The 30 major factors behind a successful customer

loyalty programme
By Peter Clark (co-author, The Loyalty Guide)
Published by The Wise Marketer in March 2006.
A good loyalty programme has the power to transform a business into a customercentric profit machine. Here, we offer a thirty-point list of the major factors that
directly impact the success and profitability of a customer loyalty programme...
In this article, we've drawn guidance and data from the first 10 of the 36 chapters of The
Loyalty Guide Volume II (May 2006, Wise Research), to offer practical insights into using
customer loyalty programmes and data to increase not only customer retention but also
customer lifetime value and profitability by means of a long-lasting customer relationship. We
have purposely kept our focus on practical matters rather than merely expounding theory.
The case for loyalty initiatives
It is vital for the marketing department to contribute to the profitably of the business, and it has
to be able to measure and demonstrate its contribution to profits, despite a the common
misconception that marketing is a cost centre, not a profit centre. But at the same time, the
marketplace is changing: customers are becoming more demanding, and competition is
becoming more intense. It's becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate one business from
another. Technology is providing some answers, but each answer brings more choices and more
decisions to be made. However, it is sensible to:

Focus on the best customers that you already

have;

Optimise the profit that can be made from them;

Increase the period in which they remain
customers;

Be able to produce measurable results of

success.

Benefits of a loyalty programme

A well designed and run loyalty programme can do all of these things. But it is just one aspect of
a comprehensive marketing strategy. Having said that, if a loyalty programme is used to full
effect, it should be the central pillar of that strategy. The theory of customer loyalty is quite
simple: a business that retains its customers for longer usually makes more money from them at
lower cost than one that is constantly paying to acquire new customers. The basic principles are
simple, too: know your customers, and only reward them for behaving in the way that you want.
Through a loyalty programme, customer and transactional data can be collected, and the
intelligent use of that data will provide a much clearer picture of the customer base - and this
will lead to more profits from the beginning. A common question is "What proportion of turnover
should a loyalty programme cost, and how long should it take before it begins to pay back?"
Well, although there is no definite answer, a good loyalty programme will pay back from the very
beginning. (Tesco's ClubCard - arguably one of the biggest and best-run loyalty programmes in
the world today - actually made money from Day One.)
Thirty factors that make loyalty pay...

Focus on acquiring data, not just repeat visits

A so-called "loyalty programme" can't buy true loyalty - or even repeat visits - in any
lasting way. This is a popular misconception. Early operators thought that the reward

would be enough to bring customers back time after time. But it didn't take long to
become apparent that they were mistaken. Customers simply carried many loyalty cards
and collected points wherever they shopped. They were just as promiscuous as before.
The smarter operators used loyalty programmes not to buy repeat visits but to garner
information from their customers in order to learn more about them: who their most
profitable and least profitable customers were, what they wanted, and what changes or
offerings would be most likely to make them truly loyal.

Target customer acquisition more accurately

A loyalty programme should attract new customers to the business. How effectively it
does so will depend on how exciting and how valuable the rewards seem to be to the
target audience. Acquiring customers is no doubt essential to any business, but it can be
expensive if compared to nurturing existing good customers. But it should not be the
central focus of the loyalty programme. However, the quality of new customers acquired
can be raised by careful use of the existing data from a loyalty programme, which can be
used to establish the demographic profiles of existing 'best customers', and then to
target prospective customers with similar demographic profiles in acquisition campaigns.

Move customers up the spend bands

By grading rewards (for example, offering extra points for exceeding a specified spend
threshold in a time period), customers can be moved up from one spend level to the
next. A good example of this is how The Continuity Company (a provider of best
customer marketing programmes) skews its rewards in its Best Customer Marketing
programmes (also known as 'continuity programmes') to encourage lower-spending
customers to move up through the spend segments. In one of the examples, the top
spending band's contribution to sales increased by 41%, the next band down increased
its contribution to sales by 45% and the lowest spend band decreased its contribution to
sales by 7% (because customers from the lower spend segments had increased their
average weekly spend and moved into higher spend segments).

Intelligent deselection of the least profitable customers

It can be more profitable to lose bad customers than to gain new ones. 'Cherry pickers'
(customers who buy only your discounted lines and nothing else) cost you money, as
does any low-spending customer. They cost more money to service than they generate.
Designing a loyalty programme that rewards better customers without rewarding this
segment at all gives these less-desirable customers less reason to stay. In fact, the
Syracuse, NY-based Green Hills Supermarket has observed that only around 30% of
customers actually generate enough profit to cover the cost of servicing them. In Philip
Kotler's version of a Pareto Principle chart, the top 20% of customers generate 80% of
the profits, while the bottom 30% of customers eat up 50% of the profits that the others
produce.

