Langham Place enhances customer loyalty through revamped app

This article is done in collaboration with DigiSalad. 

Nowadays, many customers consider themselves loyal to a brand, whether they were part of a loyalty programme or not. A previously Emarsys report unveiled that with many consumers having tried new products, stores, or ways of shopping during the pandemic, only one in five (19%) said that COVID-19 had made them less selective when it comes to brands. Meanwhile, there are several types of loyalty, including incentivised loyalty through discounts, and rewards; loyalty inherited through association with other brands; and silent loyalty where customer loyalty is built without public advocacy or endorsement.

At the Loyalty and Engagement Awards 2022 in Hong Kong, shopping mall Langham Place, operated by Eagle Property Management (CP), won two silvers in the Best Use of Rewards & Incentives and Best Membership Programme categories, as well as one bronze in the Best Loyalty Campaign – Launch/Rebranding category in collaboration with DigiSalad. The agency demonstrated a deep understanding of customer loyalty and successfully help Langham Place revamp its app.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: Can you elaborate on the challenges faced by Langham Place? In your opinion, what’s the most acute problem in its existing loyalty programme? 

DigiSalad: A loyalty programme is crucial for a brand to acquire new customers and retain the existing ones to facilitate business growth. When the loyalty programme has been established for some time, it is not easy to avoid the period of stagnation for the loyalty programme to grow bigger and breakthrough. Customers may lose their loyalties when they find the loyalty app is not user-friendly or cannot meet their expectations. 

Therefore, the key challenges for the Langham Place loyalty programme are how to keep up customer loyalty, increase their engagement and build a strong relationship between the brand and customers. 

For example, in our new loyalty mobile app, we implemented a self-service membership point registration system, enabling customers to skip the queue in front of customer service counters for point registration. It not only helps provide a better and more convenient customer experience but also increases users’ habits of using the loyalty app and encourages them to keep earning membership points by spending at the shopping mall.

On the other hand, we are facing external challenges due to the pandemic. During this period of time, retailers and shopping malls were affected by the drop in visitors and customer spending. Hence, how to boost the shopping mall traffic and encourage customers to spend is critical. The loyalty app also became one of the important touchpoints to engage our customers and encourage them to spend. For instance, our members can join the in-app lucky draw when they make spending in the shopping mall. Meanwhile, there are many promotional offers, rewards and gifts available in the loyalty app which enables our members to explore and redeem.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What sets the revamped Langham Place app apart from other shopping malls in Hong Kong? 

DigiSalad: We have been using a customer-centric approach when we formulate our strategies. We consider the needs of our clients and end customers to make sure our mobile app not only meets their needs but also surpasses their expectations. To stand out in the market, we believe that providing good user experience in our loyalty app is of the utmost importance in order to increase customer loyalty and engagement. For example, in the Langham Place loyalty app, we simplified the membership registration flow to decrease the drop-off rate during registration. 

Meanwhile, we provide users with an option to fill out the questionnaire and provide more demographic data after member registration. The revamped flow not only increases the membership registration completion rate, but also enables us to understand more about our customers and provide them with more personalised offers and messages. At the same time, we implement self-service point registration and a new reward redemption system in the mobile app so that users can earn membership points and redeem gifts easily in the app. 

On top of that, to add more excitement to shopping, we also applied gamification in the loyalty app to retain customer engagement. Adopting gamification in the loyalty programme is on the rise and becomes the trend to engage with users. In the Langham Place customer loyalty app, an in-app instant lucky draw campaign is introduced to promote the use of consumption vouchers in the shopping mall. 

When our customers spend a specific amount in Langham Place, they can scan the receipts in the app and receive a token to join the in-app lucky draw. They can get the lucky draw result and rewards instantly in the app. More gamified experiences and customer loyalty features will be added to the app soon to provide an amazing and convenient shopping experience to our customers. 

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: Can you tell us about your company’s services and strengths, and how to leverage them to address the pain points among clients? 

DigiSalad: Our company, DigiSalad, specialises in user experience (UX), user interface (UI) design and digital transformation solutions for different touchpoints, including responsive websites, mobile apps and digital kiosks. 

Since I started my business, I have been so thankful that I have gained rich experience in UX and UI Design from working in in-house companies and agencies. To me, it was not just an experience, it provided me with a clear direction on how I should position our company, DigiSalad. It also turns into our company mission and vision: To create amazing UX. In Hong Kong’s market, UX and UI may be new concepts and may not be the major concerns in the projects or product development. Sometimes, clients and some designers may just care about the interface of the mobile app or website and overlook the importance of user experience. However, when the app or website is not user-friendly, it is hard to keep our customers engaging even if the interface is pretty. So, a good user experience is as important as the cornerstone of a building. It acts as the foundation of the mobile app or website to provide a smooth and logical user journey to our customers which increases their engagement and loyalty. 

For DigiSalad, having excellent UX and UI Design skills is one of our key strengths. Not only do we design the trendy user interface for our clients' projects, but we also stress the importance of UX design for our projects; to analyse the user experience and journey to formulate the best UX for the mobile app and website. This can also be reflected in our recruitment and training of our staff. We ensure all of our colleagues, including the creative team, tech team and the project management team, are equipped with professional knowledge of UX thinking and UI design.

Meanwhile, we provide different training to our UX/UI designers, such as weekly design sharing workshops for our design team members to share their design insights or update the latest trend of UX and UI design in the market.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: Moving forward, what are the future plans in the upcoming one to two years? 

DigiSalad: Thanks to the support and trust of our clients, DigiSalad grows rapidly within six years with a headquarters in Hong Kong and an office in Taiwan. During the pandemic, we can see that the demand for digital transformation strategies increased sharply. In the upcoming one to two years, we are going to expand our team to the overseas market. We plan to open our new office in the UK this year. We also aim to build a strong team with professional knowledge in both digital transformation and UX /UI design to come up with global insights and strategies for all of our projects. 

At the same time, we are developing our own digital products. It is our mission and vision to advocate UX and UI in the market. Therefore, we develop digital transformation solutions by leveraging our UX and UI experiences and expertise which enables our clients to build their digitised customer loyalty programme or eShop cost-effectively. Most importantly, our end users will love to use our clients’ mobile apps and websites with higher loyalty and engagement.