Luna Bronze’s Director & Co-Founder Shares Her Strategies for Launching a Loyalty Program, and More Advice from Shopify Experts

In recent conversations with Alex North, Account Executive at Okendo, leaders in ecommerce spoke on how to drive long-term success. Maddy Balderson, Director & Co-Founder from Luna Bronze with Rhiannon Davies, Strategic Growth Manager from MindArc, shared strategies for loyalty programs.  

In another conversation, Tiana Taylor, Ecommerce Manager from Biologi and Aaron Langer, Chief Executive Officer at Arms of Eve discussed their best practices and tools for driving revenue with customer marketing. 

Check out the highlights from both conversations below.

Why Loyalty Programs Are Key to Success in 2024

A New Approach in 2024 

Maddy Balderson started the year 2023 thinking Luna Bronze was set for big growth. Soon into the year, her team realized that the brand’s growth wasn’t going to be as big as they thought. The biggest challenge? The cost of customer acquisition was so expensive and ads were not performing. 

Balderson, Director & Co-Founder of Luna Bronze said, “We came to this point where we realized we had this segment of Superfans, or VIBs (Very Important Bronzers) and we realized we were spraying our Klaviyo emails to our customer base and VIBs were an afterthought. We weren’t tailoring communications to them and not treating [VIBs] differently from the rest of our customer base. That’s when we started looking at loyalty and retention as being a place where we can start to improve on costs and efficiencies.” 

Fostering Relationships with Superfans (Luna Bronze’s VIBs) 

Balderson said the way they look at the customer ecosystem is by starting with Meta ads to bring new customers in and then use their funnel through Klaviyo, post-purchase flows, and now Loyalty and Referrals to build relationships with VIBs. 

“We are a small team, so the loyalty program helps us make it much more efficient [to connect with our VIBs] rather than having to carve out time to talk to VIBs every month. Now, we have a strategy to start fostering relationships with those VIBs.”

For metrics to understand if VIBs are loving Luna Bronze, Balderson noted that they’ll be looking at purchases per customer and AOV. The Luna Bronze team will also look at return customer rate and to keep that at a 25-30% rate. 

“At the moment, we’re getting a lot of new customers in the door, so the focus is how do we keep them coming back.” she said. 

Setting up and Promoting a Loyalty Program 

While setting up a loyalty program is the first step, how a brand promotes the program is what makes it effective. As part of the promotion strategy for their loyalty program, the Luna Bronze team implemented a Klaviyo pop-up that says, ‘Go join the Bronze Squad and you’ll be first to get access to new products.’ 

“Since we’ve put that on, we’ve seen a 35% increase in loyalty program enrollment. That is in your face, you can’t miss it when you’re on our website,” Balderson said. 

When deciding what type of loyalty program would work for their customers, Balderson went with a simple, easy-to-understand points program of 1 point for $1. 

“We were like, this is the easiest way to communicate this with customers without going through convoluted processes. We are at that crawling, walking phase. As we are gauging what customers want, we did a survey at the end of January and got so many responses of people saying they wanted the loyalty program. But they did not know that we had one even though the program had launched a week prior. That made us double down [on promotion] and repeat it.” 

Rhiannon Davies, Strategic Growth Manager from MindArc works with numerous brands on marketing. Davies noted how well Okendo Loyalty works, making it easy to promote a loyalty program. 

“One thing about the Okendo platform in comparison to a lot of other platforms that I’ve used is customers need it to be thrown in their face sometimes because there are so many things and messaging that we want to display on our website,” Davies said. “I love the banner at the top, the widget on the side, and a really beautiful loyalty page. The widget at the top is phenomenal.”

Reducing Ad Spend with a Loyalty Program 

Davies highlighted the importance of loyalty programs to reduce ad spend with data.

Davies gives this advice to brands: “How can we start with an ad to be able to retarget to all of the touchpoints that a customer has — from the first time they land on your site all the way through to conversion? It can be scary, but if you make sure you set up your loyalty program efficiently and have all the touchpoints like we do [with Luna Bronze] in the Okendo platform, it’s going to be a game-changer. Then, you can reinvest that money saved in ads back into more valuable areas of the business.” 

Davies notices that many brands implement a loyalty program because everyone else is doing it.  But there’s much more to it. Davies said loyalty programs are all about the data — how can you use this data to help businesses grow?

