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Build Long-Term Relationships And Drive More Revenue From Your Existing Customers With Fiona Stevens of LoyaltyLion

Build long-term team relationships and drive revenue from loyal customers with Fiona Stevens of LoyaltyLion.

In today’s episode, my guest is Fiona Stevens, the Head of Marketing from LoyaltyLion. They are a data-driven loyalty and engagement platform that helps Shopify ecommerce retailers to build longer-lasting customer relationships that drive sustainable growth.

As a Shopify Plus Technology Partner, they create unique loyalty programs that integrate with their technology stack to add power to their overall marketing strategies.

They are one of very few Shopify Partners to be 100% loyalty focussed with no distractions. They genuinely eat, sleep and breathe retention.

In today’s opt-out era, they exist to help Shopify stores retain their most valuable customers and build customer relationships that outlast privacy updates, supply chain problems, and much more.

Get Your Competitive Growth Marketing Edge

​​Our North Star is to inspire founders and marketers to accelerate growth through podcasts and strategic insights. Each week, Steve Hutt and his Shopify Expert guest discuss the latest and current marketing strategies to accelerate growth and scale in 2022. You’ll learn how to improve efficiencies, profitably grow revenue, and build lifetime customer loyalty for your Shopify-powered online store. Today’s episode gets you one step closer to learning from those who are winning in e-commerce!

Listen To Today’s Ecommerce Podcast

This episode is brought to you by Okendo, the preferred customer marketing solution for high growth Shopify brands.

Okendo enables fast-growing consumer brands like SKIMS, Buck Mason, and Zitsticka to leverage their most powerful asset; their customers. Okendo has all the tools brands need to capture and showcase customer-generated content, including product ratings & reviews, photos, and videos, and Q&A. Brands use this content to build shopper trust, drive conversions and maximize CLTV. You can check them out today at Okendo.io

What You Will Learn Today:

  • Why loyalty and retention schemes are currently in high demand
  • How supporting the causes that your customers are supporting builds loyalty
  • Upgrading a one-time purchase to be a part of the insider community
  • The future for LoyaltyLion  

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Connect with LoyaltyLion

Connect with Fiona:

Episode Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Okendo, the preferred customer marketing solution for high growth Shopify brands.

Okendo provides all the tools you need to leverage your most valuable asset– your customers. Build shopper trust & excitement, showcase customer experiences, and compel buying action with a little help from Okendo.
CLICK HERE to start your trial of Okendo

———

Welcome to season five of eCommerce Fastlane. This podcast helps Shopify-powered brands to accelerate growth. And now onto episode 236 .

You're listening to eCommerce Fastlane, the podcast show to help you build, manage, grow, and scale a successful and thriving company powered by Shopify. Listen to real conversations with partners and subject matter experts,

as they share proven practical strategies, platforms and the best Shopify apps to help you accelerate your business. The time is now for you to improve efficiencies, grow revenue, profit, and lifetime customer loyalty. Please welcome your host, startup founder and strategic advisor, Steve Hutt.

This episode is brought to you by Okendo, the preferred customer marketing solution for high growth Shopify brands. Okendo is helping over 4,000 of the fastest growing retailers, such as Kim Kardashian's underwear label skims, NOMAD and Buck Mason to leverage their most powerful asset – their customers. Okendo gives brands all the tools they need to capture and showcase customer generated content like product ratings and reviews, photos, and videos, including Q and A.

When you're looking to optimize your buyer's journey; increase the volume and the quality of user generated content, build a flourishing customer community, or collect valuable first party customer data. Okendo is here to help you. Okendo is your all-in-one customer command center where you can track, report on, and optimize every aspect of your customer marketing. But they also offer many seamless integrations with the tools that you already use and love, including Clavio, Google, and ZenDesk, to name a few.

Join thousands of Shopify retailers who already use Okendo to build shopper trust and excitement, showcasing customer experiences and compel buying action. Start your 14 day free trial today @okendo.io. That's O K E N D O dot I O

Well, hey there, it's Steve Hutt and welcome back to season five of eCommerce Fastlane. Now, if this is your first time listening, this is an e-commerce show where we have honest and transparent conversations about building and thriving with your store, powered by Shopify or Shopify Plus. Now if you're an ambitious, lifelong learner, which you likely are since you're here today, you're definitely in the right place.

