If you’re reading this article, it means you’re considering getting customer loyalty management software for your business. Congratulations! You’re about to make a decision that can create a lasting impact on your business and something that might send you to the moon.

Today, there is a lot of loyalty management software available in the market. Many software companies create loyalty management tools and market them to businesses.

Aside from those tools, there are specialization companies like HubSpot, Salesforce, and many more whose sole business is providing various sales, marketing, and CRM tools to businesses.

So with the numerous options to choose from, small and medium business owners need to be careful in selecting the loyalty management software they’ll be integrating into their business because these tools are a commitment. Not just from a financial standpoint, but also operations and technological integration.

Here are the 4 steps every leadership team can take to find the right loyalty management software for their business.

Define your needs

Planning to invest in loyalty management software begins with identifying your goal for this project. As you know, loyalty management tools significantly impact your marketing team. Hence, it’s crucial to carefully evaluate your goals and the roles of this new software in attaining this.

For example: If your goal is to increase your coffee shop’s revenue from existing customers, you need a way to increase the purchase frequency and order value of your existing customers.

When setting a goal, it’s best to look long-term, anywhere between 12 to 36 months, since there would be a transition and adaption period for your new loyalty management software. Best to manage expectations and look long-term.

Aside from identifying your goals and your needs, it’s also essential that you already set a budget this early, not only to acquire new software but also to integrate and adapt it to your existing processes.

Here are some questions you can ask when evaluating what loyalty management software you need.

• • What goals will we achieve over the next 12 to 36 months?
    • Business
    • Brand Image
    • Sales
    • Profit
  • What current challenges/roadblocks would stop us from achieving those?
    • Company (Internal)
    • Consumer
    • Competitor
    • Culture
  • What features of loyalty management tools can help us address these roadblocks and open new opportunities for us?           

Evaluate your options

Now that you know your goals, needs, and requirements, it’s time to look for software that has all the capabilities needed to accomplish these goals.

Perform thorough research on the different systems and companies on the market. Then evaluate them based on a strict set of criteria. For this, you’d want to look not only into their product and its features but at the track record of the company as well. More importantly, contact their existing clients to see how their aftersales & customer service is.

Another important thing you need to evaluate when choosing software is how it integrates with your existing tools. You might be looking at the best loyalty management software in the market, but it will be a massive problem if it doesn’t mesh well with all your other tools.

Lastly, you need to evaluate the scalability of the software. Can it handle large amounts of data without errors and crashing – or do you have a ceiling on upto how much you can utilize the software before its obsolete?

Talk to sales representatives and request a demo

Most loyalty management software providers provide a free trial/demo of their product, so businesses can see if it’s really what they’re looking for. This allows you to test the system in the field and if it’s as good as advertised.

Let your team and all the prospective users of this system take a ride at it for a couple of days. Ask them to record their experiences and feedback for evaluation purposes. Their voice is important during this whole process since they’ll be the ones using the software on a regular basis.

Side note: even if you think you have already found the right tool, make time to test your other options. Who knows, you might find features you didn’t expect to be extremely helpful.

Decide with your team – marketing, sales, and IT

 After testing your options, you should convene with your team to evaluate. Make time to review the experiences they recorded and make a list of pros and cons for every software you tested.

During these discussions, it’s important to know which features of a CRM system would greatly benefit them, which ones are so-so, and which ones are useless. This would save you a lot of trouble from getting CRM systems that do not fit your company’s day-to-day needs.

To conclude these rounds of discussion with your team, you should come up with a list of features and functionalities that are: mandatory, nice to have, and don’t need.

From this discussion, you can now move forward with a decision on which software to get.

The importance of having the right CRM system

As we mentioned, CRM systems are a big commitment for your business. They’re a powerful tool to have for growth. But the wrong CRM system might bring more headaches and losses than gains.

If you’re on the hunt for customer loyalty management software for your business, get in touch with our team to see if our solutions fit you.