Rewarding clients for their business encourages them to spend more money and instills loyalty -- resulting in a win-win situation. There are several ways to reward your clients, so you need to ask yourself the best reward program to benefit your business?
The key to any client rewards program is to make the reward significant enough to motivate the client to refer a friend, spend more money, pre-book appointments, pre-pay for a package, etc., all of which increase your bottom line. There's no shortage of ways to reward clients - here are a few ideas:
Points-for-cash loyalty program
Clients earn points for referring friends, pre-booking appointments, and/or every dollar spent on services or products. Assign a specific point value to each activity and a monetary value to each point. For example, every dollar a client spends is worth one point. At five cents a point, $100 therapy earns five dollars. Clients can redeem points for products, services, gift certificates, or whatever you deem makes sound financial sense to your business.
Discounts
New and/or existing clients receive some discount on products or services. For example, new clients may receive $20 off their first session, while regular clients receive a complimentary service after five full-price appointments. Also, you've probably heard the saying, "a referral is sending someone you care about to someone you trust." Since referrals are vital to any successful business, rewarding both the referring and referred clients can prove valuable. Perhaps you give both clients $20 off a one-hour therapy session or 20 percent off a product purchase.
Gifts
Unlike points-for-cash and discount rewards, give your clients a free retail product that you sell. A gift reward introduces your client to a retail product that they can't live without, resulting in future purchases. Regardless of the client rewards you offer, make sure to be clear about the rules. Specify how rewards may be redeemed and if they expire. The reward also has to be financially practical for your business. Offering a free session to both referring and referred clients may be highly motivating to clients, but if you're a single practitioner, it might be unprofitable in the long run.