Now, new episodes are available twice weekly with your favorite podcast players, like Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, and many more. You can also stream current episodes, including a very relevant back catalog directly from ecommercefastlane.com. Now in today's episode, my guest is Fiona Stevens,

who's the head of marketing from a plus technology partner. So this is the real deal. This company's called LoyaltyLion. And what they are is the data driven loyalty and engagement platform. And they help Shopify ecommerce brands to build longer lasting customer relationships that drive sustainable growth.

And that's the important part of this podcast. Now as a Shopify Plus technology partner, they create unique loyalty programs that integrate with their technology stack and really does add a lot of power to their overall marketing strategy of a brand. They're one of very few Shopify partners that are 100% focused on loyalty with no distractions.

There are other partners and other different apps and solutions that are more of a Swiss army knife of marketing strategy. LoyaltyLion is focused completely- like a flag in the sand. I'm all about retention and loyalty only. So they really truly do eat, sleep and breathe retention marketing. In today's kind of opt out era,

I'm gonna call it, I believe they exist really to help brands, to retain their most valuable customers and [build] these long term [kinds] of customer relationships. I know we'll really outlast a lot of these privacy policies and supply chain and cookie less future, and all the craziness is going on right now in the world.

I know LoyaltyLion can really help a brand with that.

So, hi, Fiona. Welcome to eCommerce Fastlane.

Hi, Steve. Thanks so much for having me here.

Oh my pleasure. And I know our time zones are significantly different. It's early morning for me. It's mid-afternoon for you, but you know what I think where there's talent and some great stories to be told, I'm really proud that we're able to get together today and have this little chat.

Absolutely. I've been very much looking forward to it.

I mentioned a bit at the top of the show. I mean, LoyaltyLion is not new in the Shopify ecosystem. Those that have thought about, or are currently doing some kinda loyalty or points or redemptions, or, you know, refer [to] a friend program, it's not new to people.

And LoyaltyLion certainly comes to the table. When these conversations come up. But I'd love to hear it. Maybe in your own words first about what you believe or know what LoyaltyLion is doing today for Shopify brands. Like the problems that you're solving. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, you've alluded to a lot of them in a very lovely intro.

Thank you for that. Essentially, what we're doing here is giving merchants the tools that they need to create their insider community. We see a lot of customers who check out as guests or who maybe make one purchase and then drop off and never come back. You've probably spent a lot of money acquiring these customers.

So it's not ideal to have them disappear again. So yeah, what we're really doing is giving you a chance to turn your most loyal, most valuable customers into that insider community. that's repeat purchasing, that's spending more with each order, but actually that's acting as an advocate and driving that sustainable growth for your business as well.

Yeah, I love that. I love the insider community part. It just adds exclusivity, I think, to a brand.

Yeah, absolutely. Essentially all shoppers want to be made to feel a little bit special, don't they? Especially today when people are looking slightly more outside of price and promotion than they have done in the past, it is about those VIP experiences.

Absolutely. Let's chat a little bit about the origin story I had [with] the founder… on Charlie, gosh, [a] couple years back. And I think the story needs to be retold, but maybe from your own words about how all the pieces came together, like where did this founding team come from? Where did the desire and the expertise come from to even want to create this platform?

Yeah, absolutely. So unfortunately I wasn't around at the time, but joined a few a couple of years after, but yeah. Okay. Founders, Dave and Charlie- they met around 10 years ago. I think they had an idea for a business in mind, but they quickly realized that it wasn't actually going to make a real difference.

And what they really wanted to do was solve a problem that they knew would actually get worse and get more challenging with time. So I think they put the original idea that they had on the shelf and they went out and talked to business owners of all different sizes. And over time, a key challenge started to stand out for them.

And that challenge really was well, how do you engage and retain your customers online? And this was the perfect challenge to try and solve because they knew that it would only get worse as Amazon grew bigger and bigger and sort of took over more of [the] market share. So in the end, I think, yeah, their research just showed them that eCommerce brands,

they didn't have the tools all the time or the expertise to run a good retention strategy, Even though they wanted to, and actually it seemed like the perfect place to try and help.

So why do you believe that maybe loyalty and retention programs that a brand should have- I mean, I understand the benefits.

