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Going Beyond Transactional Loyalty
1.7k Plays1 year ago
Join the Annex Cloud team as we unpack some real-life examples of how brands are leveraging loyalty to stand out and drive growth. In this episode, Annex Cloud’s SVP of Customer Success, Maciek Gorzkowski and SVP of Product Management Matt Reeves delve into how loyalty is an enabler for deepening your customer relationships, how to create urgency and personalization. They also share tips on program design, subscriptions, data collection and incentives, as well as highlight the benefits of a SaaS-based loyalty platform. Don't miss out on these actionable insights to level up your loyalty game!
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Transcript
Introduction to Loyalty Programs and Personalization
00:00:10
Speaker
Get personal with loyalty, where we're discussing using loyalty to deliver personalized, relevant customer experiences. I'm Erin Reese, your host, and I'm here today with the team from Annex Cloud. I'm here with Majic and Matt. Gentlemen, would you like to introduce yourselves, Majic? Sure. I'll go first.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi, I'm Machik Gerskowski. Very unpronounceable, but there you go. I'm SVP of Customer Success. I will be celebrating my ninth year on April 14th, so you can help me celebrate later on, Matt and Aaron.
Meet the Annex Cloud Team
00:00:42
Speaker
Yay, me. So my team basically helps customers with program design at the start to make sure that we're focusing on the business needs and also something that the end users can get excited and engaged in.
00:00:56
Speaker
Once live, we ensure the program's hitting objectives by leveraging our toolbox of best practices, product functionality, and understanding the client's business. Looking forward to the conversation today. Thank you. Matt? Yeah. Thank you, Maciej. I as well will be celebrating my fifth year at Annex Cloud at the end of this month, so lots of birthdays happening. I'm Matt Reeves, responsible for product here at Annex Cloud.
00:01:22
Speaker
My team's primarily responsible for defining the roadmap and the requirements for any of the capabilities that are in our platform. And this includes our investment in third-party integrations into technology providers and so forth. So we work very closely with both internal and external stakeholders to make sure that the capabilities that we're building are meaningful, useful, and going to be adopted by the greater audience. Great. Well, thank you.
00:01:47
Speaker
You've been in the space a bit longer as well than just with Annex Cloud. You're with SAP for a while too. Yeah. So about 20 years of enterprise product development experience all around departments from QA to solution management, product management, development, et cetera, have had a focus over the last 12 plus years, primarily around SaaS-based and cloud-based applications.
Loyalty as a Strategic Tool
00:02:09
Speaker
Well, today, because we're going to be talking about what's happening in the loyalty space, I think one of the areas that will be fun for us to get into is that loyalty is really an enabler for a lot of things that organizations can be doing. And in order to be that enabler, we need to be connecting into a lot of that other technology and the broader tech stack at organizations too. So we'll need to tap all of your knowledge as we get into that part of the conversation.
00:02:38
Speaker
So great. Well, let's start with that.
Trends and Challenges in Loyalty Marketing
00:02:40
Speaker
So what are we seeing in the space today? If you guys could share what we're seeing from our clients, what are they looking for? What are they asking for? A lot of the sessions we've had before this, we've talked to consultants who are thinking big picture, thinking future trends, and it's always nice to know where we need to be going. But I think today we could do a really great job of getting a gut check. And what's the reality?
00:03:04
Speaker
and where are brands today, what are some of their challenges, and what are the opportunities that we're seeing, and then ultimately, how do we support? Maybe we can just start with, what are we seeing? Maciek, what are you hearing from clients? Sure. Everyone's talking about it. I'm not sure if everyone's doing it. Personalization. We see personalization, quite basic stuff. Hey, Maciek, you've got 200 points in your loyalty bank account. Great.
00:03:32
Speaker
So our clients with kind of the data we're pushing is getting a little smarter about that, for example.
00:03:38
Speaker
You've got 200 points. That's $10 or $5. Your past purchase history, looking at that, including that in there and saying, well, these are things you've purchased in the past. Maybe get extra points for buying that in the next 30 days. So within that idea of personalization, you can create urgency. You can create specificity around the things that you, you know, your past purchasing behavior and not just using my name in an email, which is great.
00:04:05
Speaker
you know the pretty basic stuff and we've seen that for a very very long time. I think that's one of those things it's like these personalization things get bent around a lot and people do do basic stuff you know like you're in this tier or you have this many points but getting a little deeper on that side I think is really important. I'm sure we'll talk about surveys and progressive profiling later on.