Win back profitable customers that have defected

Customer win-back expert Michael Lowenstein (of Harris Interactive) says that the
success rate in approaching 'lost' customers can be three to four times as high as it is
when prospecting for new customers. For example, the rate for converting prospects
might typically be 5%, while that for reactivating inactive customers might be as high as
15% - 20%. In the book Customer Winback by Jill Griffin and Michael Lowenstein, it is
reported that there are several reasons why customer win-back has a greater chance of
success than acquisition. You have advantages with lost customers that you don't have
with prospects, including: information about their past purchase history; where and how
to reach them; and their preferred communication channels.

Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is increasingly being recognised as one of the most
important measures of the worth of a customer. It takes into account not only the
customer's value now but the expected value over their projected lifetime as a customer.
It is arguably the best way a marketer can demonstrate unequivocally that a programme

is working: the CLV of targeted customers will rise. Being able to identify customers
through a loyalty programme means being able to monitor long-term customer lifetime
value, and being able to identify the demographic, sociographic, and even purchase
profiles that define the most profitable customers - and that knowledge enables you to
target and develop more of them.

Build real customer relationships based on relevance

Building relationships is crucially important but not always as straightforward as it might
seem. It has been said that relationship marketing is powerful in theory but troubled in
practice - an unpalatable concept but probably one with which many marketers could
identify. Building a relationship with customers can lead to improved behavioural loyalty
and thus to increased bottom-line profits. If you examine the human elements of a longlasting relationship you'll find several elements, all of which can be approximated by
careful collection and analysis of loyalty programme data. The key element, trust, can be
built up by always excelling at customer service and problem correction, and by
providing consistently good products and services that suit the customer's unique needs.
Surprise and delight can be achieved by delivering personal offers for the most profitable
loyalty programme members, such as birthday discount shopping days.

Set fairer tiered pricing policies

There was a time when manufacturers recommended a price for each item, and retailers
simply charged that price. Any differentiation then was purely on convenience,
ambience, product range and quality of service of the retailer. But the data from a loyalty
programme can help formulate pricing structures. If enough best customers are happy to
buy a product at a particular price there seems little point in reducing that price simply
to attract cherry-pickers. The effect of changing prices can also be studied - for example,
which customer segments buy significantly more or less. To help with differentiation,
some retailers reduce the prices of key products to attract new customers (hoping they
will buy other products as well as the reduced-price ones). Other retailers try to "buy
loyalty" to low pricing (EDLP or Every Day Low Prices). Yet others use Profit Up Front
(PUF) pricing, where the customer pays to be a shopper but gets low prices all-round.
Recently a fourth way, called 'Access Pricing', has emerged, allowing customers to use
loyalty points to 'buy' extra discounts on selected items in store (e.g. US$9.99 for
nappies, or US$3.99 plus 600 loyalty points).

Intelligent response to competitive challenges

A good loyalty programme's ability to tie purchases to individual customers allows quick
and accurate identification of customers who defect when new competition opens nearby.
They can then be enticed back with customer-specific special offers or even direct
contact. In his book, Loyalty Marketing: The Second Act, Brian Woolf describes how one
fairly small, older store had to face up to a competitor opening a much bigger store on
the same parking lot. In anticipation, the small store was extensively remodelled,
causing considerable disruption. Over the period of remodelling (a matter of several
weeks) turnover dropped by 40%. However, a loyalty programme enabled management
to identify regular shoppers and mail them a letter thanking them for their patience and
enclosing some special offers. All but 183 customers returned to the store. The store
management team then sent handwritten invitations and a US$10 gift certificate to
those 183 customers. All but three returned. After the new competitor opened, the
smaller store's whole customer database was mailed an offer containing US$5-off
coupons for US$50 orders in each of the following twelve weeks. Any customer using all
twelve received an extra US$10 certificate. The result was that sales actually rose by
between 6% and 7% over the months following the new opening. The competitor's store
(which was approximately twice the size) achieved less than half the sales of the
remodelled store. This shows the power of knowing who your customers are.