Part of my day job at Shopify is really to be a trusted advisor and retention strategies come up quite a bit as, ‘Hey, it's important because the return on ad spend is going smaller, the cost pro-acquisition- things are increasing.' It's just lots of competition. I just would like to understand a little bit about

why LoyaltyLion believes that loyalty and retention schemes are really in high demand right now it's an important strategy that a brand needs to execute on

Hundred percent. I think it is the most interesting time to operate in the eCommerce space at the moment, you mentioned to reference the opt-out era at the beginning of this podcast and,

I think it was back in 2018, a very famous marketer commented quite publicly in the press that it was the golden age to work in marketing, the data and information you had available that you could feed into everything from personalizing emails, with just a first name, to actually things like cart abandonment emails, that data was- oh, it was fueling everything.

Unfortunately that's changing now, that window is closing. On top of that, there's just so many interesting things happening. We are honestly living in what I would call ‘a perfect storm'. We've been through a pandemic. We've seen the competition explode as eCommerce boomed. That pandemic, unfortunately, isn't over, I think supply is now being affected by the wave and the lockdown that's happening in China;

lots of factories closed there, but we're also dealing with much more local supply chain issues, closer to home. We have the rising cost of living and we have those privacy updates and all of these things are making it harder to deliver on the promises that you've made to your customers. But they're also all impacting their likelihood to be shopping with new brands as well.

So this leaves loyalty and retention as just number one on any eCommerce agenda, because the emotional connections with your customers are the thing that can withstand those external factors. We've already mentioned [the] insider community, but that community will continue to shop with you and engage with you in between purchases.

So you can be sure that when they do shop they'll shop with you and not someone else. And I think that combined with just the rising cost of acquisition makes relationships with that community even more important because they're essentially the most effective way to increase footfall without hiking up your ad spend.

Yeah. You know, what's interesting. There's a term that pops up a lot with a lot of my brands and there's different [kinds] of buzzwords, but I'm thinking ‘conscious consumerism'. I'm thinking how a brand is able to have just, almost like a cause bigger than themselves. Now, I'm not sure if this is on your radar a lot,

inside LoyaltyLion with the brands you manage, but do you believe that maybe loyalty kind of goes hand in hand with maybe having a larger mission? You know, being in an environmental or a socially conscious brand? There's a lot of these interesting word, I mean, this is part of the community building aspect and maybe having this sort of mission, maybe that's where LoyaltyLion fits in is that you have the infrastructure to manage this sort of community of people that really want to be conscious about where they're spending their money in exchange for becoming part of that community. So I just would love to understand a little more about your thoughts around that.

FIONA: Yeah. I think for me, the two things conscious consumerism and customer loyalty, they could not be more closely aligned or tightly connected.. I think for some brands it's very easy. If you are a hair care brand and you sell vegan products to vegan people, then you know, you've got that alignment,

your values are clear. If you are perhaps a sports clothing brand that's been around for four or five years, you may not have that quite such an obvious connection, but your shoppers are still going to be looking to you to see what you're doing, what to support- a cause or to act more sustainably, whatever it might be.

And the challenging thing for brands is, you can't revamp your supply chain, and your delivery processes and everything overnight. You can't suddenly flick a switch and make your operations sustainable to work for the conscious consumer. You just can't do it. But what you can do is start making small steps with your large program and things like that to show that actually you do care about the same things.

And I think it's so important because shoppers today are buying with their hearts and not their heads. And they need to know what you stand for and what you care about, but they can spot any kind of false claims or greenwashing a mile away. Yeah, I think with those programs giving you a chance to take some of the smaller steps and we're seeing brands do some amazing things here.

We've got a dog food brand that allows you to redeem your rewards in the form of dinner donations to a dog shelter. We've got makeup brands that allow you to earn points for recycling packaging, lots of planting trees in [the] form of rewards, that kind of thing. And I think it's just such a great way of really demonstrating that you are genuinely supporting the causes that your customers are supporting.

And it just means that you are gonna be able to build a longer lasting relationship with them and retain them. And they'll be loyal and shop with you because they know that, in shopping with you, they're actually being true to the things that they care about as well.

Yeah. No, I love that. I love that a lot.

Let's talk a little bit about other loyalty solutions that are on the market. As Shopify brands have a lot of options available, and I think the app stores sitting on almost 7,000 apps, you could do a quick search or even on Google. There's some notable peers that, maybe, offer [a] potentially Swiss army knife of marketing strategy, but there are some people that I know that are tools and platforms and things that are out there.

I'm just curious about how LoyaltyLion has been intentional to want to differentiate between maybe others in the Shopify ecosystem.

