poddle Help Centre

Set Up Your Retain & Grow Scheme

Written by poddle Support | May 17, 2024 11:24:30 AM
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What is the Retain & Grow Scheme?

Your Retain & Grow Scheme is the central pillar of poddle’s formula, and it helps you to:

  • Build your customer database.
  • Increase customer loyalty.
  • Boost purchase frequency.
  • Grow average sales value.

This scheme will give your loyal customers more reason to keep coming back to your premises (meaning they are less likely to stray and become one of your competitor’s customers) and convert one-off visitors into high-value poddle followers.  

In short, it is essentially your custom loyalty programme; supported by poddle’s award-winning technology.

Your account manager will set up your Retain & Grow Scheme with you on call; however, if you would like to try this yourself or you’d like to make a change without the help of your account manager, you can follow the steps below.

To get started and set up your Retain & Grow Scheme; first log in to your poddle Control Centre. Once you are successfully logged in, use the side navigation bar on the left-hand side to find the “Retain & Grow” menu item and click on it.

If this is your first time setting up your Retain & Grow Scheme in the poddle Control Centre, simply click the "Get Started" button to begin creating your custom loyalty scheme. To make changes to a pre-existing Retain & Grow Scheme, click on the "Change your Retain & Grow Scheme" button. 

 

 

Step 1 – Create your Loyalty Rewards

What are “Loyalty Rewards”?

Loyalty Rewards are how you keep customers coming back, get them to visit more often and help you make more money.

The way your customers unlock loyalty rewards on poddle is by collecting stamps each time they spend money with you, as part of your Stamp Scheme. You can have up to 3 tiers of loyalty rewards, which require a different number of stamps to unlock. Here's how it works: 

Having multiple rewards is a good way to increase repeat purchases and purchase frequency because customers will want to collect more stamps to unlock better rewards. For example, a single-reward scheme might offer a free drink in exchange for 3 stamps. However, a multi-reward scheme might offer a free drink in exchange for 3 stamps, a free cookie in exchange for 5 stamps, and a free meal deal in exchange for 10 stamps. When a customer collects a reward, they lose that number of stamps, so they will need to make more purchases to get more stamps to keep earning your rewards. 

Keep in mind, the way you set up your scheme will of course depend on the nature of your business!

Check out the section below for how to get your Loyalty Rewards set up in your poddle Control Centre.

 

How do you set up your Loyalty Rewards in poddle?

Before setting up your Loyalty Rewards, it is a good idea to consult the data and find out how much your average customer spends per visit and set the value of the stamp similar to or just below this value. There’s nothing more annoying for a customer than having to spend an unrealistic amount just to get a stamp! This will cause your Retain & Grow Scheme to fall into disuse and make it hard for you to unlock the benefits of investing in your scheme. Contact your account manager if you do not have this data to hand, and they can help! 

There are 3 different types of loyalty rewards that you can offer:

  1. Free Product or Service (most recommended)
  2. Fixed Price Discount
  3. Percentage Discount

Our recommendation is to offer a Free Product or Service where possible as it is found to be the most effective type of reward to build customer loyalty.

If you feel doing this is not ideal for your type of business; for example, a grocery store, where all customers may not be interested in the same item, please contact your account manager, they may be able to provide a relevant loyalty reward setup based on their prior experience working with a similar business. 

Here is an example of how a café might use Free Products or Services to create their Loyalty Rewards:

  • Tier 1 - 3 Stamp = Free Coffee
  • Tier 2 - 5 Stamps = Free Cookie
  • Tier 3 - 10 Stamps = Free Meal Deal (your poddle Control Centre will initially just display 2 tiers, but you can click "Add a reward" to create the 3rd tier). 

Once you have set up these Loyalty Rewards, you then need to choose your New Follower Reward to finish setting up your Retain & Grow Scheme.

With this completed, a pop-up screen will appear to promote your Retain & Grow Scheme.

 

Can I Change My Loyalty Rewards?

You can change or amend your Loyalty Rewards at any time. 

  • Step 1 – Use the same navigation to get to your Retain & Grow Scheme page on the poddle Control Centre.
  • Step 2 - On the Retain & Grow Scheme page, it will display a completed and non-editable form. Click on “Change your Retain & Grow Scheme” to make changes.
  • Step 3 – Update or amend your Loyalty Rewards and click Save. 
  • Step 4 – Once you have made your changes, you can notify your customers before they come to your premises.

**Please note that any changes made to your Loyalty Rewards will impact customers who have already collected rewards with your business. For example, if the first tier required only 3 stamps to claim a reward, but now requires 5 stamps to claim the same reward, this may confuse or frustrate your customers. So please be careful! 

 

Step 2 – Choose your New Follower Reward

What is a “New Follower Reward”?

A New Follower Reward is a free and instant reward for customers, without having to collect stamps first. They can receive this reward once they follow your business on poddle, which is how we add them to your customer database – or Followers. To find out how customer details are collected, click here for more information.

The more Followers you have in your database, the more loyal poddle can make them, and the more sales we can get from them, which allows your business to grow.

How do you set up your New Follower Reward in poddle?

In the section above (Step 1 – Create Your Loyalty Rewards), you will have created your 2 or 3-tier loyalty rewards structure. For Step 2, you will need to select one of these offers to be your New Follower Reward.

We highly recommend using one of the loyalty rewards you set up with your stamp scheme. This keeps your rewards scheme simple, clear and compelling for all your customers.

Once you have set up your Loyalty Rewards and New Follower Reward, your Retain & Grow Scheme is complete and you are now ready to start keeping more customers and making more money.

Check out the links below to find out how you can:

 

Can I Change My New Follower Reward?

You can change or amend your New Follower Reward at any time.

To change your New Follower Reward, head back to your poddle Control Centre and select your Retain & Grow Scheme. Follow the steps below:

  • Step 1 – Use the same navigation to get to your Retain & Grow Scheme page on the poddle Control Centre.
  • Step 2 - On the Retain & Grow Scheme page, it will display a completed and non-editable form. Click on “Change your Retain & Grow Scheme” to make changes.
  • Step 3 – Update or amend your New Follower Reward and click Save. 
  • Step 4 – Once you have made your changes, you can notify your customers before they come to your premises.

**Please note that your customers may have already seen your New Follower Reward on the poddle App before you changed it, and liked the look of it. When you make this change, even if the customer has saved your New Follower Reward to redeem later, this will change for them too. E.g.: Your New Follower Reward was a free coffee, and was then changed to a free cookie instead... This will be reflected in the poddle App for customers too!