Improving product range and stock selection

Knowing what best customers buy frequently helps choose which lines to stock and
which lines to expand on. The owner of a small suburban supermarket in the UK had

some twelve months' notice that a large national supermarket was opening right over
the road from him. He realised that without major changes he would not survive. What
he did was simple but clever. The suburb in which he was situated was mixed, having
mainly low-cost housing but also a very exclusive area. Many of his customers were low
earners who bought their basic requirements every day or two from him - in essence,
what they could carry home in a couple of bags. He knew that they would migrate to the
lower prices and bigger ranges of the big chain. However, a considerable number of the
more wealthy people would call in on their way home from work to pick up bread and
milk and a few odds and ends. He started noting what they bought, and what they never
bought. Over the months, he stopped ordering products that they never bought, and
increased his range of things that they did buy. Over the year, his store slowly changed
from a small supermarket to a very big delicatessen. His wealthy customers told their
friends and the composition of his customer base changed from mainly low earners to
mainly high earners. When the supermarket opened over the road, his low earners did
migrate, but he hardly noticed the difference.

Better merchandising and store layout planning

Basket analysis can identify what lines are bought at the same time, particularly by best
customers, and planograms can be planned accordingly to encourage cross-purchasing.
The apocryphal story of a retailer discovering from basket analysis that men who buy
baby nappies also buy beer (the refined version includes "on Friday evenings") may be
true or not, but it does illustrate the potential of the principle in its own (bizarre) way.
Insights similar to this are used widely to plan planograms for store merchandising. Of
course, on one level, plain basket analysis without a loyalty programme is enough for
this purpose. But add the dimension of knowing who the customer is, how much they
spend, and where they live and you can confidently decide whether it is worth putting a
display of nappies in the beer aisle on Friday evenings or not!

Reduce promotional and advertising costs

When you have a loyalty programme - and the detailed data that comes with it - your
advertising can be targeted instead of untargeted, and significant savings can be made.
There is no need to send out thousands of flyers that will be thrown away unread, or
take pages of newspaper space that is irrelevant to many of the readers. Better still, the
response from such targeted advertising can be measured accurately because the
audience is known to you, and each offer can carry a unique identifier that ties the offer
to both the customer and the moment of redemption. The cost-saving advantage of
targeting can be astonishing. In one instance reported by the DMA a few years ago, a
company mailed an offer to 450,000 of its 'better' customers. The mailing generated
US$22 in revenue for each US$1 spent. On analysing the response data, it was found
that 97% of sales came from 13% of the ZIP codes. Imagine the difference that that
made to the profitability of future mailings.

Geographical targeting for new store locations

Selecting a site for a new store is no longer a case of sticking a pin in a map, or choosing
a site on a hunch. The loyalty card enables you to profile the demographics of best
customers and - because it is often likely that the best prospective customers will have
similar demographics - choose new locations much more accurately. In addition, if the
addresses of existing customers are known, they can be plotted geographically and sites
can be chosen where there are outlying pockets of customers or gaps in coverage.

Loyal customers directly impact company profitability

There are many ways in which it pays to earn the true loyalty of customers. For
example: Loyal customers buy more, and are often willing to pay more, which means a
steadier cash flow; Loyal customers tend to refer others to your business, saving you the
marketing and advertising costs of acquiring them as customers; Loyal customers are
more forgiving when you make mistakes - even big ones (especially if you have a system
in place that empowers employees to correct errors on the spot, in which case even
greater loyalty is usually earned); A loyal customer's endorsement is more powerful to

their family and friends than any ad campaign; Thriving companies with high customer
and employee loyalty levels are generally seen to outpace their competitors; Loyal
customers become familiar with your way of business, and are usually the first to see
and report opportunities for improvement; and of course an increase in customer
retention can boost bottom line profits significantly.

Developing a core offer that can't be refused

The companies that boast the highest levels of fiercely loyal customers have built that
loyalty not on card programmes or gimmicks, but on a solid, dependable, core offering
that appeals to their customers. These companies have focused intently on what they
know appeals to the type of customers they want to attract, and have determinedly
concentrated on delivering what is expected every time. For example, the North
American retailer Nordstrom is well known for the extreme loyalty of its customers. It
built this loyalty by understanding what its customers wanted and then empowering its
employees to deliver those needs consistently. The data from a good loyalty programme
will help improve this core offering by tailoring and moulding it more closely to the
customers' needs and desires.

