and proximity notifications 
• Offer mini-games like quizzes to minimize their wait time
• Include video recipes/guides to help your users know more about your platform.

2.  Offer personal experience 

You can use smart algorithms in your app to analyze user behavior and offer them products and services relevant to their interests. 

Moreover, you can integrate multiple features, such as advanced filters and categorization, to help your user selects the best products and access relevant features on your platform.

3. Collect feedback 

Knowing your customer experience on your platform is essential. You can collect feedback by

• Running surveys
• Asking your customers to review their experience with your app on the app stores
• Analyzing users’ feedback, and modifying your platform to meet their expectations

4. Simplify the process

A simple and easy-to-understand reward program for your users will help you get more engagement levels to your platform. 

You can introduce a well-detailed program that includes videos for guiding new users on how to use and redeem reward points on your app. 

What is the best way to create a loyalty app?

These apps comprise multiple features that need guidance from app developers to help you build your app starting from scratch. To simplify your app creation journey and get better returns. You should go for outsourcing your project to app development agencies.

Outsourcing your project is beneficial as it offers fast delivery of user-friendly and high-quality apps. These companies offer complete app development services, from market research to launching them to your target market.

Moreover, checking their portfolios of past published apps for their clients will help you select the most suitable developers for your project.

Looking for an app developer for your loyalty program? Contact Idea Usher

Unlock the full potential of your loyalty program with Ideausher’s custom app development. Our team of experts will work closely with you to design and develop a user-friendly app that streamlines the loyalty process for both you and your customers.

From collecting points to redeeming rewards, our app makes it easy for customers to engage with your loyalty program and keeps them coming back for more. With our innovative solutions and cutting-edge technology, you’ll be able to increase customer retention, boost sales, and take your loyalty program to new heights. Contact us today to learn more and see how we can help your business grow.

Contact Idea Usher 

Email:

[email protected]

Phone:

(+1)732 962 4560

(+91)859 140 7140

FAQ

1. How do you create a successful loyalty program app?

You can follow the given steps to create your app:

• Study your customers 
• Prepare your customer reward distribution system
• Hire app developers
• Engage your users with simple UI
• Start working on creating decided features 
• Test and deploy your app

2. How do loyalty programs work?

These programs reward loyal customers to encourage them to shop again on their platform. These rewards can be gifts or discounts that users can avail when purchasing products from shopping apps.

3. What are the features of customer loyalty apps?

These are the following features of such apps:

• Onboarding
• Customer Profile 
• Reward System 
• Integration of social media 
• Push Notifications
• Payment Gateways
• Personal Offers 
• Purchase History 
• Analytics
• Maps and Geolocation
• Gamification