Customer loyalty app development – Benefits, process, costs

Jai Rawat, one of the co-founders and VP of Product Strategy at Zinrelo, a loyalty and rewards platform, wrote in a Forbes article, “To retain customers, brands are under intense pressure and have been forced to look at loyalty from a value-generating perspective with an eye toward loyalty experiences and rewards for their customers.” He also mentions that loyalty can no longer be taken for granted.

Amidst the growing inflation and the recessionary jitters, businesses are at a precarious standpoint where retaining customers is a task cut out for organizations big or small. One sure way of ensuring this is to consider loyalty and rewards app development. By developing such an app, you retain customers more than before and reward them simultaneously.

Mobile apps have quickly changed the way consumers interact with businesses. With stiff competition and an ever-growing list of businesses, it becomes extremely crucial for companies to brainstorm seriously on customer retention. Of the many strategies emerging for this purpose, loyalty app development has emerged as particularly important.

The benefits of Loyalty Apps

In order to keep customers engaged and reward them for their loyalty and retention, organizations are fast creating a loyalty program app. Loyalty and rewards apps can offer significant advantages to businesses. Some of the more apparent benefits of developing a loyalty app include:

• Promotion of consumer engagement: Loyalty programs can engage consumers in ways that align with business missions. For instance, companies often offer discounts or freebies to loyal customers or those who help bring in more business. These benefits can incentivize consumers to engage with companies, ultimately driving up sales.

• Higher customer retention: The benefits we offer our customers ultimately convince them to keep buying our products and services. Rewards can help decrease the likelihood of customer churn, which is a constant challenge for most businesses. Loyalty apps can also help attract new customers, allowing companies to build a following and ensure higher profits.

• Improved brand perception: Loyalty apps can offer a sense of legitimacy to a company’s brand; consumers perceive loyalty programs as a commitment to improving their overall experience. The result is a higher reputation with consumers.
• Higher revenues: Rewards apps can directly impact a company’s sales by incentivizing customer loyalty and improving brand engagement. Moreover, it improves customer retention and acquisition, which pays dividends over the long term.

Creating a loyalty program app can help companies tap into a number of targeted rewards strategies that incentivize specific forms of engagement, strengthening customer relationships and promoting brands. More importantly, loyalty apps can allow businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors, so loyalty or rewards app development should be prioritized by businesses that want to thrive in today’s digital landscape.

What does the development of a loyalty and rewards app entail?

The many advantages that creating a loyalty program app offer make them an effective customer engagement strategy. However, the success of rewards app development depends on their build. In design terms, loyalty apps are typically programmed such that customers can earn discounts, points, or cashback for their purchases, in-app actions, and other activities. Rewards apps, conversely, are more focused on incentivizing particular actions, such as sharing a brand message on social media or following a brand account. As you can imagine, developing a sophisticated loyalty and rewards app involves several steps, including:

• Identify your end-goals: All app development projects are initiated with a clear understanding of what must be achieved. Defining the features and functionalities your app must possess will help you appropriately drive sales, improve customer loyalty and gather valuable user-generated data.

• Define your target audience:  After defining your goals, it’s time to define your desired audience. If your purpose involves retaining customers, your existing customers would be your target audience. Identify the age group and demographic your customers are a part of. The more you understand your target audience, the more likely it is to influence your app design.

• Decide on the features: The next step involves developing a feature set. This may involve deciding the type of rewards you offer, how consumers can earn them, and how they can be redeemed. The features of your loyalty app will determine how customers interact with it and what data you can collect.

• Design the user interface (UI): An app is only as good as its user interface, and loyalty and rewards apps are no exception. An easily navigable UI can help make it easier for your consumers to engage with your brand, while poor UI design will have customers associate your brand with frustration and disappointment. In order to avoid such mishaps, consider hiring a professional UX designer to build an appealing and intuitive interface.

• Develop the app: Depending on your target audience, you may choose to develop your loyalty app on a variety of platforms, including Android, iOS, or other web-based solutions. Remember that app development projects’ complexity can increase exponentially when developing your app on different platforms.
• Test and Launch: Once you make a loyalty app, it must be tested extensively to ensure no glitches or bugs affect user experience. Moreover, the app must be swept of security vulnerabilities to keep your consumers safe. Once rigorous testing has been completed, launch your app and promote it to your intended audience.

[Also read: How to Strategically Plan Mobile App Development Process]

How much does it cost to build a Loyalty and Rewards App?

While loyalty apps can be very effective for building stronger customer relationships, this advantage does not come cheap. When considering loyalty and rewards app development, the most frequent question that pops up is, “how much will it cost?” The short answer is that loyalty app development costs can vary greatly based on a number of factors like:

• The number of features: The more features you add to develop your loyalty app, the more money it will cost to create. Some features like personalized rewards and social media integration will undoubtedly set you back by a pretty penny.