Subscription Models in Loyalty Programs
00:04:28
Speaker
Subscriptions, some of our clients are doing that in interesting ways, like electronics client that's doing that for, they have a kind of two tier program, one for paid, one for not paid, but we have also places I've seen like Taco Bell has it, right? For the pay 10 bucks and get, get tacos for 30 days. And they, I've seen that coming off and on. It's not like a permanent campaign. It just right now, currently they don't have it. Then they're going to have it again. Then they're not going to have it again.
00:04:54
Speaker
You buy it for, usually like one day offers, you can buy into it and then you can have it for the next 30 days. Panera has something like that too, like for what they call it, the Panera Unlimited Sip Club. And that's done really well. They have like a monthly subscription or an annual subscription and that's really got people into the stores buying more. So it really has increased and they're going to continue doing that. They're seeing a great benefit for doing that.
00:05:21
Speaker
cut in a little bit because I think subscriptions are really interesting. Do you advise clients on the type of subscription? Because I think they're like you started off where the subscription it sounds like is more evergreen and it's open to all products like on Amazon Prime. I think it's kind of how you were at least the way I was interpreting it and then moving into this more perhaps
00:05:46
Speaker
Definitely surgical from the way Taco Bell is doing it the way you described it is oh I've got it on and then I've got it off I've got on I've got it off so I can really use it the way I want to and maybe even with the Specific segments I guess one of my thoughts is is that considered a loyalty program in and of itself or does it play with the program? Can it complement a program? See what's here? I'm going here a little bit
00:06:10
Speaker
Taco Bell actually has a rewards program, right? So they do it in parallel. They're related, but they're not dependent on each other, right? So they'll turn this on and off. It's within the app. So obviously it drives more app usage, app downloads. There's some other benefits within the reward program for Taco Bell.
00:06:29
Speaker
In the case of Taco Bell, it's complimentary. In the case of Panera Bread, they also have a separate program that is, again, unrelated to the SIP club. Again, that's a very specific element that Panera does within their portfolio. Yes, it can definitely be a complimentary thing. In the case of Taco Bell, in the case of Panera, it is a complimentary thing. That can be turned off and on.
00:06:51
Speaker
Matt, what are you seeing from that perspective? I guess subscription or the broader trends that maybe clients are looking for or need that might be more outside the box? Yeah, I mean, I think they're definitely related. And from our perspective, what customers are asking for and some of the capabilities that we're looking at, like any time you're trying to incentivize some behavior, right, and reward people for that, definitely subscription and recurring orders and things of that nature, you know, it fits into that mold, right? I would consider it a loyalty tactic.
00:07:20
Speaker
And so making sure that you've got a loyalty platform that has those capabilities built in, I think would ensure that you have a well-rounded platform. With respect to personalization, we've been talking about personalization for many years, and it's gone through an evolution of sort of one-to-all to sort of one-to-many, and now we're trying to get to one-to-few or one-to-one, right?
00:07:43
Speaker
And we're seeing that the integrations and the data model and the platform and capabilities are finally getting to a place where a lot of that is now possible. And in order to drive that one-to-one personalization, you've got to have a lot of data about your customer and not just transactional data. You've got to have behavioral data. You've got to have some implicit and explicit signals.
00:08:06
Speaker
So making sure that you've got capabilities in your platform and an extensible data model to where you can round out that profile and then throw some intelligence on it where you can offer sort of that one to one personalization. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing it more from a broad technology platform perspective and less and less from a bespoke or custom perspective.
Loyalty Programs and SaaS Platforms
00:08:25
Speaker
And we feel that that's where the market's heading, and that's where we're spending a lot of time, be it progressive profiling, zero-party data surveys, things of this nature, tactics that we can use to help our customers get a really complete understanding of their customer in order to drive that one-to-one personalization. And are we seeing more and more customers thinking that way and working to collect that information? And if so, how does that user experience look at it? And that question goes to either one of you.
00:08:54
Speaker
I think it's all customers, you know, our existing customers as well as customers we're seeing in the pipeline. I mean, it's becoming table stakes, right? That this is where the industry is moving and as.
00:09:06
Speaker
whether you're selling into a CMO or whether you're selling into IT, both camps are expecting those capabilities to be there. And they're also expecting more so now than ever for those things to be in a platform rather than be something bespoke or custom built for them and their brand for a whole lot of reasons.
