These marketing tactics below are curated for Experience Creators and creative businesses to drive more referrals and returning customers using loyalty programs, gift cards, online reviews, social proof, and the super secret sauce, surprise & delight. If you never want to lose a customer again, and you want to build a referral machine that drives more sales to your business, then implementing one or more of the tactics below is required.

Now, let’s chat about how to improve your customer experience and engagement to build lifelong loyalty regardless of your unique offer.

If you’re in a hurry, use this table of contents to jump to the parts you care most about, but we highly recommend reading this whole article as it’s packed with ideas, tips, tactics, and strategies to grow your creative business or cause. Just sayin’! 🤓

Offer Loyalty Cards to Boost Return Visits

Many brands increase returning customer by offering loyalty programs.

For example, the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program encourages return visits by offering a free drink on the customer’s birthday. That free drink keeps Starbucks top of mind on one of the most important days of a customer’s year. Likely, the customer will make additional purchases on their visit, too.

Loyalty programs can take the form of loyalty cards like punch cards, memberships or VIP clubs, a point system or badge program, and so on.

Some thought-sparkers to build your loyalty program:

1. Passport Loyalty Card—Design a passport-style loyalty card that encourages participants to explore a series of your workshops or events. Each completed workshop earns them a stamp or unique sticker on their passport. When they collect a certain number of stamps, they unlock access to an exclusive event, discounts, or enjoy a special experience with you.
   
2. Artisan Points—Offer a punch card or point system for your customers to earn “Artisan Points” for every workshop attended or ticket purchased. Your participants can then cash them in for discounts on future sessions, gain access to exclusive classes or special events, or win prizes or rewards.
   
3. Crafty Crew Membership—Create a special VIP club for your die-hard fans. Offer early access to event tickets, private sessions, or secret pop-up events. Your membership could also include exclusive access to merch or provide a bonus gift like a custom-made mug or swag (e.g. branded hat or beanie). Your loyalty program could include exclusive benefits such as personalized invitations to small-group sessions or an exclusive quarterly event.
   
4. Share the Magic, Earn the Perks—Encourage your community to spread the word and return to your experience by offering a “refer a friend, get rewarded” type deal. When they refer a friend or family member who joins one of your experiences, reward both parties with a delightful perk—think discounted tickets, free merch, or a bonus class. These types of loyalty perks not only encourage the original customer to return, but results in new customers along with them.

FUN FACT: By offering a gift to the new customer, the original customer is more motivated by the altruistic opportunity to give a gift to their friend. By offering a gift to the original customer, you just sweeten the deal.

PRO TIP: Invites need to feel like gifts, not promotions. Altruistic language results in more invitations sent globally. So, make your referral requests a gift: “Give your friends $25 to explore a new hobby or discover a new interest.”

Offer Gift Cards to Boost Referrals

When you think “referral program,” you likely don’t think “gift cards.”

Yet, gift cards are a popular reward choice in today’s referral programs, but more importantly, gift cards are a fantastic referral source. More so today than ever, gift cards are a major driver of increased revenue, brand awareness, and customer acquisition.

In fact, this holiday season is shaping up to be the year of the gift card.

Did you know that nearly 3-in-10 (29%) of this year’s seasonal celebrators say they would prefer to receive gift cards—up from 26% in 2022. That’s compared to 19% who prefer physical gifts and another 19% who want experience gifts just like you offer. So, it’s worth noting that gift cards rank as the most popular gift to receive, more so than physical gifts or experiences.

That’s according to Civic Science and Statista who surveyed just under 5,000 people in 2023, and nearly 3,000 people in 2022.

Interestingly, their survey revealed that nearly half of people who want to receive gift cards as gifts this year are also very likely to give out gift cards. Those who are hoping for physical gifts, such as clothing and electronics, are the least likely to purchase gift cards.

Civic Science discovered that: “Nearly 1-in-3 U.S. adults say it’s ‘very likely’ they will be giving gift cards this year (excluding those ‘not sure’), up 12% from last year. An additional 35% say they’re ‘somewhat likely’ to purchase gift cards. All in all, just a little over a third of U.S. adults will not be buying gift cards this year.”

This indicates that gift cards will be a major source of revenue for businesses this holiday season. Check out this interesting data on giving gift cards:

What’s behind the gift card boom?

