Family-owned direct sales company Silpada, which is committed to empowering women through one-of-a-kind accessories and unique opportunities for fashion entrepreneurship, recently launched a new loyalty program−The Silpada Style Card−that is designed to offer customers an exclusive membership-based shopping experience.
Founded nearly 20 years ago, Silpada leverages 25,000 representatives across North America dedicated to designing the highest quality accessories on the market. Silpada’s collection features an industry-leading .925 Sterling Silver Collection, a brass-based KR™ Collection, and a versatile Accessories Collection
Loyalty360 caught up with Andrea Carroll, Vice President of Marketing and Product Development for Silpada, to learn more about Silpada and its new loyalty program.
What factors prompted the launch of the loyalty program, and what are your goals for it?
As a direct sales company, we saw a unique opportunity to create a customer engagement program that both supported our representatives’ businesses and introduced Silpada to a new set of customers. By combining our party plan business model and a customer-facing loyalty program, we believed we could be more relevant to today’s consumer. When a consumer considers buying jewelry, we wanted Silpada’s high-quality products and loyalty perks—a 15 % discount, free shipping and insider exclusives—to be top-of-mind.
Did customer feedback play a role?
We began testing customer-facing promotions in 2014 and saw very positive feedback. We used the successes of those promotions to shape the Style Card program and its primary benefits for customers.
How do you define customer loyalty, and has that definition changed in recent years?
We define customer loyalty by the types of engagement we have with Silpada buyers. Our direct sales model puts us in a unique and productive space where we get to leverage both our own corporate marketing efforts and the one-on-one interaction our representatives have with customers at parties across North America.
Silpada’s loyalty strategy, and the implementation of the Style Card, allows us to partner in a new way with representatives. We’re able to use loyalty marketing tactics to do some of the heavy lifting for them, allowing them to stay in front of customers, maintain those customers and drive incremental sales. We also embraced the idea that today’s customer and the home party have changed quite a bit. We are finding new ways to connect directly with our customer, develop a stronger relationship with her, and give her reasons to come back and shop with us and her representative again.
What is the key, in your opinion, to effective customer engagement?
It’s important to stay true to your brand, and to make sure that you are authentic and relevant to your customers.