Written by
Benjamin Daniels
7 mins read
How to unlock growth in shared mobility with your own loyalty strategy
For shared mobility operators, the customer journey doesn’t end in a purchase, it’s just the beginning! As more competitors are entering the market, a great loyalty strategy is necessary to fuel long-term growth. Why? A good loyalty & rewards program will ensure users spend more time and money, while also being 73% more likely to recommend your brand!
Find out everything you need to know about customer loyalty for shared mobility:
- Why is customer loyalty important in shared mobility?
- The 5 stages of customer loyalty
- How can shared mobility apps create a loyalty strategy?
- Do rewards really create loyalty?
- The best loyalty & rewards program examples in shared mobility
- 3 steps to create a bulletproof loyalty strategy for shared mobility
- How to implement your own customer loyalty & rewards program
- FAQs
Essentially, a loyalty strategy defines how you plan to convert your average customer into a frequent one. In other words, how can you get your customers to spend more time and money with your brand?
Often, this takes the form of a loyalty & rewards program complete with exclusive perks and incentives. In fact, market research shows these programs are a major growth driver in shared mobility. How come? Well, increased loyalty leads to a range of benefits:
#1 Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your service to others
The simplest explanation for this is that loyal customers use your app more and will have more opportunities to recommend your service. But loyal users are also likely to feel stronger about your service – and it’s this personal recommendation that builds trust around your brand. Actually, studies show how word-of-mouth was crucial for boosting shared mobility adoption across dozens of European cities.
#2 More loyalty means more profit
A loyal customer comes back to you, and repeat users have been shown to generate 67% more revenue than new users! With numbers like that, the right loyalty strategy can create huge returns. If your loyalty & rewards program converts just 10% of customers into frequent users, your revenues could increase by 37.5%! For a mid-sized shared mobility operator, this sort of increase is a game-changer.
#3 Reduce the pressure of price competition
In a market like shared mobility, where many big names offer unsustainably low prices, loyalty can help reduce the pressure of price competition. Loyal customers are also less likely to leave you for a lower price.
A loyalty & rewards program can also ensure long-term customer loyalty by building a hook. Something such as built-up benefits, points collection, or even status makes customers less likely to leave your brand for competitors.
The 5 stages of customer loyalty
Loyal customers don’t come out of thin air! You need a loyalty strategy that outlines what you should be doing at each of the 5 stages in the customer journey.
#1 Activation
Your loyalty strategy starts right when users sign up. During the onboarding process, you’ll want to ensure a smooth explanation, as well as collect some initial data to fuel your loyalty & rewards program later on. You can use gamification to promote feature discovery and more!
#2 Retention
Once people are acquainted with how your app works, you need to get them into the habit of using this. In other words, you’ll want to increase metrics such as frequency, duration, distance covered, and so on. A loyalty and rewards program can help to both trigger customer behavior and reward it, creating a positive reinforcement loop that keeps them coming back!
#3 Re-engagement
Another important step in your loyalty strategy is re-engaging lapsed customers. In fact, it’s easier to re-engage existing customers than to acquire new ones. Make sure to understand what drives or lowers customer activity. For instance, seasonality, vacations, weather circumstances, and public transportation alternatives,…
With the data available you can create personalized notifications, comeback offers, retargeting ads, and more to get customers back on track.
#4 Growing revenue
Shared mobility operators can increase their revenue tremendously by implementing a loyalty & rewards program. Rewarding customers not just on the purchase level but also based on behaviors will encourage them to take more rides, go longer distances, and so on. This may include discounts on rides or other special perks for frequent users such as points and leveling systems, free upgrades, or even access to exclusive vehicles.
Furthermore, these rewards can also create a sense of community and build relationships between the operator and its customers.
#5 Advocacy
Advocates are customers who spread the good word about your service, either through word-of-mouth, social media, or your app’s referral program. But to turn a customer into a loyal advocate, you need to provide them with unique experiences! Those worth sharing with your friends!
A gamified loyalty strategy can supercharge this mechanism. For example, e-scooter operator felyx hands out free riding minutes for inviting friends!
The first step to creating your own loyalty strategy is figuring out exactly what it is that you want to communicate and reward. At the end of the day, loyalty & rewards programs are a method of persuasion. So you’ll have to answer three main questions:
- Who is your target audience? – What motivates them to use your shared mobility service? How can you trigger that motivation?
- What do you need from them? – Which behaviors do you want to see in order to achieve your business goals within the customer journey?
- How can they benefit? – In other words, what can they earn from completing the desired action? Rewards should be variable and can range from discounts to badges or leaderboard rankings.
Your loyalty & rewards program should reward users for using the app. As a result, users will feel the benefits of continued use. At the most basic level, rewards like free riding minutes or special vehicle unlocks can do the job. However, rewards are even more powerful when personalized to your customers.
For example, look at how the mobility app Changers used rewards to encourage company employees to bike to work!
They gave their rewards more meaning by letting users redeem in-app coins for discounts on products from cycling brands. In this way, Changers created a win for customers by providing relevant offers, a win for sponsors looking for reach, and a win for their app, as customers are incentivized to spend more time on their platform!
Do rewards really create loyalty?
