One thing is certain: the impact of COVID-19 on the economy has underlined and bolded the word loyalty and emphasized that it is even more critical now to create active and dedicated relationships with all your partners. After all, returning customers, suppliers you can rely on and a loyal team are at the core of any business’ continuity.
But is it possible to maintain and/or expand your loyal base in these challenging times with decreased purchasing power and mobility? And if so, how do you do that? Most specifically, how do you retain and engage your loyal and devoted customers in the short term to ensure a more certain outlook in the long term?
In this blog, we are going to give you one solution to boost loyalty that is often overlooked in the customer experience chain. Yet, we think it is one of the most important when building a durable relationship with your client base.
Although the circumstances have recently changed, the main benefits of loyalty have not. They are:
In this current environment, the last point is probably the most important. Your steadfast customers are now more likely to be forgiving when something goes wrong. And when it does, more likely to return when things are looking up again.
So how do you create a loyal base? To answer this question, it is good to know the 3 main types of loyalty: rational, behavioral and emotional, with the most effective being the latter (Source: Loyalty Magazine, November 2019). Let’s dive a bit deeper into this one.
With more and more customers demanding an emotional connection to brands, a lot of research has been done on building loyalty on an emotional level and finding the most effective ways to engage to create that bond.
Such research also shows that customers who feel emotionally attached to a brand make exponentially more purchases or use of a service when reached on an emotional level. Or in numbers: 82% of consumers with high emotional engagement will always buy the brand they are loyal to when making purchase decisions versus only 38% of consumers with low emotional engagement (Source: Capgemini).
Since the most effective and lasting engagement with your customers is emotional, how do you best reach them? Simply put, in a language they understand best – their own.
English is great as a standardized option and may work well if you want to transfer basic information. But even individuals with a good level of English miss out on much of what is presented. A missed opportunity, we think, to really connect with existing and potential clients.
Therefore, we suggest adding a 5th building block to the 4 most common that we usually see for new markets’ launch plans:
PLUS
Localization increases the odds in a simple way, and as research shows, the majority of consumers prefer their user experience in their native language. For example, no less than 90% (!!!) of online users prefer to conduct transactions in their own language. They spend more time on websites in their own language and are much more likely to return and make repeat purchases. This is also true of users with a high proficiency in English. Users simply respond more positively if you are speaking their language (Source: CSA, Can’t Read, Won’t Buy).
The above findings mean that if you are moving into new markets with your company while not adapting your content to the local audience, you are at serious risk of alienating potential purchasers or users by missing out on truly connecting them emotionally to your products or services.
Localization should be a given in any loyalty initiative. Yet, too often it is overlooked or an afterthought when planning customer loyalty strategies. This ultimately impacts the turnover.
Of course, we realize that hitting that sweet spot of an emotional reaction to build loyalty can be a challenge already in good times, yet it is even more important in today’s trying times. Let localization do the work for you and watch your customers’ loyalty and audience engagement increase.
Want to know more about how localization can support you? Then keep an eye on our next blogs, in which we get into the details about what localization is and other tools you can use to connect with your clients.