Gone are the days where loyalty programs were run off spreadsheets, and even physical stamp cards are on their way out. If you want to run an effective loyalty program it must be built on data (past, present, and future), be innovative, and have brilliant rewards that include brand partnerships.
Which loyalty platform?
Choosing the right Loyalty Platform is important and there are tonnes in the market. I’d urge you to think about the following things when you are looking at the options:
- Will my existing systems (CRM, CMS etc) integrate with the platform I choose?
- How fast is the initial set up of the platform – does it have off the shelf functionality, or does it require custom code?
- Can my team self-serve on the platform or do we need a managed service (often costing you more as a business)?
- Does the platform contain all the data points I want to capture, or if not, can it be customised?
- What reporting features does the platform have? How much will it cost me to add bespoke reports?
- Has the platform got its own Machine Learning functionality or is it integrating with another provider? (Remember the importance of future data too)
Data points and integrations
What’s the point of having a loyalty programme, if you can’t tell your stakeholders that it’s working to retain customers or acquire new ones, and increase spend or at least frequency of spend?
You need to make sure that the platform you choose, effectively gathers, and analyses the data you have available and produces the insights that you need to prove ROI. As a minimum, the data points should include the number of members, total transactions, and frequency and value of those transactions – Antavo recently posted an interesting blog on this too.
If you can, a powerful tool is to compare your member data to non-members. This can be done by extracting anonymous card transactions from non-members and comparing them to the activity of your members – if you are running a good loyalty program, your average transaction value (ATV) for members should be much higher.
So, you’ve chosen your loyalty platform, and you’ve got data feeding in and out. You’re starting to really understand your member base, including their values and desires not just their behaviours. Now you can focus on how you reward them.
You can do product discounts, free delivery, early access, exclusive brand events, but the real magic happens when you take those insights, and partner with other brands which help set you apart from other loyalty programs.
Partnerships
At Mando-Connect, we specialise in five types of partnerships; contra, part-funded, funded, risk managed, and revenue generation.
Like most things, there are pros and cons to the different partnership types.
- Fully funded rewards can be costly to a business, but you can specifically target your audience with exciting rewards and reap the benefits of high engagement rates.
- Contra rewards mean there is little to no spend required from your business, however, these can be challenging if you have a transactional program, and they usually require you to give up comms space.
- Rev gen can offer practical rewards for customers and helps to fund your program; however, it can be hard to create highly targeted rewards for your audience, and we can sometimes see lower engagement rates.
At Mando-Connect, we use data from our Partnerships Engine™ to provide our clients with the best partner reward recommendations for their target base, whilst keeping their business KPIs front-of-mind.
I’m keen to hear your thoughts on my take of loyalty programs, and if you’d like to know more about how partnerships can help your business, please reach out.
