Membership Cards - 4 Benefits of Designing and Implementing Your Own

Many big stores, restaurant chains, hotels, airlines, etc. are starting to incorporate the use of membership cards in their day to day business transactions with customers: offering special deals as a part of memberships in exchange for the customer’s address, email address, or a monthly/yearly fee.

Odds are you have a membership card to some restaurant, store, etc. in your wallet, as they are becoming more and more a part of business/customer transactions. So, what are the benefits of both designing and using membership cards for your own business?

1. Improve communication between business and customer

An important aspect of employing a membership card system in your business is the fact that in order for customers to get membership cards they are required to submit a certain amount of information about themselves to you.

Businesses can then use that information (customers’ addresses, email addresses, purchasing histories, etc.) to better communicate with and provide customers with relevant information and offers.

2. Offer special deals for membership cardholders

All businesses, big and small, will tell you that you must be able to design some sort of special offer for loyal customers in order to keep the most valuable customers coming back. Offering special deals to loyal buyers encourages the customer to purchase more merchandise than they would had they not had the discount, coupon, etc.

However, not only does it encourage customers to purchase more products, merchandise, etc., it can also improve the business/customer relationship as it allows the business to demonstrate that they value the customer’s business enough to offer them special incentives to return.

3. Embed technologies to track what people are buying more efficiently

If you are designing your own membership cards you decide what technologies to embed in those cards. Of the embedded technologies you can include in your membership cards you can include technology that can both track what people are buying and how often they are coming to your business.

Membership cards with embedded technologies can be cards with a magnetic stripe that is swiped through a scanner at the time of check out; they can act as more of an ID card granting access to card holders; or they can be a key fob/tag that transmits a signal to a receptor on your premises that will track the comings and goings of the cardholders.

4. Designate different levels of Membership

As well as offering deals, coupons, etc. for signing up for membership cards, once your customers are membership card holders you can continue to offer even better deals, coupons, etc. to members you designated as having a higher level of membership.

Because it is your membership card system, it is up to you to determine what levels of membership exist in your program as well as what those different levels mean for the cardholders.

What membership card programs are you a part of? How do you think your business would benefit from implementing your own membership card system?