00:09:26
Speaker
We've seen the evolution of the rest of all of the technologies that are adjacent to loyalty, whether it be a sales cloud, a service cloud, e-commerce, marketing clouds. The whole rest of the industry is going SaaS and it's going platform, right? And it's focusing on technology and it's only logical that loyalty moves that same way. And so, yeah, it's becoming, I would say, a hard and fast requirement for all of our customers.
00:09:53
Speaker
Mathek, maybe how the clients are adding this in. A couple of weeks ago, I was at ETail and had the pleasure of emceeing a day there and hearing all sorts of different sessions and different perspectives. And what was kind of surprising, I guess, to me was a lot of people were talking about the data they were collecting through transactions.
00:10:17
Speaker
And so they were trying to personalize based on the transaction. So you bought this just like the example you had earlier. You bought this. So now I'm going to go offer you this.
Harnessing Customer Data for Personalization
00:10:26
Speaker
And I just kept sitting there thinking, well, if you were collecting profile information and it doesn't seem like a lot of organizations are.
00:10:34
Speaker
And I'm just wondering if there was like, it seems to me that we used to collect more profile, but is it just that it was too passive that it was like, Oh, you log in and then there's a whole bunch of questions and people you take it or leave it if they don't want to fill it in. And now we need to be doing it in more creative ways so that the consumer is more apt to give us that information or what are your thoughts?
00:10:56
Speaker
Wow, there's a lot there. I think there's a couple there. There's a few different things. So collection of data is at first collect that data is it's the whole idea of what do I get in return for that data, right? So it's like, and I think that a lot of companies collected the data and then they kind of sat on it and failed it. It's almost too much data. What do we do with it? How do we create a CRM out of it that makes sense? How do we make it personalized enough? And then it just kept going, I think,
00:11:22
Speaker
you get fairly minutia level data, like say your cosmetics client and you're like, what age group are you in? What skin type you have? What colors do you like? What brands do you use? But if you don't create cadences of communication that responded that, then it kind of just becomes dead data. And then they elevate that just to, okay, you're a female or you're a female within a certain age, right? And it loses out on that personalization thing. I think the other thing is,
00:11:50
Speaker
collection of data, what loyalty enables is having incentivizing that a little bit. So giving people a reason to, at least at the very beginning, even with the response later on, I get something forward and I create some value. The loyalty program creates some value for those points or for those answers, whether it's a one-time survey, whether it's a progressive survey, or whatever that might be.
00:12:17
Speaker
And then you have to set up some kind of cadence to make sure that I split that segment data in a way where you actually are rewarding people later on saying, hey, will you give us this, this and this? We got this in return. I'll give you an example for separate, completely different example for EasyJet, right? So what they did for the, I think it was our 20th anniversary is that they took all the data about flight that I've taken, my first flight that I've taken with them, where I went,
00:12:45
Speaker
When was the last flight? And they created roughly like these, like, I think 14 or 15 segments. But the elements in that were super personalized to me is saying, Maciek, you took your first flight with us on this date to this place, right? You chose the aisle seat 35% of the time. So maybe you can try what you want with this. You used to go to this place, but you haven't gone to this place. So we're going to give you a discount to go to this place.
00:13:12
Speaker
So they took a bunch of data and they created a super personal. I felt like it was literally written for me, but they when I read it was by the way, it's incredibly successful. It really raised bookings on their site and had a long term kind of effect beyond just that initial booking.
00:13:29
Speaker
But for me as a consumer and for them, actually they just behind the scenes, they created cohorts, like 15 of them that made it seem super personal to me, but it wasn't hundreds of thousands of cohorts. It was 14 or 15 of them, but they were able to create these personalized stories for me. And I think that it is that it's getting that data and making sure that data gets paid off
00:13:55
Speaker
So I think what I saw is a lot of people getting data, they had this, hey, give us your profile. And there just wasn't enough, whether the wrong personnel, whether the wrong systems that were in place to manage that, but the output back to the user wasn't there where it made it worthwhile for the user to actually give that data. So now you're trying to incentivize that data, but if you incentivize it and still doesn't work, you're going to, you know, so you have to, you have to pay off on that, on whatever you're collecting, you have to be,
00:14:24
Speaker
paying off and like I see oftentimes give us your email address and we'll get will send you stuff like what what like what are you actually going to do? Why am I giving you my email address? Tell me what you're going to do for me. I just don't think that A it's communicated well enough and B it's actually executed on well enough because the systems may not be talking to each other. That's a great point and maybe Matt do you thoughts on that to you? Yeah it's your point Aaron on the
00:14:50
Speaker
you know, how we've seen an ebb and flow of that personalization. I think data privacy regulations and what's going on with third party cookies has had an impact on that and that companies were, you know, whether they were nefarious or above board or whatever, they had a lot of ways to collect data on you, you know, passively could could send some personalization that way.