Absolutely. And look, I'm not here to tell you to use LoyaltyLion over any other platforms, it's that every store is different. Every strategy's gonna be different and there will be a right fit for you.

But I think the key difference between LoyaltyLion and some other providers is that for us, loyalty is not a new product that we've added on to a suite or sort of a bolt on. It has been and will continue to be the only thing that we do. And every one of our team is focused on loyalty and retention and nothing else.

So the expertise that you'll get from every person you talk to, whether it's the person that gives you a demo or to the person that's onboarding you when you start your program, they will be an expert in loyalty. And we tend to partner with other businesses who are also best in class and take the same approach.

So with any luck, all of our integrations are built in collaboration with other subject matter experts. I think that's something that very few other loyalty providers can really say hand on heart.

Yeah, absolutely. I wanna pivot a bit over to a story [for] a bit. I think it's important to, I don't know, just be inspired by people and what they've used to build their loyalty programs.

It's so interesting because I think we have education. We like to inspire people. We think about the whole customer journey. I think when you actually hear a story of an existing Shopify brand, I think those listening, they will go, ‘huh? Okay. That could be me. This is the piece of the puzzle that I'm missing.'

And so I just like to understand a little bit about how someone came to you and hopefully I don't put you on the spot here, but it'd be nice just to understand a little bit about [how they find] LoyaltyLion and like what sort of problems were they trying to solve? And then LoyaltyLion came in with the technology to help them,

and then what happened on the other end? I just would like to understand maybe some potential, some results that happened with implementing your solution.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think we've got a lot of examples, really. The one that really resonates best with me is a UK jewelry brand called Astrid & Miyu. The reason that I feel so passionately about their program,

is because we've actually been working [with] them the whole time I've been at LoyaltyLion, so that's over four years now. And just seeing the program evolve over time has been absolutely fantastic. So when they came to us, I think they had- from memory, I believe they just migrated from Magento across the Shopify Plus, and they were looking for something quite simple to engage their customers and really drive up those repeat purchase rates.

You know, the challenge was relatively simple at that stage. What we've seen over the last four years is actually it's gone from being a loyalty program to a fantastically loyal community of customers that's actually driving so much of their different marketing activity. So for example, over the pandemic, they did such a great job of keeping their community really close.

They were doing things like blogs and competitions and playlists, so that they could engage with customers who might not really be feeling like spending at that time. They also used that period of time to really start telling the story of their brand with their loyalty program and getting their community very emotionally invested in its success.

So for example, they featured a lot of interviews and blogs from their founder and other team members. Again, just sort of signaling to people during the pandemic: ‘hey, it's okay if you're not shopping, but we are here, still here and we still want to connect with you'. It's not all about purchasing. And then I think the most recent edition that I loved the most is they've launched a silver recycling scheme for their members.

So program members can get points for recycling their jewelry, and again, it just really resonates with their shoppers who are looking to live a bit more sustainably. I could talk about their program all day. It's a bit of a gold star, best in class. They've got the loyalty program tiers, your available points show up on all the different pages.

And when you're looking at products, they've integrated with their email comms really well. They're doing everything fantastically, but for me, it just goes above and beyond because it's all about their insider community.

What's interesting is I actually went to their website as you were speaking, and they're even available in the US now.

So they definitely are a UK brand, but now they have us.astridandmiyu.com and so I went to the loyalty page, it is quite interesting. It's hard on the podcast to talk about it, but you're right. They have, I think, all [of] the boxes [are] checked here about our loyalty program and how you can earn points to gain access to exclusive treats and discounts they talk about. But it's very interesting and all the different tiers are there and how it works,

like I think their landing page is well executed. It's definitely on brand and it's exciting that they're, you know, ‘hey, middle of pandemic. It's a really good point about the fact that you may not be shopping with us right now. Fair enough. But we're not going anywhere and we're here to support you and still be part of that community.'

So I think that's really interesting. I love one of the things about LoyaltyLion that's quite unique to the marketplace, too. A few brands over the years, I've kind of always shown them off a bit to other brands and saying, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about having loyalty points show up from within the shopping cart of Shopify?' and on the plus side, you get access to checkout.liquid and checkout.liquid is a theme file that's available to the plus side of Shopify, it adds a little more extra functionality. It maybe even pushes people over the edge a bit and saying, ‘Hey, you're this many points away from- you spend a little bit more money.

