Making it Personal

Customers are looking for more from rewards programmes than ever before

It isn’t enough anymore to just feature a shop where loyalty programme members can choose from a selection of vouchers or experiences or products. You need to think wider about how the rewards fit with your brand, what you are trying to say and what your members will remember about the reward.

Think about the presents you have received for the last few Christmases. How many of those can you remember and of those you can remember, do you know who gave them to you? I would guarantee that, for most people, this will be harder than you think.

Gifts should have meaning, be memorable and be something which brings the user joy. That can be hard to achieve when you are trying to appeal to a wide audience. Everything comes down to personalisation, and what your members truly want from the programme. Here are some tips of how to switch up your rewards programme:

Experiences

If you are offering experiences, then why not also offer a concierge service? Experience providers work on high breakage rates and most of us have received the opportunity to undertake experience, which we have then never used. Why not offer a concierge service to help your members, with booking, to ensure that they end up using the reward whilst making their life easier at the same time?

Charities

Rather than only providing one charity which your members can donate to, why not give them options to ensure a wider appeal? Could you add to every donation to give it more meaning and value? If you do provide charity rewards how often do you let your members know what has been donated or provide them information about what the charity is doing? This all helps increase engagement.

Vouchers

Physical gift vouchers are almost a thing of the past, but if you are going to use them, then ensure that they are presented nicely, boxed and make them feel that bit more special.

If you need to offer vouchers, then try to make them digital and instant and even allow members to add a gift message - and even another email address - so that they can be sent straight to someone else. This could be especially engaging in B2B where the owner of the account could choose an employee of the month to reward.

Sustainability and Environmental Rewards

Rather than just allowing your members to plant a tree, why not take advantage of some of the available solutions – for example creating your own forest where your members can choose where they wish to plant their tree in the forest.

Could you assign a sustainability score to each reward, so that your members are empowered to make good choices?

How could you offer a truly personalised reward experience? Could you allow your members to create their own wish list of rewards that you then curate the shop from? This might sound more difficult and time consuming, but it would definitely be personal.

About The Author

Stream’s co-founder, Melanie, became the first British woman to become accredited with the CLMP from The Loyalty Academy. Passionate about all things loyalty, Melanie cuts through the technical jargon and gets to the real business issue. Melanie loves to develop engaging digital solutions that appear simple whilst creating long lasting partnerships that add value to all.

View More Information