Rewards aren’t inherently rewarding. In fact, one of the reasons why you have to develop your own loyalty strategy is to give your rewards meaning! As a result of this strategy, rewards should be well-timed and feel earned.
Only then will you create loyalty and the powerful driving force that we call intrinsic motivation. This is where users feel motivated to use your platform because it’s inherently fun and personally satisfying to use. This is in contrast to extrinsic motivation, which is driven more by hard results, prizes, and the need to win.
While both forms of motivation are powerful, behavioral science shows that you need to foster both to fuel long-term engagement.
The shared mobility model is well-suited for a gamified loyalty strategy. Since mobility apps run on massive amounts of data, there are many opportunities to create fun challenges & incentives. For example:
- Reward customers with points based on distance
- Create a challenge on speed or frequency on a specific route
- Hand out badges for reaching certain goals such as 1-5-10 kilometers
- Unlock milestones based on customer location
- …
Want to see how it’s done? Let’s look at some examples where a loyalty & rewards program drives growth for shared mobility operators:
Challenges give EVO Sharing riders a chance to win
Operating across Germany, EVO Sharing lets users share electric scooters to get to their destinations. And the company has big growth ambitions! When EVO Sharing came to us at StriveCloud, they had a clear goal: to boost the number of rides per customer.
In other words, EVO Sharing needed to turn occasional users into loyal ones. That sounds like the perfect job for a loyalty & rewards program!
“With Strivecloud, we want to create incentives to drive more often with the electric scooters from EVO Sharing. Through the challenges and the achievement of milestones, the customer shall be motivated to use our scooters more often.” – Jennifer Dittmar @EVO Sharing
Keeping the loyalty strategy of EVO Sharing in mind, we introduced exciting challenges that users could compete in and be rewarded for their participation. When it comes to creating customer loyalty, challenges can be a game-changer:
- Challenges increase engagement and provide both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
- Prizes provide a purpose/end goal
- Creates a social ‘event’, something customers have in common and can discuss
- Competitive elements are more than just fun, they bring customers closer together
- Customers can track their progress and achievements
Voi. incentivizes loyalty with micromobility’s first credit card
In partnering with Mastercard, electric scooter operator Voi. has done something truly unique. Unlike any other e-scooter operator, Voi.’s loyalty & rewards program offers a powerful credit card! The card lets users collect free miles on a Voi. e-scooter with each payment they make. So you can see how it pays off to be a loyal Voi. customer!
The card also comes with special travel health insurance, which is smart considering safety is the top concern of shared mobility consumers.
HumanForest’s rewards program shows users their impact on the environment
Make it fun, make it simple. Well, that’s what we helped HumanForest do! In London, HumanForest stands out by championing sustainable e-bike travel. And this message of green mobility became central to the loyalty strategy we developed together.
To encourage Londoners to travel green, we designed a loyalty & rewards program that rewards customers for their positive impact on the environment. This led to the creation of ‘TreeCoins’. It’s simple – the more users ride, the more TreeCoins they earn. And users can redeem the coins for free riding minutes or discounts at green retailers.
Drive 5 miles = Save 5 trees = Earn 1 TreeCoin = Exchange for 1 free riding minute
But here’s the best part – TreeCoins actually show users how many trees worth of CO2 they save! For every 5 miles that users ride, they earn a TreeCoin, and this TreeCoin represents 1 tree in saved CO2.
“StriveCloud really helped us fulfil our brand message. The TreeCoins explain our mission perfectly…the progress visualization mechanic prompts users to keep using HumanForest and rewards sustainable behavior with free minutes!” – Michael Stewart @HumanForest
Visualizing the real-life consequences of TreeCoins makes the currency feel tangible – and in turn more valuable. Users can literally see their positive impact on our planet! This incentive gives users a reason to return to HumanForest, and it clearly works. In June 2022, 70% of the 150,000 trips on HumanForest were made by repeat users!
Creating your own loyalty strategy requires a holistic approach. To get it right, you need to look at your whole customer journey and make many decisions; what to leverage, how to leverage it, and when to do it. But these are decisions that our team can help with.
From experience, we have devised a 3 step plan for creating the ultimate loyalty strategy for shared mobility operators:
- Book a consultation & workshop. Join us for a workshop and let’s achieve growth! Together, we will identify the best solution for your challenges, as well as how to engage your specific audience.
- Set up! We’ll integrate the new features straight into your mobility app. Easily edit & change them from a control panel, live into your app!
- Onboarding & training. We’ll train your team on how to use our software so they can easily manage the experience themselves! How can you customize features to fit your loyalty strategy?
How to implement your own loyalty & rewards program
Once you’ve created a loyalty strategy, you can either go about it on your own or join forces with our expert team. You can easily set up and integrate the new features straight into your shared mobility application. And if you use Wunder Mobility, our direct integration will make this even faster!
Our gamification software helps yo fuel your loyalty strategy with over 20 interactive features such as in-app rewards, challenges, quizzes, and polls! Furthermore, our software is all about flexibility and autonomy. That’s why the experience can be changed swiftly from a simple control panel, live into your app!
“Personally, I really like the control panel of StriveCloud, and I think it is easy to use. I can instantly implement changes without having to wait 24 hours or more to deploy.” – Michael Stewarts @Human Forest