You can apply your current points.' Now. It's so interesting. I don't know if you can unpack that a bit. Cause I think that's another interesting unique feature that LoyaltyLion has, is that the known or the unknown customer, you're still able to kind of under- obviously the known customer is the most important, logged in experience.

You can double check to see if they have signed up the loyalty program, how many active points they have, you can kind of figure things out in real time from within the cart and the whole checkout flow, but even the unknown customer, you're still nudging people in the cart that you have a loyalty program, how many points you've currently earned right now? Not even checked out yet. We'd love to understand a little more about that.

Absolutely. I mean, I think we'd be lying if we said that the biggest challenge of a loyalty program isn't getting people to use it. I think there's such a sort of legacy problem of we've all got between five and ten loyalty cards in our wallets from the days of physical shopping and we didn't get the best experiences back then.

It's hard to use your points. It was hard to know what your points would actually get you. And I think we are all being left a little bit, perhaps untrusting of loyalty programs as a result of that. So it's all about ease of use and simplicity and those seamless experiences. So exactly, as you say, if you can show someone in the cart, ‘Hey, actually, you've got a reward available, redeem it.

Now don't miss out.' Or you can say exactly, as you said, you know, ‘okay, you are 15 points away, but if you just follow us on Twitter, you could earn 50 points and unlock that next reward' and things like that. Then you're gonna drive up your average order value, drive up the size of the basket fantastically well,

But on the flip side of that, you could be getting people to join your program. You know, that fear of missing out, ‘Hey, join the program, earn points, unlock your next reward. And then you're one step closer to that person joining your insider community'. They might take some time to get there. They might need a bit of nurturing on SMS, email, et cetera.

But if they've created that account and you've shown them why it's worth doing that in their basket, then? Yeah, they are one step closer to not just being a one time purchase, but being someone you can upgrade to your community.

One thing I noticed that's unique too, is that you're right. There's lots of loyalty programs that are out there, but the unique thing about having it from within the cart is that there's a possibility that maybe those listening today didn't have the correct messaging, that's front and center that in fact even have a loyalty program.

And so I think this is another interesting touch point from within the cart to saying,' Hey, We have a loyalty program, you have this many points potentially available' or ‘here's how to sign up.' And I think because the cart is usually so emotional and there's lots of things you need to think about, the trust that goes along with it.

There's lots of other like elements, but it's interesting to have it front and center from within the checkout flow and for sure in the cart, so people know they just put them a little bit over that edge that this program is even available.

Definitely. And I think it's the follow up after that is really important as well.

You know, you've parted with your hard-on cash. You've made a decision to shop with a brand and there's nothing worse than either not getting a follow up email to confirm your purchase or it taking forever to come through or perhaps it comes through and it's just a blank standard one, you know, that's what you get from Amazon,

it shouldn't be what you get from an individual brand. So there's a huge opportunity just within the post purchase as well. If you've built that trust in the checkout, you've secured that purchase. Make sure that you send a really good follow up email that talks about your brand [and] tells 'em a bit more about you- tells them about the loyalty program, either how many points they've earned or how many they've missed out on because they didn't create an account.

I think there's a huge journey that you can take people in- on just after they've committed to that purchase that's extremely powerful in securing the next one.

Absolutely. And you make a good point about wanting to send these post-purchase experience emails and stuff. And it makes me think about how nicely LoyaltyLion plays with others, kind of in the Shopify ecosystem. Are you able to talk a little bit about, I think there's some intentionality about playing nice with Clavio or playing nice with Omnisend or there's other lots of other non-competing tools that are in people's tech stack.

Are you able to talk a bit about how LoyaltyLion is connected to these others and doesn't disrupt it, it just actually just enhances the overall customer experience.

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a tendency for people to look at a loyalty program as just a standalone thing, an extra thing on your to-do list, another channel to manage, et cetera.

And, it is another thing to manage, but it's actually something that can power all of the other marketing that you have. So from your loyalty program, you are getting unique individual data on an individual that you might not be getting from other channels anymore. You know, the more people opt out of tracking, the more people say no to being tracked on an app, et cetera, the harder it is to gather any data about people.

So your loyalty program's giving you that data and that insight almost by default. And if you connected up your loyalty program to your ESP for example, then you can start feeding that loaded data, those points, balances, tier data, whatever it is, you can feed that into your emails. That means you are sending really unique, highly personalized emails that they're not gonna opt out of,

cuz they appreciate that personalization. It's literally what they're looking for. Same with tools like Attentive. If you can either trigger SMS messages based on loyalty actions that they've taken, or you can personalize those messages with loyalty data like points, balances, available rewards, et cetera.

