We pride ourselves on developing, delivering and continually improving the most powerful loyalty marketing platform in the convenience retail industry. Our intention is to identify effective and efficient features that allow you to build your connections with customers in meaningful ways, and this chapter summarizes our top tips to operate a world class loyalty program that truly helps you build an increasingly profitable business.

Operate a successful loyalty program requires a clear vision supported by operational excellence. 

Top Ten Tips to Operate Your Loyalty Program Successfully

1. Build the Basics. Our campaign templates allow your team to run exciting marketing campaigns on the same products over and over again. Customers actually look forward to relevant offers when they are well-executed, so make sure to build a basic toolkit that supports your operational efficiency from the start.
2. Automatically Welcome New Members:  The very first step in your digital relationship with your customers is to welcome them as a member of your program. This first communication cycle sets the tone for your connection with your members, so build it once and then simply let it operate efficiently every single day from the moment they join.
3. Identify and Target Your Least Active Members. Your campaign operations team will inevitably identify certain segments of customers that only engage occasionally. With our automation tools, you can build specific campaigns to energize these members with low activity levels, which should be designed to educate and inspire action with relevant, new & interesting offers.
4. Identify and Target Inactive Members. Our automation rules can also plan and prepare for those members who become in-active over time. These campaigns can help members understand your goal of being relevant and invite feedback and engagement rather than allowing these members to lapse completely.
5. Remember to Say Thanks: While your loyalty program can drive powerful behavior change with customers, always remember the importance of your brand being loyal TO your member, before you can expect loyal behavior FROM them. The best loyalty programs treat their members like family or friends, with specific non-commercial communications that ensure your members feel appreciated. We recommend that you include a “thank-you” campaign within your life-cycle plan, that celebrates the connection you’ve build so far with each member.

Remember to balance your commercial objectives with your members needs.

6. Automatically Identify Your Best Customers. Communicate clearly that you appreciate their support as top members and supporters of your store, and where possible, include some extra exclusive benefits for this most-valuable segment.

7. Build Business Partnerships: Many convenience store brands miss the massive opportunity to leverage their loyalty program to support local businesses and their staff. By inviting these businesses to introduce and promote your store to their staff, they can enjoy exclusive offers in return. Truly a win-win opportunity, powered by your loyalty program.

8. Create a Coupon Shop. An effortless solution to easily reward segments of customers and give them an every-day relevant reward or unexpected treat. Our coupon shop feature is a unique way to scale your B2B program with no effort – a great way to include a powerful “surprise and delight” pillar to your loyalty strategy.

9. Support Local Campaigns. As well as your centrally-designed campaigns, we recommend you allow your stores create local templates that you approve. This allows your merchants to run additional campaigns for their own local needs, but they will always be executed within your corporate guidelines. This ensures you have a consistent approach and your program can be driven locally yet with the help of expertise from your central marketing colleagues.

10. Fraud Controls: Our final suggestion as best practice is to implement systematic controls to monitor and prevent loyalty fraud. Our platform allows you to define an acceptable number of transactions per hour, as well as limits on how many points can be earned. We also recommend creating a “misuse report” that alerts you if there is an unusually high number of redemptions within a defined timeframe that requires your attention.