00:15:10
Speaker
Now it's got to be it's got to be legit, right? It's got to be zero party first party data. You've got to prove that you're a good trustworthy data steward in order to get people to trust you to give your data to all of my checkpoints. You've got to incentivize them like what's the reason for me to give you my not only my data, but my time.
00:15:29
Speaker
And what's what's gonna be my benefit to it and if you can if companies can do that well. We're all a part of loyalty programs in our day to day and there's ones that we interact with quite heavily and there's ones that we don't write in the ones that we don't they're obviously not doing a good job at that right there not incentivizing me to take the time. You want me to spend ten minutes filling out a survey to get more data about me what's in it for me.
00:15:51
Speaker
And that's where loyalty and those tactics really can provide those incentives to get people to share some of their data so that the brand can offer sort of a hyper-personalized experience.
Effective Incentives in Loyalty Programs
00:16:04
Speaker
So on that, I want to dig into the incentive piece a little bit because I think I always have a debate with people on this is you say incentive, which I like because I kept waiting for you to say something like a discount or something. You were very careful in the words you use.
00:16:20
Speaker
I think that when you look at loyalty and loyalty programs, I feel like there's not enough recognition, at least the way I was educated about it, it's rewards and recognition, but we forget this part of that last piece. And just being able to say thank you, or I appreciate you, can go a long way. And so I've just been curious as to what your thoughts are, is giving a data, if I give you my data, the promise of
00:16:48
Speaker
a more personalized experience or a promise that I can make your life easier, is that enough? Or do people actually really need to have points or dollars back or something that's more financial? Again, it's probably a debate, but curious your perspectives. Yeah, I think it depends on the brand and the experience, right?
00:17:10
Speaker
There's not a lot of, let's say, cache or what have you. If I, if I roll up to the window at McDonald's and they say, Hey, thanks for being a loyalty member. Yeah, that's great. But you know, it's, it's not really, but you know, I'm a member of Delta SkyMiles program, right? And they're always thanking me for being a customer. They're thanking me for being platinum. They're, they're doing this and doing that. And, and with some brands and some experiences, I think it makes sense and it does add value.
00:17:36
Speaker
There certainly are loyalty programs where the brand unfortunately has to give up margin right there in the loyalty program to get a break or get some free product or get something but that's not across the board and that's why i say incentive right because the incentive at least for us again you're trying to promote or incentivize some behavior.
00:17:53
Speaker
And the incentive for that it could be a coupon it could be money off it could be a badge it could be an entrance into a sweepstakes it could be a lot of things and those things that we call incentives or rewards you know we really need to tailor to that brand and their experience and what they want to accomplish.
00:18:10
Speaker
So just on that, I do think if you're a member of some kind of utility loyalty program, you probably just want a discount. But I think that discounts, in most cases, customers, from what I see in the data, they use the discounts.
00:18:25
Speaker
they talk about a lot of different things again it's actually great debate what are customers want they say they want you can do lots of lots of great behind the smoke screen interviews and reviews and focus groups but when it comes to it like what are people actually using it for but i think brands with a sports manufacturer brand that the top tier
00:18:47
Speaker
they have certain things they can offer.
Creative Rewards in Loyalty Programs
00:18:49
Speaker
So they they can offer a zoom call with a pro that because of the sport that they sign up for, they're super, super excited. I mean, this is a this is an invite, like a lot of invites. And if you think about it, because it's a zoom call, you can invite a lot of people into the same room to speak to Harry Higgs, right, which is, wow, awesome. Really depends on the brand. We have another brand that's
00:19:15
Speaker
from a rewards perspective, that's a benefit. Hey, I do, I engage with you a lot through points, through spending, whatever it is. And this is my benefit at the end of that. And it might be surprising to like, it's not something that's written in there, just they'll say, hey, guess what? Because it's organized. So there's going to be things that are going to be
00:19:32
Speaker
printed on the website. And there's going to be things that are going to say, hey, guess what, Aaron and Matt, you're part of our program, you know, top tier. We'd love to invite you as the first whatever thousand people to be able to join and talk to or listen to whatever it has been a conversation with this pro. Very cool, right?