You're showing your customers that you know them, that they are [individuals] and that you're marketing to them one to one. And I think that's when your loyalty program goes from being sort of a siloed thing to being something that's adding power to everything that you were already doing. Yeah, email and SMS are just two examples.

We've also- things like our integration with recharge allow you to treat your subscribers differently, have a VIP subscriber tier, so they don't churn as often as, you know, subscriptions. Unfortunately, they're gonna be the first thing to go with the cost of living increasing. So what can you do with your loyalty program to keep those subscribers

hanging around. And the help desk as well, if you can link up your help desk with your loyalty program and you can make sure that your customer support team are able to identify those insiders, identify your most loyal customers and make sure that they don't get a bad experience, or if they do it's quickly resolved.

You know, one thing I noticed too, I'll put this in the show notes, but this fourth slash integrations that you have, and [a] couple others that are on my radar right now are mobile apps either through global, or through tap cart. And it's so interesting. Are you able to talk about that tight connection with either of those two?

There are also plus technology partners, many brands that want a mobile solution, and we know the benefits of push notifications and other exclusive drops and things that can happen from within a mobile experience. I'm curious to understand about how does just the regular web experience, the desktop org mobile versus what happens on

mobile app, as it relates to LoyaltyLion.

Hitting [the] nail on the head there, it's gotta be the same, hasn't it? You know, you don't know where your customer's gonna shop. Next, we're about to commute into work. They could be on the train. They could be sitting on the sofa watching TV at night. They could be purposely doing all their Christmas shopping in one go. That will impact where they're shopping from.

But the key thing is they need to be able to access their points and their rewards and their tier information, wherever they are shopping. You need your omnichannel experiences to match up. If I have a points balance that I've earned on a computer, I wanna be able to spend it on a mobile. If I make a purchase on a mobile, I want to be able to build up my points balance and then go redeem the rewards somewhere else.

So, you know, the key thing about these mobile integrations is. Being able to recognize that shopper wherever they are shopping and make sure that they have access to their loaded program, profile information rewards, et cetera, wherever they are.

I've noticed too. Some brands are being very creative with kind of extra bonus points upon downloading the mobile app because owning real estate on somebody's phone coveted,

on top of the fact that you have these push notification options and other [kinds] of VIP kind of drops and different things. So it's interesting that it sounds like there's a good kind of one, two punch, massive incentive in points, and that points [have] a monetary value. As you mentioned, it could have some kind of sustainability, social, environmentally conscious kind of direction of how these points are [used]. Download the app, here's what you get. And it's so interesting. So you can angle it very interestingly, to get the download numbers in exchange for being part of this kind of insider community, you talked about.

Absolutely. This is what I mean when I say loyalty shouldn't be siloed. It can drive such positive behaviors. It can drive results across marketing channels that you didn't even consider might be connected.

You could build up your social media following using incentives. You could build up reviews using incentives. You could build up your app downloads using incentives. It's a great way to drive the positive behaviors that you're looking for.

Lovely.

Lovely. Lovely. All right, Fiona. We are nearing the end of the show for today, but let's talk about the future for LoyaltyLion.

You've been in business a long time. You have a lot of very- I would call them key accounts, but there's a lot of seasoned Shopify brands that are making their home on LoyaltyLion and that's part of their success is their loyalty program thanks to LoyaltyLion, but we just would love to understand maybe what the North Star is, I guess, for the remainder of this year.

Nice to get warm and fuzzy about. You're doing a lot of great things today. Where's the current and future headed for LoyaltyLion?

Sure. I think for us, we just want to make relationships the foundation of commerce. We want to help the fast growth businesses out there succeed by building longer lasting customer relationships.

And we want those relationships to be built on the right things: emotional connections, aligned values, and really great customer experiences that they cannot get from the Amazons of the world, and I think, you know, what you'll see from us in the future is everything will be designed to help you drive that customer re-engagement to help you

still acquire customers, but in a more cost effective way when other marketing channels are becoming more expensive and hopefully, yeah, we'll be able to just give you more effective ways to deliver those loyalty, permissions and campaigns that drive and power the rest of your marketing strategy.

Lovely.

