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Creating a best-in-class health and wellness loyalty program
Creating a best-in-class health and wellness loyalty program

Our top tips for optimizing your health and wellness loyalty program

Harriet Bingham avatar
Written by Harriet Bingham
Updated over a week ago

Looking to optimize the loyalty program for your health and wellness store? We’ve got the perfect blueprint for you to follow. A typical best-in-class health and wellness loyalty program includes:


Subscriber tiers

Let’s start with tiers. Tiers are a fundamental part of any health and wellness loyalty program because:

  • Tiers motivate customers to engage with the program more regularly in between orders to unlock bigger and better perks

  • Tiers encourage customers to stay subscribed for longer as they’re accessing experiences that non-subscribers can’t access

  • Tiers can be used to reward your most valuable customers with experiential rewards that are perceived to be of very high value but cost little to deliver.

A best-in-class health and wellness loyalty program should have a specific subscriber tier that offers subscribers the opportunity o unlock more exclusive rewards. For example, you may give your non-subscriber customers free shipping, but your subscribers free shipping on a named day of their choice. Or, you may give non-subscribers rewards such as early access to sales, while subscribers also get early access to new products as they launch. You may also give customers in your higher tiers more VIP rewards such as invitations to exclusive events or webinars, or the ability to join a focus group.

Typical rewards that we see in subscriber tiers include:

  • Free shipping

  • Double points days

  • Early access to sales

  • Early access to product launches

  • Event and webinar invitations

  • Free products

  • Birthday gifts

  • Invitations to join focus groups

We recommend that you brand your loyalty tiers in a way that aligns with your loyalty program. For example, if LoyaltyLion were to launch the Pride Points loyalty program, we might have a Cub tier and a Lion tier, and our Subscriber tier could be called Savannah.

Subscriber tiers are a great way to encourage increased program engagement and participation, but they also provide a more rewarding experience for members. Most importantly, they help to reduce subscriber churn.

Find out how to set up Subscriber Tiers.


Free product rewards

Best-in-class health and wellness loyalty programs often include free product rewards. We recommend using free product rewards because:

  • Products provide a more exciting and compelling reward for members than discounts, increasing the likelihood of redemption

  • Prouct rewards provide another way to clear excess inventory

  • Product rewards enable you to introduce customers to more of your product range.

The most innovative health and wellness loyalty programs include free product rewards that customers can redeem in exchange for their points. For example, you may offer customers with 100 points the opportunity to add a free product to their basket with their next order.

Typical free product rewards that we see in a loyalty program include:

  • Mini or sample-size products

  • Branded merchandise, for example tote bags

We recommend that you use free product rewards in a way that aligns with your product strategy. For example, if you are launching a new product that you want as many of your customers as possible to try, include a sample-size version as a free product reward. If customers like the sample they will then return to but the product at full-size. You can also use free product rewards to clear excess inventory of products that didn’t sell as anticipated.

Find out how to set up free product vouchers.


Double points days

Best-in-class loyalty programs help brands to reduce their reliance on discounting and motivate customers to return and buy again sooner. Double points days or weeks are an extremely effective way of re-engaging loyalty program members without an immediate financial incentive.

We recommend health and wellness brands run double points days because:

  • Double points days can be used during sales events as an alternative to discounts, helping you protect your profit margins

  • Double points days help members to build up their points balance and unlock their next reward faster. This then speeds up the time to their next purchase

  • Double points days can be designed to align with your wider marketing calendar - for example, running a double points day during Veganuary if you’re a vegan nutrition brand.

Typical ways that we see brands using double points days include:

  • Running double points promotions on newly launched products or collections to increase exposure

  • Running double points promotions on high margin products to incentivize sales on the products that generate the most revenue

  • Running double points promotions on all products for all members across a limited timeframe to create a sense of exclusivity and bring back returning customers.

We recommend promoting your double points days across email and SMS. We also recommend posting about double points days on social media so that non-members can see what they’re missing out on.

When it comes to your loyal customers, double points days or weeks can be just as effective in driving a sale as discounts. They also work more effectively in the long-term as they help members unlock rewards that they return to redeem sooner.

Find out how to set up double points days here.


Social media

The vast majority of health and wellness brands are using social media to connect with their customers in between purchases, and to drive the next purchase. The best loyalty programs sync loyalty and social media strategy to drive greater engagement.

We recommend health and wellness brands use their loyalty programs to support social media activity because:

  • Your loyalty program can help you increase your social media following by incentivizing members to follow your channels with points

  • If loyalty program members opt out of email communications but continue to follow you on social media, then you can continue to reach them with new products and promotions

  • Your loyalty program members are typically your most satisfied customers and therefore the most likely to post about you and your products, increasing your reach to their audiences. This can be encouraged with points.

A best-in-class health and wellness loyalty program will offer members points in exchange for following the social media channels that are important to your brand strategy.

Typical social media channels that we see brands building into their loyalty program include:

  • Instagram

  • Facebook

  • Pinterest

  • Twitter

  • TikTok

We recommend that you also use loyalty points to incentivize and reward customers who tag your brand on social media as this will also significantly increase your reach.

Integrating your loyalty program with your social media strategy allows you to reach more or your members, more of the time. It also helps you to get your products and promotions in front of a wider audience, and keep in touch with any customers who opt out of email or SMS communications.

Find out how to incentivize social follows here.


Do you need help creating a best-in-class health and wellness loyalty program?

Need a hand setting up any of these tactics within your loyalty program? We’re here to help - just contact support@loyaltylion.com.

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