“It’s not just saying, ‘I know this is my loyalty segment’, but how to get creative in terms of assessing customer lifetime value and create real experiences with our customers,” she said. “From a psychology perspective, there is still a transaction element that is important to pull someone in. But as you start to foster loyalty, how do you create a personalized experience for that person as their emotional connection with the brand continues to grow?” 

Customer Marketing Strategies that Win 

Focusing on the Customer with A Consolidated Tech Stack 

Aaron Langer, Chief Executive Officer at Arms of Eve, believes in having authentic conversations with customers. Arms of Eve is a customer-centric brand that creates effortless essentials and statement pieces for women. 

Langer admits his team was scared when they started using Okendo Reviews because of receiving negative feedback. 

“Even the bad stuff is good,” he said. “But the good stuff is great, and you find that people love you. It made us feel good, but at the end of the day, we were like, ‘What can we do for them? How can we talk to these people differently? How can they become our Superfans? How can they refer us?’”

Langer said, “Reviews were a game changer for us with social proof. To have those 4- and 5-star reviews across our PDPs, we use those in advertising and talk about it because we should let customers have their voice because they are the most authentic. We started with Reviews, then we went to Referrals. We had the mindset of, ‘It will just work,’ but we needed to [promote the referral program] to make it work better and harder for us.”

Langer noted he got started with Okendo Loyalty because of how easily Loyalty works together with the rest of Okendo’s products and integrations.  

“We jumped into Loyalty pretty early because of the integration. The way Okendo works with everything else is just magical. It’s so easy, the backend is so good.” 

Langer also noted the importance of being able to seamlessly syndicate reviews across international storefronts to build up social proof in new markets. 

“We have two Shopify sites, and the reviews are migrating across those, which is awesome because most of our customer base is in Australia. So having those reviews to move to a new market is powerful.” 

Retaining Customers in a Competitive Landscape 

Langer also spoke on the importance of constantly reminding customers that the brand’s loyalty program exists. He also stressed that the Arms of Eve team rewards customers as much as they can. 

“If they are coming back to us and spending more, those are our favorite people,” he said. “We want to keep them happy. For us, we’re in business for them.”

Langer noted, “It’s so hard to acquire new customers. It is competitive. So once you’ve got them in the door, or you’ve got them on customer service, make it right. Loyalty is that other piece of understanding who they are, what tier they are at, and being able to talk to them differently as well.” 

Increasing Conversions with Quizzes 

Natural skincare brand Biologi views Quizzes as a massive tool for education. Tiana Taylor, Ecommerce Manager at Biologi said their quiz is like having another staff member.

After their previous quiz platform was impossible to manage, the team now has a quiz product that is easy to use with Okendo Quizzes. Biologi launched the product recommendation quiz three months ago and is already seeing success. 

“[The quiz] removes the barrier of entry for customers when they don’t know where to start,” Taylor said. “People have short attention spans. If you can’t get them in the first three minutes, you can’t get them to understand which product they need.” 

Biologi can use the quiz as another way to market their products because it’s so needs and solutions-focused. “That’s what skincare is.” 

While important, quizzes are not just about personalized shopping experiences. On the product front, quizzes provide the team at Biologi data to inform development.

“For us, it’s been a massive resource in our product development. In creating that new business, we’ve decided we need to expand that product line as well. So it’s helped us realize what is missing and what people are looking for. Focusing on specific answers helps us create new products.” 

Using Okendo Quizzes helps Biologi convert more customers on a high level, resulting in a 53x ROI from Quizzes. 

“We have a low drop-off rate,” Taylor said. “Even with the email section as optional, the majority of customers put it in anyway. It’s great for capturing leads. And it’s one of our highest converting tools onsite. Since introducing the quiz, we saw another revenue stream come through.” 

Utilizing Zero-Party Data to Segment Customers 

Taylor’s team uses zero-party data from quizzes, noting the importance of tech consolidation to make sure all customer data is in one place. 

“Looking at the customer data [the quiz] has helped us see a better transition from initial contact to conversion,” she said. “There’s a lot less noise, and we can personalize and tailor that experience. That’s where the data helps with the segmentation.

“[Quizzes] works with Reviews as well. That connection into the rest of our tech stack has created a seamless experience.” 

For Arms of Eve, Aaron added that the team’s use of segmentation has evolved. They segment based on purchase value and how many times a customer has purchased. He says the data is great, but the key is knowing how to use the data. 

“The loyalty program is another way to segment by putting people in a specific group. You can then segment that as well based on their tiers. Segmentation is hugely important. It’s another way to speak to your customers.”