For the purposes of this review, I’m just considering the basic fact that by becoming a FREE Lyoness member, you’ll be able to save money right away (in the form of 1-5% cashback on every transaction), as well as a number of Shopping Points (explained later) on most purchases you’d normally make anyway. By recommending your savings to all your friends (after all, what are friends for?), you can save even more! Lyoness operation is definitely beneficial for both buying members and traders, but how does it work? Are there areas that could be improved?
From the buyer’s point of view, the overall concept couldn’t be simpler. Getting started is free and there are no ongoing membership fees. All the buyer has to do is make sure that he or she makes as many of their regular purchases as possible at local or online Lyoness Merchants. By making sure they frequent a Lyoness merchant for their normal purchases, they can be assured that each sale will generate a cash back of 1-5% of their total spend.
There are also ‘Friendship’ bonuses and ‘Shopping Point’ bonuses that can also be earned for free on top of these amazing savings. Introduce these benefits to a friend and they will immediately start earning a ‘Friendship Bonus’ based on their level of purchases made at Lyoness Merchants. When these friends present the Lyoness card to their friends (and why shouldn’t they?), you’ll also earn this Friendship Bonus from their spending. Imagine if you introduce only 5 friends a month, and they do the same…
There’s even a free upgrade to Lyoness’s ‘Lyconet’ internet marketing package that will allow you to expand your reach to friends around the world, with at least 8 other ways to generate a substantial income. There are already almost 50 countries living with Lyoness, and many more will follow. With Lyoness’s stated intention to become the world’s largest company by 2020, it would seem to make sense to get involved now, especially since it won’t cost you anything.
What about the merchant? After all, no one in their right mind will offer a 1-5% cash discount to all Lyoness members unless there is something for the seller.
Every merchant’s business needs to invest money to identify new customers and then make sure that these new buyers remain loyal to them. In exchange for the various member benefits offered to the buyer, Lyoness will put in place a very powerful marketing support program that will not only generate new business for the merchants, but also help the merchant create a strong loyalty bond with these new and existing. customers. This is done with the help of a very useful online search function from a PC, laptop or smartphone that can identify Lyoness dealers in the buyer’s current location.
Once a merchant has secured a new customer, to keep them locked in there is another incentive, in the form of ‘Shopping Points’. I won’t go into the mechanics of these Shopping Points here, but in short, every time you spend £90 with a Lyoness merchant, you earn one or more Shopping Points. It is not necessary for the buyer to spend that much in a single visit, so two, three or many trips a month could easily add up to one or more Shopping Points awarded. Each Shopping Point is worth a minimum of £4.50 in additional discounts on already attractively priced offers from selected Lyoness merchants. Some merchants will use this service to increase a bonus to attract business in certain areas and may award more than 1 Shopping Point for every £90 spent.
For those of you old enough to remember Green Shield Stamps, this was a very early ‘open’ loyalty scheme (not tied to any company, unlike, say, a Tesco Club card), where my car didn’t chose to run with BP, Shell, Texaco, or Jet Petrol, but in the garage by giving away the most Green Shield stamps. I’d go way out of my way for ‘Quad Green Shield Stamps’, and that’s the effect Lyoness is starting to recreate, with a lot more benefits.
If you consider that Nectar© (another common ‘open’ loyalty card) merchants now have over 90 million regular customers compared to Lyoness’s total of around 5 million today and their optimistic target of 1 billion by 2020, you can see that if these goals are to be met, everyone involved today will be very grateful to have done so in a few years. But who gets paid to recommend Nectar Points to their friends?
The levels of savings, even when you only consider the free cash back service and Shopping Points – which you’re already spending, say, £500 every month on anyway – can really be worth it. Add to that the ‘Friendship Bonus’ earnings you can get by referring friends to sign up for free and then save money on your monthly ‘Anyway Spend’ money as well, and this can be another money spin. You can even earn that ‘Friendship Bonus’ with friends that YOUR friends refer. Imagine if ten of your friends sign up each month to save money, and then do the same for ten of their friends.