Well, convenience, of course.

Convenience (including online shopping) is a top priority among this year’s holiday shoppers. Hard-to-please friends and family members also rank high on the list of motivations driving gift card purchases. Can you relate?

How do gift cards increase sales and referrals?

Gift cards can be an effective tool for boosting referrals for several reasons, which in turn lead to increased sales for the lifetime of that new customer. Some of the greatest benefits of gift cards include: raised awareness, improved customer loyalty, and new customer acquisition.

Here are a few reasons why gift cards increase sales:

• Brand Exposure—The distribution of gift cards will increase your brand’s visibility. Whether gifted or earned through referrals, gift cards put your brand directly into the hands of potential customers.
  
• Attracting New Customers—Now that the recipient of the gift card, either as a personal gift or reward, has awareness of your business, with this “free money” in hand, they are inclined to explore your offerings and make a purchase. Potentially converting them into lifelong loyal customers.
  
• Flexible Offering—Gift cards offer flexibility, allowing recipients to choose what they want from your range of products or experiences. This versatility often entices them to explore and engage with your offerings more extensively. It also gives you great insight into what people want most from you; with this insight, you can double-down on your best-selling offers.
  
• Word-of-Mouth Marketing—Referral programs leveraging gift cards can significantly enhance word-of-mouth marketing. Satisfied customers are more likely to refer friends and family when there’s an attractive incentive involved. Plus, consumers are more likely to choose a business a friend has recommended than one they found through traditional advertising means.

How can I use gift cards to increase sales?

Gift cards can benefit several aspects of your sales strategy. Aside from the standard use case of offering gift cards for purchase, there are many other creative ways you can use gift cards to increase your sales.

Below, we’ve provided 5 unique ways that you can use gift cards in your marketing process to gain new customers and increase sales.

Here are 5 ways to use gift cards to increase sales:

• Re-Activate Past Customers—Send a complimentary $5 or $10 gift card as a “Hey, just thinkin’ about you” or “Appreciate you” gesture to your past customers. It’s a powerful move because the irrational human brain sees a $10 discount as a deal, but a $10 gift card as FREE MONEY! With “free money” in hand, your customers are much more likely to return and spend significantly more than the value of the gift card.

PRO TIP: With the exploringnotboring.com gift cards coming early December 2023, as an EXPLORINGNOTBORING Partner, you can provide your past customers with a complementary gift card, which virtually costs you nothing until they buy. At the time of their purchase, the gift card serves as a discount on their successful transaction. A win-win for everyone!

• Expand Your Audience—Use the recipient email data to create custom and lookalike audiences on Facebook. This is an audience that your gift card buyers are pointing out as an ideal audience for you, and you may not be marketing directly to them yet.
  
• Re-Market to Past Gift Card Buyers—You can also retarget the gift giver when next year rolls around (if the occasion was the holiday season, a birthday, anniversary, or an alternative annual occasion). Remind them of their decision to purchase a gift card last year and sweeten the deal for this year.
  
• Social Media Giveaway—You can invite your current followers to “like” and “share” your social media post to enter the giveaway for a gift card. Once they do, their followers will learn about the giveaway and your business as well. This kind of exponential sharing and awareness is invaluable, especially if you’re going up against established competitors. Offering e-gift cards as giveaway prizes means that the winners receive their rewards instantly, and when they make a purchase, you’re rewarded, too. Another win-win!
  
• Gift Card Rebate—Fun fact, a study from the Promotion Marketing Association shows that customers are 75.4% more likely to purchase a product if it comes with a rebate. Offering a gift card rebate encourages potential leads to convert into paying customers. Sometimes all it takes to win them over is a small incentive. Offering a rebate in the form of a digital gift card or e-gift card can lead prospects to choose your business over your competitors; it can even encourage them to switch from a competitor to you.

Why are digital gift cards better than physical gift cards?

Here’s the coolest thing about digital gift cards—if your customer were to buy your product/service as a gift or purchase a physical gift card, they’d just be referring your business to the recipient. Good, but not great. Why? Because when your customer buys a digital gift card, it makes you an integral part of the gifting process, and now, not only does the recipient know about you, you know a little somethin’ somethin’ about the recipient:

• You gain the recipient’s name (whoever the gift card was sent to)
• You gain the recipient’s email or phone number (wherever the gift was sent)
• You might even learn the occasion the gift card was sent for (e.g. birthday, anniversary, major milestone) and build rapport on that insight.