• UI design: The UI is the most important component of an app, so you might need to sink more money into it. Since a poorly designed app is likely to tank your customer engagement, it’s best not to cut costs regarding its user interface.

• Development platform: Creating a loyalty program app on multiple platforms will cost exponentially more money, but it can be worth it if it helps reach your target audience.

• Third-party integration: Integrating your app with your existing CRM or e-commerce platform can help better manage your customer experience but will increase development costs.
• Security and compliance: Your loyalty and rewards apps may have to be developed in accordance with security standards and regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Ensuring your compliance may involve expending more time and money.

The costs associated with these factors may vary based on the app you intend to design. However, here are some ballpark estimates for what you can expect. Please keep in mind that these are just estimates. The actual costs you may incur will depend on your requirements.

• Basic Rewards App: A basic rewards app with simple features like a point system, account management, and basic analytics will cost you between $20,000 to $50,000
• Intermediate Rewards App: Intermediate rewards apps have more sophisticated features, such as personalized rewards, location-based rewards, and third-party integrations, and would cost you between $50,000 and $100,000.

• Advanced Loyalty App: Rewards apps with advanced features such as social media integration, branding, and mechanisms like gamification can cost more than  $100,000.
• Maintenance Costs: The costs associated with an app do not end with its development. Apps must be constantly maintained and updated. Moreover, customers using apps require constant support. These tasks must be undertaken near-daily, meaning they should be indicated in your budget.

While the cost of developing a loyalty and rewards app like Smile is high, its benefits could go a long way toward shoring up business. Loyalty apps help increase customer loyalty and virtually guarantee a competitive advantage. Consider working with experienced developers to create an app that aligns with your goals.

The features of customer loyalty apps

The experiences you can offer your customers are just as important as good products and services when it comes to building strong relationships with your consumers. Loyalty and rewards apps are an excellent way for businesses to create holistic consumer experiences, especially since smartphones and mobile devices are now becoming indispensable to the modern consumer. The typical features found on a loyalty and rewards app include:

• Personalized rewards: All loyalty programs revolve around the rewards themselves. A good rewards app must offer a number of different rewards based on the customer’s activity and location.

• User-friendly UI: Loyalty and rewards apps should be intuitively designed, focusing on easy navigation. Customers must be able to track their activity, see their rewards, and redeem them whenever they want. Moreover, the app’s UI should also be visually appealing.

• Point-of-sale (PoS) integration: To streamline your loyalty and rewards programs, it’s important that you integrate it with your PoS system. This ensures that customers can easily collect points and redeem rewards when they buy products without unnecessarily exerting themselves. Ideally, the rewards or points that a consumer accumulates upon purchase should be immediately reflected on your loyalty app.

• Push notifications: Loyalty apps can allow you to send push notifications to consumers, reminding them of the rewards they can earn by engaging with the app. Push notifications are a powerful tool that, if used appropriately, can drive engagement.

• Gamification: The incorporation of game-like elements to an app can make it much more interactive, encouraging customers to spend more time perusing the app. Gamification is an innovative approach that can even help create a sense of competition or inspire a sense of enjoyment among consumers, thus driving engagement.

• Social media integration: Social media platforms are an effective way to connect to your audience. Connecting your app to social media allows your consumers to share their progress or the rewards they receive, promoting word-of-mouth and increasing the visibility of your business.
• Analytics and reporting: It’s important that you integrate basic analytics into your loyalty and rewards apps to help collect and analyze data on how your customers are integrating with the rewards programs you have put in place. Analyzing how many customers are participating in the program, how often they frequent your business, and what rewards they redeem can help you further customize and improve your program.

A loyalty and rewards app is a powerful but precocious tool that needs to be well-designed and maintained. Creating a sophisticated rewards app with advanced features such as PoS integration, social media integration, analytics and reporting, and personalizable rewards can help you better engage with your customers and learn what they like about your business. If you don’t have a loyalty and rewards program, perhaps now is the time to create one. Get in touch with an on-demand app development company to discuss your requirements.

Loyalty and rewards apps can be incredible tools to boost customer retention and business revenues. Loyalty apps that offer a personalized experience and appropriately incentivize customers can be leveraged by businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors while improving their reputation. While developing a loyalty and rewards app can be fairly expensive, the long-term benefits of these apps make it a worthwhile investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How much does it cost to build a Loyalty and Rewards App?

A. Depending on the complexity and the features you want in your mobile app, the cost can range between $30,000 and $100,000. This cost is based on number of factors such as platform, tech stack, development team’s location, etc.

Q. What are the benefits of developing a loyalty and rewards app?

A. The many benefits associated with loyalty and rewards apps include the ability to offer personalized customer experiences, the incentives they offer consumers, and the fact that they help retain customers and build better brand perception.

Q. What strategies do businesses use on loyalty and rewards apps?

A. Companies typically employ a tiered rewards system, gamification, and personalized rewards as strategies for loyalty and rewards apps.

THE AUTHOR

Dileep Gupta

DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER