A loyalty scheme helps you attract repeat business because it gives customers a reason to come back to you. It also helps reduce discounting and protects the value of branded goods. This is because customers save money by using the points they’ve built up on previous purchases to buy items at the RRP. A ‘win-win’ for both retailer and customer.

Customer Rewards comes fully integrated into Cloud POS, our End-to-End Cloud Retail Solution. It helps you encourage customers back to your store, rather than shop elsewhere. You can offer rewards on in-store and online purchases so your customers benefit every time they buy.

It’s been brilliant, so now everyone’s getting 5% of what they spend in shop on their account. That money equates to 2.5-3% [of margin] to us and it’s all back in our door, rather than over the road.

Dan Stringer – Owner, Ride Bikes

How it works

Citrus-Lime’s Customer Rewards is loyalty scheme that gives customers points every time they buy something from you. The points equate to money off their next purchase and customers start collecting these points from the very first time they shop with you. By offering them money off their next purchase customers have a reason to return to your store.

As you’re in control of setting the rate at which customers earn points through Customer Rewards, you’re able maintain your margins and reduce discounting stock. You can also set how long the points remain valid for.

Keeping in touch with customers

With Customer Rewards, you can send automated emails to let customers know how many points they’ve earned after each purchase, as well as monthly statements outlining their points balance. If you’ve a special offer you want to promote, you can also email customers to let them know about it. When they’ve got money off their next purchase, they’re more likely to browse your store the next time they want to buy something.

Keep customers loyal

As they have money off their next shop with you, customers are more incentivised to check out your store before they go elsewhere. Once they buy from you, they’ll get money off the purchase after that. And on it goes. Every time they buy from you, they earn points (and cash) towards the next item they buy. Alternatively, they can bank their points to put towards that big purchase.

Customer Rewards vs hard discounting

With hard discounting the deduction is applied on the first purchase. This means you’re cutting in to your margins from the first interaction, but there’s no guarantee the customer will come back for a second visit.

Customer Rewards, on the other hand, encourages the second transaction because it provides an incentive to come back. The second interaction with a customer is more important because it’s forms the start of a potentially beautiful relationship.

Take a look at the illustration below to see how customer Rewards helps you and your customer:

Whilst everyone earns rewards, redemption rates for Customer Rewards is typically around 20%. Hard Discounting is habitual, resulting in a much higher percentage of customers receiving a discount, but without the baked-in incentive for the customer to actually return (the benefit has already been realised in the initial transaction).

Because the data shows that 1 in 5 customers will repeat purchase when Customer Rewards is featured in the transaction, you can effectively attribute the value of the second transaction to the first, which reduces the overall discount (as a percentage).

For example, if the first transaction is £1,500 and generates 5% Customer Rewards (£75), but the second transaction is £500, then the total revenue across those two transactions is £2000. This means that the £75 of Customer Rewards, despite being presented as 5%, is actually just 3.75% of the total revenue across 2 x transactions.