With this information in hand, you can start building the new relationship by providing a quality first-touch experience and continuing to nurture it.

How to Grow Your Social Proof for More Sales

In today’s digital landscape, the influence of social proof, including online reviews and user-generated content (UGC), has become an invaluable asset for businesses. These testimonials, comments, and reviews shared by satisfied customers are not just a pat on the back—they’re an influential force driving referrals to your business, and in turn, increasing sales.

Why is social proof key in building your referral machine?

1. Building Trust–Authentic reviews and UGC act as a trust-building tool for potential customers. When prospects see positive experiences shared by others, it instills confidence in your offerings.

2. Referral Magnet—Positive reviews are the best advertisements. They serve as a gateway for your existing customers to refer friends, family, or peers, encouraging them to partake in the same delightful experiences.

3. Strengthening Brand Reputation—Consistent positive feedback helps establish a strong brand reputation. It’s this positive perception that triggers referrals, as people are more inclined to recommend a brand they trust.

4. Amplifying Visibility—Online reviews aren’t just about testimonials; they’re a potent tool for amplifying your brand’s visibility. They contribute to improved search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to discover your offerings.

5. Influencing Decision-Making—Studies show that many consumers rely on online reviews to make purchase decisions. Positive reviews often serve as a tipping point for those considering whether to engage with your business.

How to Grow Your Online Reviews to Increase Sales

What are online reviews if not personal recommendations?

The greatest benefit to online reviews is that one review can refer thousands of customers to your business. The review expands far beyond the immediate friend and family circle of the person who took the time to leave you a review. Therefore, it’s arguable that online reviews are your best word-of-mouth.

All great businesses know that word-of-mouth marketing is still the most powerful marketing. In fact, 72% of small businesses rely on word-of-mouth marketing, and 85% of consumers rely on word of mouth recommendations (including online reviews).

According to Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, which surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries, 92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

Obviously, it’s only good business to manage your online reputation by driving positive reviews to your online profiles and mitigating negative feedback. But how do you do this?

5 Steps to Grow Your Online Reviews and Increase Sales:

1. Automate Your Review Requests—Let’s be honest, asking for a review can feel like begging for money. It’s awkward, embarrassing, and feels degrading. But you should do it anyway! Even if you have an automated system to help you, a personal request goes a long way to increase the likelihood your customer will take action. Of course, nothing beats automation your review requests because a good automated system will handle ALL 4 steps below without you lifting a finger. As a result, your online reviews will skyrocket!
   
   So, invest in review management tools that automate the process, allowing you to monitor, collect, and respond to reviews effortlessly.
   
   PRO TIP: Our online community marketplace—exploringnotboring.com—has an automated review system that ensures a timely review request is sent, a convenient pathway is provided to leave the review (link via SMS & email), and a timely follow-up if no action is taken. With our experience growing a leading SAAS system for online reputation management prior to starting EXPLORINGNOTBORING, we know how automation can impact business growth, particularly when it comes to online social proof. So, if you’re not leveraging tools that can automate your review growth, you need to take action right away to change that immediately.
   
   FUN FACT: We can do you one even better, as a local marketing company, ENB owns exploringnotboring.com—an online community marketplace to help creative businesses sell uniquely local experiences—and The Hub—our boutique AI-powered CRM that can automate all forms of communication, including review requests to help you drive reviews to your Google Business Profile, Facebook page, Yelp, and many of the other platforms you use to grow your business; plus social media post scheduling; and even website chats, direct messages, and more powered by AI—It’s honestly insane! We hope to integrate our two platforms in the near future to take our ENB Partner’s customer relationships to the next level and rapidly impact your business growth across the web. For now, our platforms connect via Zapier and our CRM is exclusive to our marketing clients. Feel free to reach out directly to learn more.
   
2. Be Timely—People are most likely to take the time to share their feedback and experience with you and others when you catch them in the moment of their feelings. It’s best to ask for the review right after their experience with you or within 2 hours after the fact. The longer you wait, the less likely you’ll receive a spectacular review or any review at all.
   
