How to build an effective Loyalty programme? Technology and personalisation

Loyalty is currently one of the marketing areas that companies are most concerned about. Keeping a customer is easier and cheaper than acquiring a new one, and, moreover, thanks to loyalty the Lifetime Value that each user generates for the company can be increased. However, building customer loyalty in today’s environment is not an easy task, which is why it is necessary to get to know them, maximise personalisation and use careful and effective loyalty programmes. To achieve this there are two important points to take into consideration: strategy and technology. At VASS we help our clients to build the best customer loyalty solution, and for this, we rely on different technologies and collaborate with different partners such as Salesforce.

4 technological pillars for customer loyalty

At VASS we believe that loyalty projects should be leveraged on 4 pillars:

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
• Marketing Automation Platform
• CDP (Customer Data Platform)
• Loyalty system through solutions such as Salesforce Loyalty Management.

These are the basic pillars, but it is important to work on the particularities of each sector and its integration needs. For example, within the tourism sector, they may need to integrate with different applications in different areas (spa, restaurant, hotel reservations).

Going deeper into the Loyalty Management solution

At VASS we work with Salesforce in different areas and solutions, being aware of the capabilities that the Salesforce Loyalty Management solution can bring to our customers. The advantage of this solution is that it offers a 360-degree customer view, with layers of analytics, intelligence, and omnichannel. The generation of a single source of information makes it possible to personalise the customer experience to the maximum, which is a key point for loyalty. It is also possible to identify customer behaviour and the way they interact with the brand. From here, bonuses and benefits can be proposed that are much more refined to generate loyalty and drive recurring purchases. Some of the key features this tool offers companies are:

• Implementation rate, allowing a loyalty project to be set up in just two months.
• Ability to manage and know the members of the loyalty programme (it is important to understand that not all company’s customers need to be in its loyalty programme).
• Analytical capabilities for customer segmentation and clustering. This will allow the use of Marketing Automation and activate users to return to the company.
• Single source of information, with a customer file in which all the consumer’s touchpoints with the company are collected.
• Reports generation to extract business insights and offer a better customer experience.
• Artificial Intelligence layer (Einstein) that applies to all Salesforce services and allows, through algorithms, to make recommendations to users based on their behaviour.
• Parameterisable and automatable Low Code development, which offers great flexibility and avoids the need for pure development.

In addition, all these tool functions can be applied to both B2B and B2C cases.

Partner agreements and rewards management to enhance loyalty

It is essential to consider when creating a loyalty programme, the possibility to enter into agreements with other companies to work as partners. For example, an airline could have an agreement for customers to use loyalty points with a hotel chain. Such partner agreements increase value for the customer, who now has a wider range of options. But it can also increase visibility, as the customers of company A may be aware of company B simply because it is an establishment within the loyalty programme partners. It is therefore very important to create a loyalty programme that facilitates the connection and management with the different partners. On the other hand, loyalty systems must be flexible in the management of rewards or benefits and adapt to the business logic.

For example, if a restaurant has 90% of the tables booked, it might make sense not to offer the customer the same number of points for coming that day as if the restaurant is empty when demand should be encouraged. The Process Administration area of the Loyalty solution discussed above allows you to establish this differentiation and add parameters according to your business logistics.

Benefits of our loyalty solution

It is important to explain these modules to develop a process framework to offer the most complete and customised solution possible for each client. Thanks to our technological stack, experience in the development of solutions, and agreements with software providers, we generate different advantages for the companies:

• Possibility of placing the customer at the centre, a trend that is fundamental for practically all sectors at the present time.
• Breaking down information silos, so that data flows and adds value to the entire company.
• The conception of a 360-user profile at the business level.
• Possibility of segmenting not only based on socio-demographic data, but also on customer behaviour.
• Possibility of applying predictive analytics to marketing actions.
• Real-time actionability.
• Positive impact on the final consumer experience.

Loyalty is a strategic area for any business, as it can have a decisive impact on its turnover. It is important to take care of the customer to retain them and increase the profitability they generate for the company. In fact, we must not forget that each customer attracted has a cost (due to the marketing actions carried out). It is therefore important to build a relationship of trust, becoming their favourite supplier of the product or service that our product offers. And for this it will be essential, on the one hand, to take care of the product and the experience and, on the other hand, to carry out specific actions such as loyalty programmes.