Engage your customer base, inspire their loyalty, develop an emotional attachment and reward on incremental sales. Trish Curtis, client services director at Platform, explains how
While there are many off-the-shelf loyalty management systems and reward catalogues, attention should be given to the short-term financial gains of such schemes over the longer-term benefits of creating your own programme. Creating your own loyalty programme enables you to tailor your customer’s requirements for today but more importantly amend and adapt for tomorrow.
1. Preparation is key
A loyalty programme should be viewed as a strategic sales, marcomms, brand, finance, IT and data analysis, and even HR tool (there’s no reason why the programme cannot be extended and tailored to act as an employee incentive programme). Set up a ‘Core Team Unit’ (CTU) made up of stakeholders from each group identifying the responsibility and workstreams with a reporting line back to the CTU. Everyone needs to know the reasons for the programme, the rationale behind it and be familiar with the mechanics and programme rules. Conduct training workshops and build in the flexibility to adapt the functionality, and consider a soft launch to a diverse group of your customers.
Do not underestimate the importance of a brand name for your programme – it should reinforce the company and brand position, image and heritage. Pay attention to its ability to cascade across all mediums, from print to a domain name and its flexibility to grow and refresh in its later generations.
Clean customer data is essential. Commission an outbound telesales initiative with the promise of loyalty programme points. Populate the database with the clean data and send e-invites with a vanity URL.
2. Use a web-based model
The customer benefits of a web-based loyalty scheme are clear; examples include a secure site offering convenience where customers can browse and view their personal account any time and in real-time, regularly updated content and personalised messages, and a communication channel for dialogue with the company.
Business benefits include the ability to segment customers and filter content, refresh and offer relevant product and programme information, change and modify the programme rules, and obtain insight into how customers behave, so offerings can be improved.
A word of caution – with customers now accessing the Internet via their smartphones, pay attention to the format of any rich media content.
3. Define the rules & format
Your service provider will create a site map, wire frame and technical specification. Ensure your CTU is involved in this process to define the rules from day one of the programme. These may include the system generated notification requirements, where branded templates are to be inserted and the internal routing of customer completed system dialogue and forms. Share the formats and data files that may be imported, together with the reporting tools – each business unit has different needs.
Build a future-proof and scalable system. To justify initial investment and support a long-term programme, it needs flexibility to adapt and execute the many behaviour changing elements required after the programme launches.
4. Offer bespoke rewards
One of the most significant elements that will differentiate your programme from its competitors is your reward offering. Measure against non-transactional, as well as transactional behaviour, placing a value on the advocacy of your customers, their ongoing engagement and wallet share, not just the size of their business. You may wish to reward for participating in online or on-site training, attending focus groups and displaying POS.
Where historic sales data is known, set targets and create the programme rule so customers cannot redeem points earned until they achieve this target – thus rewarding incremental sales and changed behaviour.
With a segmented customer base you have the opportunity to differentiate the reward value by group, communicating this via the online account and personalised ecomms. Tease customers with the different rewards, increased features and benefits of a higher-tier member group to inspire customers to increase their loyalty. Create a bespoke catalogue of relevant rewards, and with segmentation by type of company, filter rewards so they are appropriate.
Soft benefits, such as product training courses and general business-related courses, industry association membership, dual branded workwear and stationery will resonate strongly. This is the most underdeveloped area of loyalty programmes and has been identified by American trends forecasting as the next big thing.
Don’t forget to analyse your programme data. Google Analytics will give you a landscape picture of hits, pages visited and duration. Be prepared to react to the data, feed it back into the database and share it among the CTU.