00:19:50
Speaker
We have, on the other hand, this is also the kind of rewards that you can use. Setting up, again, it's not for everybody, but I think you have to just be creative and you work with every client in a different way with the tools that you have, right? Just like we have different talents as people and you develop those things, right? So we have another sporting good company and what they offer is gear that is signed by athletes. Again,
00:20:15
Speaker
You can't technically buy this stuff, right? So you have to be in the program to be able to use your points to be able to do this. So it's a great incentive that if you are, and the incentive matches the type of product that they're selling, right? It has to be a close correlation. And that's maybe done through either intuitive, because it's sports sports, or something they have to do through research that, hey, this group is open to these types of products or experiences or services.
00:20:43
Speaker
that you can get as using your points or being as certain or as a benefit, right? So I think there's lots of different things and there's some certain customers probably be more focused on, give me a discount. What other benefits can you really give me, right? Maybe, I think if we sat down and thought creatively about it, what do they have to offer? Is there anything else they might have to offer? Maybe, maybe there's some discount on an EV, something that matches something that was within their domain.
00:21:12
Speaker
Thank you. I really like that, both of the ways you guys are thinking about this. And it's making me think, too, in addition to the recognition piece, a lot of what you're calling out there, Maciek, kind of goes back to the personalization as well. So as you're looking at how can I recognize somebody, it's almost
00:21:32
Speaker
Like a chicken and an egg, almost if I don't know anything about you, I can't deliver better rewards or better experiences so being able to somehow articulate that in your communications up front that you'd be more open with with your consent so that we can can help because gosh look at these cool experiences.
00:21:51
Speaker
that is much like we're sharing about our clients that are delivering these really cool exclusive events that only really work because you know that that person has that passion and that person is that interested.
00:22:03
Speaker
So i think that that's really interesting and even when we started the conversation we're talking about what's going on out there that people can do and there's a lot of conversations around and fts and ai and and all these things where it's again all that's great but that takes a lot of planning for something new but you have your program today what are some things that you can actually action on in the short term that can really make some impact and
00:22:29
Speaker
Matt, I think you kind of hit on two things. One is what you were talking and kind of went into the depth on is that exclusivity.
00:22:36
Speaker
and offering some specialty experiences or items, but then also like social interactions or social components as well as maybe other kinds of interactions. I know that obviously at Annex Cloud, we have the ability to do a lot of that with our technology, which is one of the things I think is so cool about this place. But because of that, we're really able to help our clients that way too. Anything you could share about that interactivity piece and
00:23:04
Speaker
and what we're seeing from that perspective. If we're talking about social things, like I'll give an example. Maybe this is what you're asking for. So hashtagging images of the product in use or how you, you know, we can, we have a way of being able to have people post images on Instagram.
00:23:23
Speaker
Again, creating content and then we can also enable that content to be placed on the website and people interacting with how that product is being used in the real world is UGC and being able to give people points for that, allow people to comment on that and get almost almost like a community without necessarily creating a whole different leveraging Instagram, leveraging our technology to create almost a sense of community and being able to share how the product works. That's an example.
00:23:53
Speaker
referrals through the referring right so we have a referral program that people can share via whether it's facebook or twitter or directly online or through just taking a link and be able to talk and from acquisition perspective create create awareness of the program because someone's happy with that brand and we can incentivize that person for doing that so
00:24:15
Speaker
Those are the kind of a couple of things that we can do on the social side and engagement side to be able to put both acquisition and just creating content for that brand again incentivizing it and also creating a reason for people to engage more more often with the brand.
00:24:31
Speaker
But, you know, some brands you may not purchase very often, right? So creating an opportunity in a way to engage between those purchases is super important because there are other brands that you might interact with more frequently. You know, if you're a grocery store or Amazon's of the world where you're kind of shopping regularly. But when those are the ones you need to find ways of engaging whether directly with the consumer or allowing them to
00:25:00
Speaker
post and gain some kind of value by discussing the brand in their own space right. I love it and you can also go into tutorials and other be able to to help educate people or.