What about [the] sweet spot? Cause I think, you know, there's gonna be, I don't know, 15, some thousand people listening to this episode right now and I think LoyaltyLion fits in a certain category of maturity and complexity for a brand. And so I don't wanna talk in two general terms, but it just nice to understand where's the sweet spot for a customer for LoyaltyLion,

just so those listening today. I've learned a lot today. Loyalty and retention are an important strategy that I need to execute on. I wonder if LoyaltyLion is right for me.

That's a good question. I'd say if you have a product that people will repeat purchase, could repeat purchase regularly.

Then you are in the market for a loyalty program. If you're selling mattresses and you are what someone's buying them once every seven years or luxury handbags then, yeah, probably not for you, but essentially if you've got a product that people are coming back and replenishing, then a loyalty program could definitely work for you.

I think you could argue that the moment somebody has a customer, they have a customer that could repeat [their] purchase, but also that could act as an advocate. So it's never too early to start a loyalty program, but I think realistically for the absolute best results, if you have sort of an email list preexisting, you know, you spent some time building that up,

then the re-engagement of that list is where you'll see some real impact. So technically I would say from day one, go for it. And then we do have a free plan to support that as well. But realistically, yeah, the people that will really see the value of an insider community are the people that have lots of people who've purchased their products once, but have the capacity to come back. And buy them again,

and again, and again.

Sounds like that RFM, that Recency, Frequency, and Monetization kind of strategy that I talk about a lot.

It is a hundred percent that, yeah.

That's good.

Much more eloquently put.

All right. So how can people learn more about LoyaltyLion? Where would you like to… what's the call to action today?

Where would you like to send people?

You can find us on the Shopify app store, just search for LoyaltyLion or head straight to LoyaltyLion.com. We've got onsite chat there. If you wanna talk to one of the team or you can book a time to have a discussion with somebody and find out a bit more. I think in terms of call to action, I would be heading to our blog where you'll find all sorts of,

articles on how to guide, how to do things, when to invest in loyalty, et cetera.

I actually curate a lot of your content. Kudos to your team, 'cause you produce like some amazing kind of- I'd call 'em even pillar or epic pieces of content. So I'm syndicating a lot of it and sharing it around. And that's over the years I've been doing that,

so hopefully helping cast a wider net for discovery of LoyaltyLion content on eCommerce Fastlane. One other thing that I wanted to add to, I know we had a quick chit chat in the green room before recording and understand that you would like to, have a small offer for those listening today to see if in fact LoyaltyLion could be a great business case and maybe you can share some of those details.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We'd love to offer a free loyalty strategy. Essentially, we'll ask you just a few questions about your brand, what you're looking to achieve, a few characteristics, and then we'll come back to you with a personalized approach about what we think the right program might look like for you, what you might be able to focus on.

I love it. I love a free audit. Just to double check, so if you're not in any kinda loyalty program at all right now, or you feel that yours is not being executed well enough, then yeah, I would take [up] Fiona and her team up on this offer. So it'll be ecommercefastlane.com/loyaltylion. That will be in the show notes,

that'll redirect you to their landing page and you'll have all the details in there, about how to take Fiona up on that offer. So. Well, Fiona, thank you so much for coming on the show today .You know this because you're so deeply entrenched kind of in the Shopify ecosystem, but Shopify really is on a mission to make commerce better for everyone.

And, you know, I'd argue maybe even building a path that leads to more entrepreneurs, more independent retail. And I know LoyaltyLion is also in tight alignment. I know you really wanna help brands to improve efficiencies and definitely [grow in] revenue. And, you know, these retention strategy processes you have built in LoyaltyLion [are] phenomenal.

This lifetime customer value or customer loyalty. So I just wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge today, your vision giving back basically to these Shopify ecosystem.

[00:32:15] FIONA: No, thank you so much for giving me the chance to.

All right, have yourself a great afternoon.

[00:32:21] FIONA: thank you.

All right. Take care.

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That's O K E N D O dot I O. Well, that's it for today's episode.

[00:32:53] I'd like to thank you, a loyal listener of eCommerce Fastlane. It's my hope that this podcast is offering you a ton of value through growth strategies, tactics, and exclusive insider tips on the best Shopify apps and marketing platforms. All with my personal goal, to help you build launch, grow and scale with Shopify.

[00:33:12] Thanks for investing some time today and listening to the show. I'm so proud and excited that you have a growth mindset and are a constant learner. I truly appreciate you and your entrepreneurial journey. Enjoy the rest of the week and keep thriving with Shopify.