Influencing customer satisfaction levels

Clearly, satisfaction is important; indeed essential. But, taken in isolation, the level of
satisfaction is not a good measure of loyalty. Many auto manufacturers claim satisfaction
levels higher than 90%, yet few have repurchase levels of even half that. The situation is
stacked against the business: if customer satisfaction levels are low, there will be very
little loyalty. However, customer satisfaction levels can be quite high without a
corresponding level of loyalty. Customers have come to expect satisfaction as part and
parcel of the general deal, and the fact that they are satisfied doesn't prevent them from
defecting in droves to a competitor who offers something extra. The point is that, while
high levels of customer satisfaction are needed in order to develop loyal customers, the
measure of customer satisfaction is not a good measure of the level of loyalty. The two
are not measuring the same thing.

Influencing the elasticity of a purchasing decision

Elasticity expresses the importance and weight of a purchasing decision - effectively the
level of involvement or indifference. This applies to both the customer and the business.
The more important your product or service is to the customer, the more trouble they
have probably taken in their decision to do business with you, and the more likely they
are to stick with what they have decided. Most customers would be highly involved in the
category when choosing a new car, a new jacket, or a bottle of wine. However, when
choosing a new pair of shoelaces, involvement is not usually high. Businesses dealing in
commoditised products and services cannot expect high involvement and need to earn
loyalty in other ways. The customer's level of ambivalence is also important. Few
decisions are clear cut. There are usually advantages and disadvantages to be balanced,
and vacillation is unstable. Again, we see that the more commoditised a product or
service, the more difficult it is to cultivate loyalty. It is only when points of differentiation
are introduced that the customer has a valid reason for consistently preferring one
particular supplier.

Judging the marketplace's influence on customer loyalty

The marketplace is a key factor in the development of loyalty. The elements most closely
involved are: ease of switching, and inertia. If the number of competing suppliers is high
and little effort is required to switch, switching is likely. Conversely, the more time and
effort invested in the relationship, the more unlikely switching becomes. The level and
quality of competition has a significant effect on how easy it is for a customer to switch
from any one particular supplier. When competitors are offering very similar products at
similar prices, with similar levels of service, some means of useful differentiation has to
be found in order to give customers a reason to be loyal. But inertia is the opposite:
most banks enjoy a high level of inertia loyalty simply because it's often so difficult and

time-consuming to change to a new bank and transfer direct debits and standing orders.

Using demographic data to predict loyalty

According to Jan Hofmeyr and Butch Rice, developers of 'The Conversion Model' (which
enables users to segment customers not only by their commitment to staying with a
brand but also to segment non-users by their openness to switching to the brand), more
affluent and better educated customers are less likely to be committed to a specific
brand. They say that the commitment of less affluent consumers to the brands they use
is often unusually strong - possibly because they cannot afford to take the risk of trying
a brand that might not suit them as well. They also suggest that younger consumers are
less committed to brands than older consumers. Interestingly, these differences carry
over into cultural groups as well: they find that French-speaking Canadians are more
likely to be committed to a brand than English-speaking Canadians, and Afrikaansspeaking South Africans are more likely to be committed than English-speaking South
Africans. In their excellent book, Commitment-Led Marketing, they show how
commitment norms for the most frequently used brand of beer vary from country to
country. At the two extremes we see both Australia and the UK (58%) and South Africa
at 83% - a considerable difference.

Increasing share of wallet

Share of wallet expresses how much of a consumer's total spend in a given category
they award to your company. For example, if a household buys US$800 worth of
groceries each month, and they buy US$200 of that in your supermarket, your share of
wallet for groceries is 25%. As markets become saturated and customers have so much
more to choose from, share of wallet becomes increasingly important. It is cheaper and
more profitable to increase your share of what the customer spends in your sector, than
to acquire new customers. After all, that's what loyalty is really about. Totally loyal
customers would give you a 100% share of their spend in your sector. A loyalty
programme that's working properly provides enough data about consumers and their
households to be able to reasonably estimate share of wallet. There are complete
formulae and data analysis tool-sets just for the job.

Promoting the brand to build customer loyalty

Every business must develop and deliver a consistently branded experience for its
customers. The essence of the brand should be apparent in every interaction a customer
has with the company, enabling customers to form an emotional attachment with the
brand. This includes: training and enabling front-line employees who interact with
customers; developing high-impact marketing campaigns; defining the brand's
"promise"; and segmenting customers on the basis of value. The loyalty programme
provides a truly multi-channel vehicle through which to communicate this brand
experience, and through which the consumer can become more attached to the company
and its brand.