00:25:16
Speaker
Sharing content or madam sure you have other ideas and other things that you've seen cuz I'm sure some things were on the road map or a prayer just a comment on that the real quick so actually with the client a Trans client that is actually doing that.
00:25:30
Speaker
They have a whole set of actions for watching videos reading blogs interacting with learning resources because if you think about electronics they take some learning like you get that quick quick start booking near and then get a massive pamphlet on how to use your tv or my car or whatever it is right and then you don't want to read that so this is your little ways of
00:25:51
Speaker
getting people engaged outside of the purchase or pre-purchase or getting them to maybe facilitate that purchase and facilitate that purchase with you rather than a competitor, right? If you're a retailer versus a manufacturer, you can go there or there or there. So you create an affinity where it may be more expensive, but they're providing you with other values so you feel a level of loyalty to that brand, right?
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And to pile on Machek's comments about user-generated content, we've seen all sorts of statistics that when you look at reviews of products that people, they respond more, where they see actual users actually using the products, right? And that helps brands sell more.
00:26:35
Speaker
comes off more credible and more believable. And so, you know, we've got a number of fashion and cosmetic companies where that's really key, right? They want people to upload some content of them using the product, and it creates a little bit of buzz around the product, but that also, you know, helps with some ways to promote their product. And then around other industries like entertainment, sports entertainment, or even travel,
00:26:59
Speaker
It's got a little bit different purpose, right? You're creating a little bit of FOMO where someone is taking some, uploading some content from an event they went to or a lounge that they're sitting in and other people see that and they want that experience, right? So the UGC and the promotion through social can be really powerful tool. And we've seen a number of our customers be really successful with some of those tactics.
Engaging Strategies Beyond Transactions
00:27:20
Speaker
It's super interesting and I guess one of the trends that we certainly have seen for a while is a lot of pushes to go beyond just transactional loyalty. I think this is a way to go beyond that without necessarily boiling the ocean and creating something really extravagant. It's just being able to have more interactions. We actually had somebody come to us and ask us some questions around if I just switch platforms.
00:27:48
Speaker
How can I get an ROI? And I was thinking about this going, okay, if you're just switching from one platform to another, it's the strategy that gives you the ROI. It's what you do with it that's going to make the changes. And it just got me to thinking about what you guys were talking about. It's the ability to use the technology to create more interactions. I've always called them kind of overlay. So you've got your core,
00:28:16
Speaker
Strategy that you start your program with to when you launch but then on an ongoing basis you're constantly needing to watch it and and as you're collecting the data on an ongoing basis how do you then use it in these different ways.
00:28:31
Speaker
And that's really a key above and beyond that I'm not sure a lot of people are looking at or thinking about. And I thought that was quite interesting. I don't know what your take on that is or how you would advise somebody or answer that question. Any thoughts? Yeah, it really does come down to the strategy and tactics, right? Because we've had a number of instances where we've either displaced a competitive loyalty platform or a homegrown system
00:28:56
Speaker
And as part of the cycle, they come to us and say, you know, we've we've got tons of members in the program. And what we're seeing is that all these people accumulate these points and they never burn them. Right. And they're not engaging with the platform. And it really comes down to the design of the loyalty of the loyalty program.
00:29:12
Speaker
And I know my check is in his team is certainly more advanced at this than I am but if if you've got two platforms that offer the same tactics it really does come down to the design in the strategy because if you design or poorly design a loyalty program you can use the best platform in the world right but if the loyalty program if it doesn't incentivize the right things if it doesn't add value if it doesn't interest your customers it's never gonna be successful that's where the strategy and people like my chicken is team comment.
00:29:40
Speaker
I think before we hand it to Mancha, I guess a push for you is being able to have flexibility on a platform that allows you to configure different actions or segments and campaigns.
00:29:53
Speaker
can be a real differentiator and a key too, because you could have a base program. Maybe you've got people with a whole bunch of points, like you said. Can you then pull that data? Who's sitting there? When was the last time they made a purchase? When was the last time they redeemed? What could they redeem for? And then being able to quickly and easily configure some kind of promotion or suggestion or proactively pull them back in.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, and it really comes down to two things, right? It comes down to some proper analytics and being able to look at the data and understand what's going on on the platform. But then having a platform that is truly easily configurable to where you can deploy different tactics, you can deploy more or less of some tactics. And as you mentioned, you can kind of turn on and off different capabilities and different loyalty tactics.
