Need Email Subscribers for Your Rewards Program?
How to sign up customers & offer immediate benefits

Signing up customers for store rewards programs is key to developing a loyal customer base. Often these programs are free to the customer, and the store develops a rich database of email addresses, which facilitates personalized, cross-channel marketing opportunities.
Without a solid strategy and close attention to each piece of this sign up journey, the benefits can backfire.
Imagine this customer interaction:
· It’s a busy Sunday afternoon and the customer deposits an armful of items on the checkout counter.
· The very friendly sales clerk/cashier asks if she’d like to sign up for the special rewards program. There is no cost, he explains, plus there are coupons and special offers sent via email once the customer signs up.
· Customer gazes down at the 6 items lying jumbled on the counter.
· Should she pick them up, and put them back on the shelf while she awaits an email offering her special percentages off this purchase?
· Or does she carry on with buying these items at full price, because this is the last of her weekend errands and she needs to get home to begin dinner for her family?
You can figure out that this customer went forward with the full-price, no-rewards purchase. But how did it make her feel about the store’s brand? What emotions are now, unfortunately, attached to the brand because of this one simple customer interaction?
One easy solution would be to include an immediate, say 5% offer, in the sign up journey. Actuaries can parse the costs of offering 5% on an initial purchase. The customer could feel good about her purchase — she saved 5% after all! And the store just added another loyal member to its database.
It’s just one thought for resolving this minor customer experience infraction. Ethnography and detailed journey mapping — plus understanding how many customers do not sign up at the often stressful point of purchase — could easily change this customers frown — and blog post — into a smile.