Becoming truly customer-centric

Most businesses are, by nature, either product-centric or service-centric. Remember the
days when business owners knew their customers by name, and knew their personal
preferences - and just about everything else there was to know about them? Those who
have realised the value of a customer-centric approach have thrived: examples are the
Tesco Clubcard programme in the UK, widely regarded as one of the best loyalty
programmes in the world, and the Nectar retail coalition programme, which very quickly
signed up 13 million members, representing half of the UK's households. But adopting a
customer-centric approach generally involves changing several procedures, including:
marketing, sales and service applications must be merged seamlessly; differentiation
based on products or services must be changed to differentiation based on customers;
reactive service must be swapped for proactive service; and data that's segmented by
products must be segmented by customers instead. Again, the loyalty programme's data
is already customer-centric by its very nature, and the implementation of a loyalty

programme is a vital opportunity to merge cross-department data silos.

Ensuring the success of a loyalty programme

There are dozens of elements that are critical to the long-term success of any customer
loyalty or relationship marketing initiative. First, these programmes are definitely not a
'quick fix' for an ailing corporate bottom line. It takes time to build loyalty because
loyalty is based on trust- and relevance-based relationships with best customers.
Accurately targeted marketing is a benefit of loyalty data, and is essential if the
programme is to be seen as 'relevant' by its members. Other secrets of success include:
gaining consumer buy-in, knowing your customers, rewarding only the right behaviour,
rewarding and recognising customers in the right circumstances, spotting defection
patterns, insights into customer lifecycles, making sure rewards are attainable,
recovering the programme's costs in a reasonable time, well timed and relevant
communications, keep the programme simple to understand and use, measuring
campaigns and results continually, acquiring new customers, having unique and
uncopyable benefits on offer (as a barrier to entry for competitors in the same space),
empowering your staff to make the right decisions under all circumstances, and of
course making the customer's life easy.

Detailed planning and careful execution

The list of issues to consider and pre-plan when designing a loyalty programme is
enormous: there are hundreds - sometimes thousands (depending on programme
complexity) - of individual action points that have to be worked through before a
programme can confidently be called "a success". Indeed, any failure to address some of
the more important points could result not only in a failed programme but also
unrecoverable expenses, lost consumer good will, legal problems, and lasting brand
damage. The loyalty consultancy and management company ICLP uses a comprehensive
list, of which the following are just a few of the more important issues to be defined:
Loyalty programme markets and objectives; strategy (programme type, proposition,
comms, partnerships, infrastructure, etc.); objectives, key process flows, KPIs, rewards,
benefits, financials, and timelines; desired behavioural changes; benefits and rewards,
type, tracking, communicating, bonussing, reward currency, breakage, and liability;
partnership details; tiers (both thresholds and management); financial and
administrative controls; legal aspects; staff requirements and training; ROI; programme
rules; system functionality; fulfilment process and costs; data requirements and usage;
and the list goes on. There is much to be planned for a well-executed programme.

Rapid market penetration with a coalition programme

Partnership in a coalition loyalty programme is often thought of (quite rightly) as a quick
method of entry into the field of customer loyalty - however, there are disadvantages
that must be weight up first, such as the ownership and usage of loyalty programme and
customer-specific data, and potential competition of other programme partners in future
markets you plan to expand into. Successful coalition programmes have a major partner
in several of the key consumer sectors in order to quickly capture a significant proportion
of consumers' spend. Ideally, this would be a major grocer, fuel retailer, bank or credit
card, department store, and mobile telecoms provider. Proportions as high 50% - 60% of
the target market can be enrolled very quickly. This means that not only is the data
collected more representative of the target market but that the share of each consumer's
wallet is also maximised. Most importantly, new partners joining the programme after it
becomes established will automatically gain the same degree of market penetration as
the existing partners, and co-marketing activities with the programme's operator will
usually raise consumer awareness rapidly.