00:30:43
Speaker
Without having to turn code or have a large services engagement, you know, loyalty has never said it and forget it. It's an evolution. It's, it's something that is always changing and having a platform that allows for that to where marketers or sales or whoever is, is the, the user of the platform can pivot and can deploy these things at will to make sure that the people are engaged, that they're not losing folks. And for the laggards, you know, bring them back into the fold.
00:31:09
Speaker
Let me, about two to Matt's point a little bit for the product side of things. So I think, you know, when, when customers move off of especially custom platforms and a lot of times they're like, yeah, let's just move it from A to B, right? From, from what we have now to, to you. And sometimes they just do, they do that because a lot of times it's difficult to do things on their platform, like change things, configure things, create campaigns, create different cadences.
00:31:35
Speaker
because it's always code, code, code, code, code, right? You're always developing code to make that work and then test it. So a lot of times I just say, just take this and put it on your, and so then we know that it'll be easier to do all that stuff there. That's the easy route. The more difficult route is you say, okay, what are your objectives? Beside the fact that it's harder on the custom platform, it'll be much easier on our platform because it's fit for purpose and it's
00:32:02
Speaker
and it's SAS and it's just going to be it's tried and tested.
00:32:07
Speaker
What do you want to accomplish in this program? Are you targeting everybody, which is going to be tough, especially depending on the type, how many users are going there, or is it a segment of that? Do we want to focus on that? Are you looking at repeat purchase? Are you looking at this? Is it lack of engagement? Are you finding people there's a lot of competition? Going through that process is the painful process. Moving across
00:32:35
Speaker
That's the easy part because I think because of the platform, they're moving on to ours. But I think figuring out what they want to achieve is the thing that we probably almost held back on because it's so hard to do stuff on the other platform, they didn't even think about that. So I think that
00:32:52
Speaker
Moving to our platform or to a SaaS platform will enable that to kind of people to stop and go out. I can think about what I really want to achieve and who I want to target. What do our customers want from a loyalty program and questions that they maybe weren't asking themselves? Freedom to dare to agree. Yeah, exactly.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. Fabulous conversation with you guys today. Thank you so much. I think we've covered a lot of ground from program, program structure, different concepts that are out there today to being able to do social and.
00:33:30
Speaker
exclusivity and being able to even platform for the configuration and things like we just talked about. Hopefully lots of great nuggets for people to learn from to at least be able to action today on some things to enhance their strategies. Any parting thoughts or anything that we maybe didn't cover that we should? My main thing is don't overcomplicate things. You probably heard me say this before, make adjustments needed over time.
00:33:57
Speaker
but try stuff and not everything will work and have clear objectives for your loyalty program. That's great. The ETail conference, it was a huge theme. Everybody kept saying and advising each other of just get out there and try and give it a shot. If it doesn't work, fine. Pivot quick. One last thing is understand your capacity both on the marketing side and tech side. Because what I have seen a lot is
00:34:27
Speaker
let's move the whole tech stack. And it's a big lift, especially because of all the different technologies that can enable all these things to happen, whether it's CPs or ESPs, MCs, things like that. And doing it all at once is a big, heavy lift, right? So I think just understand your capacity.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think as well it's, you know, having really clear objectives like what do you want the loyalty program to solve and be really honest with your organization as far as what the loyalty program can and cannot do, right?
Experimentation and Creativity in Loyalty Tactics
00:35:01
Speaker
And to Maciek's point, there needs to be like a foundational things to support that, but then be playful, you know, and try some things. And again, Maciek stated, everything won't work. Some things will work great for some brands and will fail for others.
00:35:13
Speaker
but just try and experiment. There's a lot of really creative brands that are doing some great things in this space that are outside the norm and wouldn't have stumbled upon those things if not having that mindset. What a great way to end this. Thank you both so much for your time. One last question. How can the audience reach you? If people want to get in contact, talk about this a little further with you, how do they reach you?
00:35:38
Speaker
You could reach me on my email, mgorskowski, at annexcloud.com. Please feel free to reach out. Yeah, and I'm at mreaves at annexcloud. I'm also on LinkedIn, so please reach out and let's have a conversation. Perfect. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for hosting us, Aaron. Thanks for listening to this episode of Get Personal with Loyalty. Join us next time for more Loyalty Insights. Until then, dare to dream.
00:36:08
Speaker
Let Annex Cloud help make your dreams a reality. Visit annexcloud.com. See you soon.