Athleisure Loyalty: 5 Ways Sportswear Brands Can Drive Customer Loyalty and Engagement

One of the upsides of the pandemic is people learned to adapt to the new world and make do with what they had. It had people vying for alternatives to keep themselves occupied in the safety of their homes. With people spending most of their time at home, it became their new workspace; finishing their projects, restaurant; replicating their favorite dishes, or grabbing popcorn and watching their favorite movies. It did not come as a surprise that mental and physical wellness was a high priority in the minds of the people at the time.

Fast forward to 2024 and the desire to lead a proactive life has continued to see an upward trend. Athleisure brands are competing to offer activewear that is practical, and fashionable while not compromising on ease of use. 

With the athleisure market hitting close to $320 billion in 2022 and expected to hit $450 billion by 2028, retailers are needing to revamp their customer engagement strategies to capture the market while keeping their existing customers coming back for more.

Let us explore 5 ways how your athleisure brand can benefit from customer engagement strategies.

5 Ways to Boost Customer Engagement as an Athleisure Brand

Seamless Signup Process For Your Casual Customers

Your sale was a hit and you’ve got a 6% boost in your loyalty program enrollment. You are well on your way to getting customers to sign up for your top-tier loyalty program. Great job but they’ll have to go through 10 steps and wait for 24 hours before they can log in to their account and start accruing points and availing benefits. Inefficiencies in user onboarding can make you lose out on building customer relationships even before it takes flight. It is crucial to offer a frictionless enrollment process as it is one of the initial touchpoints for a customer. By optimizing onboarding processes like 

• Getting minimal data entries for sign-up
• Not having to click many buttons
• Reducing form page load time
• Minimal steps to completion

seamless enrollment for the users is facilitated. 

Athleisure brand Metro shoes have removed the monotony of sign-up processes urging customers to enroll. Potential customers are sent discount offers that can be unlocked through quick fun games like Spin the Wheel making the whole process fun and engaging. Play a game and win discounts, how cool is that?    

By analyzing the above and combining them with a feedback mechanism, an enterprise can step up its onboarding game for its existing and future customers.

Instant Gratification Through Quick Redemptions

Today’s loyalty scenario is far from mere points redemptions or discounts. Most of today’s athleisure consumers comprise of GenZ and Millennials who are looking for experiences that are accessible and engaging. 

One feature that athleisure enterprises can leverage for their most loyal customers is quick redemption which capitalizes on the psychological principle of instant gratification. Here points can be redeemed instantly unlike the usual earn-and-burn schemes where members have to accrue a specific threshold of points before being able to redeem them. This could take the form of cashback at the counter or receiving freebies along with online orders. Quick redemptions fuel emotional loyalty offering customers instant gratification further solidifying their loyalty and trust.

Fableletics VIP Membership offers quick redemption through special promotions and members-only discounts urging existing members to acquire more points and urging lower-tier members to spend more to grow up the tier ladder.  

Instant gratification fuels emotional loyalty giving customers instant power to redeem gifts or vouchers. Instant redemptions also facilitate enterprises to capture real-time data which can be leveraged to analyze customer preferences and further fine-tune your loyalty program.

Putting A Face To Your Brand: Building Relationships With Influencers

There’s no other industry like sportswear that would benefit from influencers to stay relevant in this competitive landscape. Top athleisure players understand that messaging is key; the right influencer’s delivery would make a difference between night and day. Influencers humanize a brand, bridging the gap between customers and the brand. 

Now coming to athleisure evangelists, comprising mostly of Millennials and GenZs; they are not blown away by discount sales or fancy coupons but are leaning towards differentiated products and most importantly, brand values. Through the power of storytelling and narration enterprises can build authenticity and relatability.

Influencers are not just contractually obligated but can also play a key role in other areas like product feedback, the type of messaging, and inputs on the various channels on which it can be delivered. 

Lululemon possesses a good mix of macro and micro-influencers to capture newer audiences through fitness workshops, local events, and wellness retreats fostering mindfulness, good health, and a well-knit community. Lululemon is able to build authenticity with its customers through influencers driving engagement and brand trust in the long run.  

In the end, athleisure brands must strive towards fostering relationships with influencers aligned with their values to build a compelling and meaningful voice that resonates with their customers.

Omnichannel Expansion: Find Your Customers On The Right Channel

Offering a seamless experience to customers across any channel at any point in time is a staple for any athleisure brand. By taking a customer-first approach, enterprises are able to offer unified experiences irrespective of the channel.

With customers being more aware and with a wide range of alternatives, omnichannel customers are looking for differentiators of a brand like what sets it apart from other brands or benefits from making transactions with them. Omnichannel fosters strong brand-customer relationships converting casual shoppers into brand loyalists. 

Omnichannel offers a wealth of information in the form of insights like

• Top engaging channels
• Sustainability of offerings
• Customer engagement across channels
• Average customer order values

Personalization forms a key component of omnichannel. It is not a buzzword anymore but a necessity for any athleisure enterprise aspiring to stand out in this expansive market, it is what differentiates one from its competitors. Brands must take the plunge into experimental omnichannel strategies to offer more unique offerings through personalizations catering to a wider range of customers. This creates a well-integrated and cohesive experience across all channels.   

Asics, a Japanese athleisure giant with the aid of a robust loyalty solutions platform was able to acquire a centralized view of customers across markets. This facilitated repeat purchases through personalized product recommendations offering the right product at the right time on the right channel driving brand loyalty and customer engagement.

By analyzing insights through platforms like Capillary’s Engage+ and setting up multiple touch points across various channels, any brand can build robust omnichannel strategies to deliver the right message at the right time driving overall customer engagement.

Encourage Referrals: Get Your Customers Coming Back For More

Referrals are usually sidelined and not spoken about much but are one of the unsung heroes in driving customer engagement in the athleisure space. One of the best aspects of a referral is its ability to convert the referrer into a brand advocate while simultaneously acquiring a new customer. It boosts customer relationships and eases customer acquisition processes encouraging brand evangelism. 

For instance, a sportswear brand can capitalize on New Year’s resolutions by offering referral bonuses to their existing customers to get fit along with their friends or family members building a “feel good” ecosystem sparking excitement amongst newbie fitness enthusiasts. 

Gymshark offers an enticing affiliate program for its frequent customers who are also fitness influencers/athletes through the Gymshark Athlete Affiliate Program. Once they become Gymshark ambassadors, they receive referral codes which they can share through social media channels, emails, and messages. The benefit?

You can collaborate with the top athleisure names, start building your brand in the fitness community, and earn a commission (up to 4% of eligible purchases) from the sales through your affiliate links.   

Leveraging loyalty platforms like Capillary’s Loyalty+, brands can create easy referral programs on the go, without having to invest huge on in-house teams or vendors.

Conclusion

With the pandemic being a catalyst to the recent athleisure boom and the ever-growing health-conscious customers, customer engagement strategies have never been more important for athleisure brands than now.


Try Capillary’s product suite like Loyalty+ to boost your customer engagement, Insights+ for real-time customer insights, and Engage+ to find the right channels to engage your customers at the right time.

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Bharat is dedicated to enhancing marketing strategies through digital and content marketing initiatives to drive enterprise efforts. He spends his leisure time geeking out on drums, playing with his bands and watching anime.