3. Make it Convenient—If you’re not sending the review request via email and SMS or push notification, then most people are not going to take action. It’s just the simple truth. People are busy, distracted, and have higher priorities than leaving you a review . . . BUT if you make it eeeasy, super simple, and uber convenient, just a click of a link from their ever-present mobile device, then the odds that every customer leaves you a review goes waaaaay up. *Tick* *Tick* *tick* That’s the sound of your reviews growing because you made it convenient for your customers to provide their feedback.
   
   PRO TIP: The only time a customer goes out of their way to leave you a review is if they’re BLOWN AWAY by an exceptional experience or pissed the F*#k off. If you invest in the right automation tools, like our AI-powered CRM: The Hub, then you can intercept negative feedback to resolve it immediately without the customer feeling like the only way to be heard is to yell it from the rooftops (the Google search rooftops). When you do this, you can often turn an initially poor experience into a raving 5-star review!
   
4. Follow-Up via Email and SMS—Automated follow-ups are obviously the easiest way to do this, but you can also manually send messages to customers who haven’t left a review yet. Gentle reminders are great because people are busy, so a little nudge can go a long way to encourage them to take the time to share their experience with you and others.
   
5. Respond to Reviews—Here’s a little trick most business owners don’t know: you should always respond to reviews, ESPECIALLY the negative ones. Firstly, positive or negative, your response let’s potential customers know that you care about the feedback you receive and actively engage with your customers. Secondly, responding to negative reviews may not affect how it impacts your overall rating, but it can definitely affect how potential customers perceive the review and perceive you as a business. In fact, the right response to a valid or invalid negative review can completely wipe its merit, so it holds no weight in the prospects purchase decision, except for the fact that they might like you even more now.

Click here to view our Review Response Templates.

How to Encourage Use Generated Content (UGC) for Social Proof

User-Generated Content (UGC) refers to any content—such as photos, videos, reviews, testimonials, or stories—created and shared by your customers or participants about their experiences with your business.

It’s content made by the people who enjoy your experiences, and it’s like a digital scrapbook that showcases their authentic interactions, creativity, and feedback. This content is often shared on social media, review platforms, or directly with your business and can greatly benefit you by building trust, engaging your audience, and attracting more people to join in the fun!

Encouraging UGC not only amplifies your business but also creates a vibrant community around your experiences.

So, how do I get people to share UGC?

1. 📸 Photo Ops—Provide opportunities in your experience for participants to take photos. Encourage them to tag you or use branded hashtag to share it on your social channels.
   
2. 📸 Candid Photos—Create opportunities in your experience to capture candid photos of your participants, with prior permission granted, and share it with them after the experience. This creates another touchpoint, a meaningful one, and also creates UGC when they share it on their social channels and tag you or use your branded hashtag to share it on your pages.
   
3. 📸 Surprise Moments—Integrate surprise moments or unique elements into your experiences that participants are likely to share with their networks.
   
4. 📸 Hashtag Campaigns—Create a unique and catchy hashtag related to your brand or a specific experience. Encourage customers to use this hashtag when sharing photos of their experience with you on social media platforms. You need a third-party app like Later or Repost+ to share these photos on your social. Otherwise, have the person tag you in the photo.

Build Lifelong Loyalty with Surprise & Delight

When it comes to “surprise & delight,” popular speaker and consultant Joey Coleman’s theory of customer loyalty is one of the best.

In his book “Never Lose A Customer Again,” he teaches you how to turn a one-time purchase into a lifelong customer within the first 100 days after the sale.

During that brief window, as quickly as the customer experiences joy, euphoria, and excitement, buyer’s remorse sets in. In fact, 20–70% of newly acquired customers won’t make another purchase because a company neglected them at the exact moment they needed affirmation.

In our article The Golden Nuggets from the Book: “Never Lose A Customer Again” by Joey Coleman, we break down some of our biggest takeaways from his exceptional book on how to create an unforgettable customer experience.

OVER TO YOU!

If you need any help, you know where to find us 😊

• Find the answers you need in our Marketing Resources
• Email us at marketing@exploringnotboring.com

The information in this article is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.