Loyalty-lite: how to build a rewards program without engineers
Many customer-centric companies have loyalty programs. And it’s not hard to see why. They encourage user engagement, boost desirable interactions (like purchases), and decrease undesirable ones (like churn).
Marketers love loyalty programs too! As well as helping us hit our targets, they allow us to flex our creative muscles – and are generally a lot of fun to work on.
Industry giants like Booking.com, with their teams of engineers, can build complex loyalty programs featuring tiers, achievements, badges and incentives.
But what about if you find yourself in company with lean resources and a crowded dev roadmap? Should you just give up on loyalty? Not at all!
Here’s a blueprint for a loyalty-lite program: a stripped-down framework to build a customer engagement program with minimal technical support.
Before we kick off, this blueprint assumes a few prerequisites:
- An integrated CRM tool: like Braze or Clevertap with in-app cards or messages functionality
- Data pipeline: an existing from your DWH to your CRM tool, plus the ability to add new attributes (either yourself, or your Data team)
Let’s go!
_Recognising desirable behaviour__
Right then… The first decision for your loyalty-lite program is the recognition structure.
Although well-established programs use concepts like tiers and points accumulation to access rewards, I’d personally go for an achievements-based system for this bite-size program. Reason: ‘points-based’ may be more flexible when it comes to rewards payouts, but it’s also harder to implement and keep track of.
The achievements you choose to recognise will obviously depend on your company and product, but might include things like:
- Purchase (or equivalent ‘primary’ engagement event)
- Something on the way to the <primary engagement event> event e.g. add to cart
- Completing a user profile
- Answering surveys
- Winning competitions
- Anniversaries e.g. 1 year since signup or first purchase
The examples above are mostly ‘milestone’ achievements – representing steps on your customer’s journey with your product and as such, will generally only happen once or will accumulate over a longer period of time.
To keep your loyalty-lite program engaging, you will also want to mix in some more dynamic and temporary achievements, like streaks:
- <primary engagement event> X times in X days
- Be in the top 10% of <primary engagement event> during the calendar month
A mix of ‘milestones’ and ‘streaks’ will make the achievements feed fresher and hold user attention.
To get the necessary data to support your loyalty program, you (or your martech/data teams) will have to rummage in your company’s data warehouse and add the appropriate attributes to your existing DWH -> CRM tool import. Common tools for this include Hightouch, as well as CDPs like Segment and mParticle.
_How to communicate recognition with users__
This is the key thing to crack to make your loyalty-lite program a resounding success.
To make program engaging, you will need attractive visual badges and an inspiring name for each achievement.
With lots of engineering resources, you would have a permanently accessible section in your mobile app or website, showing the badges the user has achieved.
However with minimal backup from your tech team, you will need to be a bit more creative. This is where your existing marketing tech stack comes into play!
- If you have functionalities like Braze content cards or Clevertap’s App Inbox already integrated in your app and accessible from a fixed menu, you already have the perfect channel! Each achievement can be represented on a card and with manipulation of the campaign sending settings, can be visible permanently
- Otherwise, an inapp message triggered when the user earns an achievement, can also work. The disadvantage with this of course, is that the complete achievements feed with all earned badges is not visible on user demand
- In this case, it would be prudent to combine the inapp message with a weekly email summary. Make sure to include social media sharing buttons to maximise impact!
And on the subject of emails, make sure to include a briefing campaign to inform your users about the program and get them excited for all those lovely rewards they can earn. You may also wish to consult with your legal team to make sure everything is above board and get help creating some T&Cs – especially when monetary incentives are involved.
_Incentivisation__
Although in some cases the achievements & badges may drive a positive impact by themselves, in most cases you will need to offer incentives to get the most benefit from your loyalty-lite program. You may choose to incentivise specific achievements, or a combination of them.
If you’re working in a mature eCommerce company, you will likely have an internal system for generating vouchers/promocodes already which loyal customers can use for discounts on your platform. If you’re really lucky, you’ll also have an API or other programmatic way to create them – saving you the manual work of generating the codes and importing them to your CRM tool.
But what if your company doesn’t have a way to generate promocodes? What else could you offer as a reward?
- Platform benefits. You might be able to offer exclusive or priority access to certain aspects of your product
- 3rd party vouchers. Most eCommerce and bricks-and-mortar retailers offer vouchers, and some also offer an API to create them programmatically
- Merch items. If your company offers them, this can be another good way to reward your loyal customers. But don’t forget – this is a loyalty-lite program! Packing and posting that merch can be a lot of hassle.
- To avoid some of the effort of merch, sending gift hampers is another option. Some companies in Germany will put together the hamper for you and take care of the shipping. You then simply send the recipient’s name and address via API.
_User segmentation and measuring success__
After all your hard work thinking up those achievements, creating the badges and preparing the incentives, it may be tempting to roll your loyalty-lite program out to your entire user base right away.
However, as with anything new, you will need to AB test it on a segment of your user base to be able to measure the impact on your success metrics. Your main metric will be likely be your primary engagement event e.g. purchase. You will also want to keep track of some secondary metrics to gauge how engaged your users are (things like campaign KPIs). Don’t forget to monitor negative reactions e.g. unsubscribes!
Furthermore, I would recommend thinking about the user segment where the program can have most impact. When this program was tested in the past, the greatest impact was on lower and medium active users. There is less scope for growth with your high active users. Simply put, they will engage with your product anyway!
_Summary__
Ok, let’s summarise the to-dos for your loyalty-lite program:
- Strategy & budget: Define success metrics and secure budget for incentives.
- Logic & data: Decide on achievements and ensure the data (DWH -> CRM tool) is actually flowable.
- Audience: Define the AB test segments (who gets in, who is the control).
- Creative: Create the badge visuals and the “inspiring” copy.
- Distribution: Setup the “earned achievement” notifications and the ideally-persistent “gallery” (via Content Cards/Inbox, or if not – inapp messages/emails).
- Launch: Send the “Intro/Briefing” email to the target segment 🚀
If your company doesn’t already have a loyalty program, I encourage you to get started ASAP!
Good luck!
