The Loyalty Engine offers exceptional versatility, accommodating a wide array of use cases. These can operate independently or in conjunction, providing flexible solutions for diverse needs.
Purchase-based rewards
These programs enable customers to accumulate points proportional to their spending, such as gaining 1 point for every £1 spent. This system incentivizes higher spending with an increase in earned points.
Monthly/annual member rewards
These programs reward customers for staying loyal to your brand, by giving them a reward or fixed number of points each week/month/year they remain a member.
Product/service/subscription purchase rewards
These programs reward customers for taking out particular products, services or subscriptions.
Tiered rewards
These programs provide users with a hierarchical series of tier statuses, unlocking additional benefits and incentives as they progress through the tiers. Tier status is typically based on their annual points earned.
Gamified rewards
These programs incentivize customers by rewarding them for engaging in specific activities. This could include a mix of the previously mentioned actions or any other relevant events.
Employee benefits/rewards
These programs reward your employees for their tenure, overtime worked, completion of training courses, performance appraisal results etc.
Earning & spending rewards
Most loyalty program use cases revolve around points, supporting the ability to earn and spend points from a points balance.
Earning points
Per £/$/€1 spent (e.g. spend £100, get 100 points)
Per product SKU purchased (e.g. buy X product, get 200 points)
Per action(s) completed (e.g. complete your profile, get 500 points)
For taking out a particular service or subscription
For renewing a monthly/annual membership
With our additional modules, you can expand the functionality of your loyalty program to include earning points for:
Entering promo codes or scanning QR or product codes using the Promo Codes module
Referring a friend to join the loyalty program using the Referrals module
Team point earning using the Teams module
Points can be displayed in any unit that suits your program’s branding or user experience. For example, you might label points as “XP” or “Credits.” You could even represent a points balance as its cash equivalent (e.g., displaying £1.00 instead of 100 points).
Spending points
Once your customers have earned points, they need ways to spend them. Out-of-the-box, the Loyalty Engine supports spending points on your own self-fulfilled rewards using our voucher management system, for example:
Discount codes or gift vouchers to use in you or a partner's e-commerce or POS platform
Physical merchandise
Access to exclusive services or benefits
Utilising our additional modules, or with deeper integration, it's possible to offer rewards such as:
Digital gift cards fulfilled by us and delivered directly to the user (e.g. $50 Amazon gift card) using the Reward Fulfilment
Prepaid Visa cards or Paypal credit
Virtual debit card top-ups compatible with Apple Pay & Google Pay
Cash ATM withdrawals (users receive a PIN via SMS to input in a compatible ATM to withdraw cash there and then)
Credit to use in your Shopify store
See Points for more information on earning and spending points.
Not running a points-based loyalty program? No problem.
Our platform also supports 'point-free' loyalty programs, and all of the earning and spending mechanisms above can be implemented without the need to run a points-based program.
About loyalty campaigns
Now you understand the core premise of our platform and the various resources, let’s learn how these resources come together to create loyalty campaigns.
A loyalty campaign is a set of resources which work together to enable the logic and rules of your loyalty program. Loyalty campaigns are abstract and do not (yet) exist systematically.
We consider there to be two main categories of loyalty campaign:
Core Campaigns: the campaign which powers the main premise of your loyalty program (for example, earning 1pt per £1 spent).
Supplemental Campaigns: campaigns designed to run alongside your core campaign, typically time-limited or audience-constrained, with a purpose to acquire, engage or retain users.
Core campaigns
About core campaigns
Your core loyalty program offering, available to users on a permanent basis
Typically would only have one core campaign per loyalty program
Usually based on an ‘earn points, spend points’ model focused on creating a loyal customer base
Infrequently changes and is consistently available
Outlined in your program Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
Example core campaigns
Below, we'll list some example core campaigns and we'll also outline, at a high level, the resources that would be required to achieve each campaign.
The examples below are for the purposes of understanding how resources work together to form a loyalty campaign. They are not intended to be tutorials or step by step guides.
Earn Points, Spend Points (Most popular)
The main premise of an Earn Points, Spend Points core campaign (sometimes called earn & burn) is as it says on the tin. Users earn points which they can then spend on rewards.
Earning mechanisms could include:
Receive x points per £x spent / get x% back in points on all purchases
Receive a fixed number of points for buying a specific product
Spending mechanisms could include:
Spend your points on gift cards (i.e. 100pts = £10 Amazon gift card)
Spend your points on discount codes (i.e. 100pts = 20% off code)
Spend your points on additional account benefits (access to exclusive offers etc.)