Successful CRM (customer relationship management)

The loyalty of customers stems from building relationships with them, and those
relationships have to managed. This is where CRM comes in. Whether the relationships
are so finely tuned as to be one-to-one relationships, or whether they are in bigger
segments or groups, the principles of management are similar. Over the past decade

CRM has come to be regarded by many marketers as being synonymous with huge,
costly IT systems. But many of the big companies have now passed through that stage,
and are focusing more on explaining to both employees and customers the benefits of
the system, and streamlining the laborious processes of data collection. CRM's reputation
is improving - it is making a come-back. Some of the key faults that can cause CRM
projects to fail or prevent delivery of the expected ROI are a reliance on technology as a
global 'cure-all' and down-playing the importance of management level buy-in. But
having the correct focus and commitment can significantly improve a CRM initiative's
performance. According to IBM's research, CRM should be run at the corporate level or
with a cross-functional perspective - and when this is the case, there is a 25-60%
greater chance of success.

Using gift cards and store value cards for loyalty

The market for gift cards - many of which are pre-paid, stored value cards - is expanding
rapidly. Clearly, the card is the mechanic: what is done with it determines how useful it is
as a vehicle for building loyalty to the retailer. Copious research has been carried out to
show the potential of the gift card market. Gift cards have been widely used in the US
for longer than in other parts of the world, but the popularity is now beginning to spread.
Gift card merchants can use different types of promotions to increase the level of
excitement. For example, creating a swipe and win sweepstake when the gift card is
redeemed is an excellent way to drive additional sales. Another opportunity that can
benefit both the merchant and the customer is the use of receipt coupons, or custom
coupons, as part of a gift card programme. For stored value cards that are a cash
replacement and need customers to re-load their cards, a bonus can be given when they
add value to the card. And if something can be offered that is difficult to put a price on priority service, a backstage pass, a ticket on the 50-yard line at the Superbowl - there
is an opportunity to create 'extreme perceived value'. All of these are gift card-based
ways of generating renewed consumer engagement.

Use the six Ps of customer loyalty marketing

Loyalty programmes have become necessary due to vast customer bases and market
sizes, according to The Allegiant Group, which suggests adding two new 'Ps' to the wellknown 'Four Ps of Marketing' (those being Product, Price, Place and Promotion). The two
newcomers that stand to benefit the customer loyalty marketer are People and
Performance: People (and how they affect customer loyalty) are an increasingly
important part of the marketing mix, and the Performance of the entire enterprise, and
its quality and consistency therein, is increasingly critical to delivering products and
services in a way that engenders loyalty and repeat purchasing behaviour. Other critical
success factors in the development and management of successful loyalty initiatives
include: strategy and economics, the features and benefits offered by the programme,
the methodology of the reward component, and the metrics and measurements used to
track the effect of the programme.

Building a database that can really create loyalty

There's a myth that says most companies have enough data about their customers to
conduct successful marketing campaigns. But, in fact, some of the largest firms in the
world have not assembled the personal identities and key contact information of their
largest customers into a single database. Instead, the information resides in the minds,
drawers, or handheld PDAs of their sales representatives. Rarely is it warehoused as it
should be. The amount of junk mail the average consumer gets today proves the point:
despite talk of CRM, it hasn't improved relationships between consumers and their
suppliers. The problem is that properly implementing a customer database is far more
difficult than ever imagined. A customer loyalty programme's unifying effect on data, if
the data structure is properly planned based on clearly set-out business objectives,
forms the basis of relationship-based campaigns that start with "Fred, we see you've
moved - here's a map of your local stores to get you started" instead of mailers that
start with "Dear Occupier".

 Avoiding technological problems with loyalty platforms

If you're setting out to find a ready-made or partly-customised loyalty platform, there
are hundreds of points to consider before making a final choice. In 2005 a survey of the
capabilities of over 30 loyalty programme platforms was conducted by UK-based MJA
Associates, finding that many of the solutions examined were merely "points engines"
that could increment and decrement the points in a member's account but were limited
in the functionality required to manage bonussing, lifestyle data collection, surveys,
partner management and other fundamental operations. Most of the loyalty solution
software platforms examined were lacking in many areas - particularly in terms of
bonussing, partner management, survey functionality, and contact centre information
screens. Of the hundreds of factors, these are just a few of the most important:
Application and member number tracking; Archiving of programme data; Audit logs;
Awards redemption processing; Bonussing functions and flexibility; Card management;
Different currencies and languages; Events management; Interactive Voice Response
features; Fees management; Kits and cards processes; Location hierarchy; Member
services provisions for call handling; Member management, transaction and attributes
recording; Partner management; Points expiration; Point types; Reporting; Security;
Development kits and APIs; Statementing; Surveys; Tiering; and Financial transactions
and points management. It's important that the system you choose has the features you
need, not only for today but for the future development of the loyalty programme.