This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, my friends, quick little reminder, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, at least in the United States. Canada beat us to it a few weeks ago, and of course, we've got lots of international listeners as well. I just want to say I'm thankful for you wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for being out there. As always, we make this podcast for you, and of course, let's continue with an episode here.
It's about how to create a simple customer loyalty program for a small business. So if you're a side hustler or a small business, should you have a customer loyalty program? Do you need a little punch card or some other means of rewarding customers? Might this in fact increase your sales and is there a way you can do it that's not complicated? It doesn't take a ton of time and attention.
Well, I think the answer is depend on the kind of business that you have, but let's hear today from Janelle. She's running a small handmade soap business, and she's thinking about launching one of these customer loyalty programs, but of course wants to keep it easy to manage. So let's talk about that. What is the way to do it? First of all, is it a good idea?
Second, if it is, how might you do it in this easy to implement way? Detailed question from Janelle and my answer right after this. I'm Janelle, calling in from Sonoma County. I run a small side business selling handmade soaps, and I've been thinking about starting a customer loyalty program to encourage repeat purchases. But since I'm just a one person operation, I want to keep it simple and manageable.
What's the best way to create a straightforward loyalty program for a small scale business like mine? Any suggestions for tools or strategies would be super helpful. All right Janelle, thank you for the question. Customer loyalty program could be a good way to reward repeat customers, keep them coming back or it could also be a lot of work for something that is not really bringing in much of a return. So that's why we always want to focus on simple tools here.
Key is in fact to keep it simple, especially since you're running this one person operation. So what can you do? Start with a punch card system. Punch card could be a classic analog punch card, which works in a retail business like this, or it could be a digital postcard. Loopy Loyalty is one company, no affiliation here, I just found them online.
You can make digital punch cards using apps like Loopy Loyalty, there's probably some others. And I've noticed that Apple actually is doing this more directly. Like when I use Apple Pay, lots of places like something's popping up and it's not from a third party app, it's from Apple directly. That's like, hey, do you want to add this stores loyalty program basically to your wallet and you'll save money. And I'm like, okay, I'd like to save money and plus I use Apple Pay all the time.
So that might actually be a good way to do it. That incorporates naturally into how a lot of people pay these days. What else could you do though? If you want to put more into it, a VIP membership, so this is more of a membership program for customers who have made multiple purchases or they hit a certain spending threshold, you can invite them to join this VIP club. Obviously you call it whatever seems to make sense.
Shopify has tools that will basically set this up for you. If you're using Shopify, it will notify members via email when they've reached whatever milestones that you have set, probably some other platforms do as well. And again, how much work you want to put into that kind of depends on how much return you think you might receive. So if it were me, I wouldn't put too much into this at first, I would just kind of try it out and see if it really makes a difference. If not, I would focus more on how am I going to bring in new customers?
What new products can I introduce? How can I sell more to those existing customers and so on. Whatever you decide, keep it simple, fun and focused on making your customers feel valued. Good luck Janelle. Good luck listeners.
Thank you for being out there. Hope all is well in your world. Again, happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. And if you don't celebrate, why not? You can celebrate Thanksgiving anywhere.
If you have a comment or a question, you know our website, sidehustleschool.com, you're of mentalhealth.com is where I write my three times a week mental health newsletter. It's been fun to hear from lots of readers and listeners over there. And of course, much more is to come Black Friday coming up also be on the lookout. New episode every day always. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