Donate you points to charity
Withdraw you points as cash at an ATM
Resources required
Let's say our core campaign - the crux of our loyalty program - is an earn & spend campaign where users earn 1 point for every £1 they spend, and can spend their points on an Amazon gift card.
The following resources would be required to enable this campaign:
Event type
An event type for events registered when a user makes a purchase, which includes a payload that has the transaction amount in. Let's say, NEW_TRANSACTION.
Reactor
A reactor to listen for NEW_TRANSACTION events.
The reactor will award 1 point per £1 spent.
Reward
A reward to show and fulfil the Amazon gift card (let's say a £25 Amazon gift card for 2500 points).
Pricing the reward at 2500 points means the user needs to spend £2500 to get £25 worth of value in the form of the Amazon gift card - representing 1% in 'value back to the user'.
Member Rewards
A Member Rewards core campaign is based on rewarding your customers just for being customers or being a customer of a specific kind.
You could reward customers for:
Taking out a new or renewing an existing product, service, subscription or policy
Being a customer of a specific type - for example if they subscribe to a premium membership service
Referring friends to your product or service
Resources required
Let's say our core campaign - the crux of our loyalty program - is an annual member rewards program where users can claim 1 reward for every year they are a member. There is no point earn/spend mechanism required.
The following resources would be required to enable this campaign:
Audience
An audience of users who have NOT purchased a reward in the last 365 days.
Reward
You could create as many rewards as you like, but to keep it simple lets use a £25 Amazon gift card.
The reward cost is 0 points.
The reward availability is set to only allow users who are in the above audience to purchase it - this means once a user has purchased it, they will fall into thee audience above and as such cannot purchase the reward again for another year.
Supplemental campaigns
About supplemental campaigns
Additional promotions and incentives available in addition to your core campaign
Targeted and purposeful - acquire new users, retain existing users, re-engage dormant users
Available for either a limited time or for a limited group of users
Example supplemental campaigns
Below, we'll list some example supplemental campaigns and we'll also outline, at a high level, the resources that would be required to achieve each campaign.
The examples below are for the purposes of understanding how resources work together to form a loyalty campaign. They are not intended to be tutorials or step by step guides.
Sign-up Bonus (Basic)
Attract new customers by offering a sign up incentive, such as a free voucher code or points when they sign up and make their first purchase.
One resource required to implement:
Event Reactor
When a user registers an account a REGISTERED_ACCOUNT event occurs.
Your event reactor would listen for any events matching the REGISTERED_ACCOUNT event type.
The reactor awards 100 points when the event occurs.
Engage and reward existing users by offering an incentive on or around their birthday, such as a double points earning period, a voucher code or some free points.
Two resources required to implement:
Audience
Create an audience with two criteria, specifying:
"users who's birthday in their profile schema is between 1 week ago and 1 week ahead" - this ensures users can only see the birthday reward in the week leading up to and following their birthday
"users who have not redeemed the birthday reward (see below) in the last 340 days" - this ensures users who have redeemed the reward once already cannot do so again, and also acts as a fraud prevention technique if they attempt to game the system by changing their DOB regularly
Voucher-type Reward
Create a Voucher-type reward with the relevant discount code or offer you want to make available to your users for their birthday, i.e. 50% off.
Restrict the rewards visibility and purchasability to only those in the audience you have created (see below).
This means only users who meet the audience criteria can see and redeem the birthday reward.
Inactive User Re-engagement (Advanced)
Re-engage inactive users by offering a special incentive when they return to the platform and make a purchase, such as double points or an e-gift card on their next purchase.
Four resources required to implement:
Voucher-type Reward
Create a voucher-type reward with the relevant discount code or offer you want to make available to your users i.e. 20% off code.
Restrict the rewards visibility and purchasability to onlythose in the audience you have created (see below).
This means only users who meet the audience criteria can see and redeem the birthday reward.
Create a marketing webhook with the relevant message you want to send to a user’s device, i.e. ‘We miss you! Come back from 20% off your next order.'
Audience
Create an audience with two criteria specifying:
users who have had no reported events in the last 45 days - this ensures users can only see the re-engagement reward if they’ve been inactive
users who have not redeemed the re-engagement reward (see above) in the last X days - this ensures users who have redeemed the reward once already cannot do so again for a specific period
When creating the audience, toggle on the Report Audience Joined option. This will trigger an AUDIENCE_JOINED event every time a user meets the required criteria of the audience, which you can then create a reactor to act against.
Reactor
Create a reactor based on the AUDIENCE_JOINED event and select the audience you created.
You would then configure the reactor so that when it sees a matching event, it reacts by sending the user the marketing webhook you created (see above) which prompts them to open the app where - as they are now in the inactive audience - they will see the re-engagement reward available to redeem.