When used in conjunction with any existing store customer loyalty card, the Lyoness shopper gets the best of all special offers and other loyalty programs. For example, if a Lyoness member regularly shops at a particular store and has a loyalty card specific to that store, they will not only get their Lyoness cashback in the bank account, but will also benefit from offers made from the store. who are visiting
You’d be very surprised and impressed by the range and caliber of Lyoness Loyalty merchants already involved in this, but while membership is free, it’s ‘by invitation only’ from another Lyoness member, so if you’d like to be pleasantly surprised , talk to a known Lyoness shopper and ask them to sign you up.
But it’s not just big chain stores that can become Approved Merchants, and Lyoness is going to great lengths to court and encourage small and medium-sized businesses such as local supermarkets, dentists, hairdressers and other local specialty stores to become SMEs. of Lyonness. Merchants. It is beyond the scope of this review to describe the Lyoness SME programme, but suffice it to say that when a small business joins the scheme, they will not only gain a great deal of marketing support and, if approved, a unique catchment area for their new Lyoness customers, but also another massive boost to their revenue.
If an SME, such as a local grocery store cum deli, has, say, several hundred existing regular customers, then if a percentage of these customers sign up for a free one-time Merchant/Lyoness membership, if they spend, say, £50 a month in the SME store, but they also spend £500 or more a month in other Lyoness outlets (the list grows daily), every time one of these customers gets a haircut, a pizza, drink a coffee or do your monthly shopping at another great Lyoness Loyal Merchant – SME owner gets 1% of total spend from their loyal customer base, plus an additional 0.5% from their friends who also sign up for a free Lyoness membership.
It’s not just about the regular monotonous shopping involved here. In addition to groceries, gasoline, gas, and electricity, the Lyoness concept is that you should eventually be able to buy just about any product or service from a Lyoness loyalty merchant. How about a wonderful vacation abroad, a new kitchen or even a new Mercedes? Imagine introducing a friend who then goes out and buys a new car through Lyoness. What wonderful Friendship Bonus would I create for you?
By involving your friends and family in these savings, you actually have the foundation for a very easy word-of-mouth referral business, which could grow into a powerful home-based business.
If your friends refer their friends to join Lyoness as well, you will also earn the same level of commission (0.5%) on their spending. I know this may sound small, especially if each friend only spends say £200 per month at Lyoness merchants, he’ll only get £1 paid into his bank. But let’s say you introduce 10 friends, and they introduce 10 other friends, then you’ll have over 100 friends who will net you the grand sum of £100 each month. Imagine if you introduced 10 new friends each month, and they all spent over £500 each month on food, petrol and entertainment…
If you want, you can accelerate the growth of this home based business by upgrading (again FREE) to the Lyconet internet marketing solution, and maybe even go international with your members. This will allow you to follow Lyoness’s Career Path programme, which, at level 8, they estimate will be able to generate more than £50,000 each month.
So this all sounds great, and perhaps too good to be true, so what about the downside (if any?)
What can be the downside of joining an international shopping community with a free membership, just making sure you spend your ‘already spent’ monthly money at any Lyoness merchant (online or offline stores)? This will ensure:-
- Earn up to 5% cash back on every transaction paid at your bank every Tuesday
- Earn one or more Shopping Points (worth around £4.50 in additional discounts on products and services from the ever-expanding Lyoness Mall) as a loyalty bonus for every £90 spent
- Get an ongoing friendship bonus just for referring your friends to join, which goes down 2 levels
- Expanding your network of potential friends by upgrading to a Lyconet member (Lyoness network seller, also free), where you can build a very rewarding international family business, with as many levels as you can create.
I am definitely starting to look into this opportunity in more detail and have already signed up for Lyoness’s marketing division, Lyconet’s internet marketing facility, which is the next stage in building a successful home business with Lyoness.
With all the improvements I’ve now seen on the way, now is the time to get involved in what looks set to become the world’s biggest company by 2020. It’s better to be inside feeling warm and cozy than frozen. outside.
