Individual Loyalty

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Even though we live in an age of of hyper-personalization, individuality within loyalty is lagging behind. Just think about it: personalized holiday offers, flexibility in our shopping experience and personalization during customer service calls all have become the norm. By comparison, only few loyalty programs offer personalization in their rules and program benefits.

How do current loyalty programs address the trend of hyper-individualization?

Current loyalty programs are based on program rules, benefits and challenges. But – at least to date – they just don’t take their members’ individual needs and changing life-situations into account. With more and more loyalty programs launching, a modern program needs to stand out from the crowd and deliver exceptional, individualized offerings.

Loyalty programs should be colorful and full of life!
That is why we introduce Individual Loyalty. It is centered around a mix of rules and benefits that are program provided and those that are member selected. Therefore, both loyalty program members and program managers can act in advance to changing life situations. An Individual Loyalty program can adapt quickly and flexibly to new customer focus groups and their individual needs.

Individual Loyalty creates a personal set of rules for each member.
Here, program rules, benefits, products, targets, incentives and communication center around an individual’s needs and requirements.

What makes personalized loyalty so important?

We did extensive research to identify four common desires in consumers that show the need for individual experiences in loyalty programs. From our focus interviews we derived “voices of the customer”, which reflect emotions and affections behind important customer desires.

4 Key customer desires behind Individual Loyalty

Empowerment

“In a loyalty program, I want to be able to adapt program options myself based on my needs and preferences.”

Diversity

“In a loyalty program, I want to be able to adapt program options myself based on my needs and preferences.”

Relevance

“I am willing to share my needs and preferences because it is important to me that a loyalty program provides me with individual offers.”

Simplicity

I prefer a manageable selection of options customized to me rather than a large general selection that is the same for every member.”

The theory behind Individual Loyalty

Customers want to feel appreciated by the brands they choose. And through Individual Loyalty they receive benefits that are uniquely valuable to them. But how does personalization work and what are the pitfalls that make personalized loyalty so complex?

Approaches to Individual Loyalty

Evidently, personalization in loyalty programs is highly desired. However, for some members, individuality means actively deciding what they want for themselves (Choice). Others view individuality as an offer of tailored content that suits their personal needs and wishes (Tailoring).

Each approach bring different benefits and drawbacks that need to be evaluated depending on the existing loyalty program, its member base and the goals of the business.

Choice

Empower members to individually select their preferences from a wide range of choices.

  • Foster engagement with the program by getting members out of “autopilot” mode
  • Increase relevance of program through flexibly responding to situational/life factors and personality of members

Tailoring

Offer pre-selected options tailored to the individual based on data  analysis and automation

  • Ease burden and increase simplicity to program members
  • Increase relevance of program through demonstrating that this is something “just for you”

Field of Tension
Your way to provide unique loyalty experiences

Choice and tailoring are not mutually exclusive but can act in somewhat contradicting ways, thus resulting in a “field of tension” along which loyalty managers need to position their program. The right positioning is the key to implementing Individual Loyalty successfully.

To make the most of Individual Loyalty for your business, you should understand your customers’ preferences, as well as your business needs and abilities.

No matter which direction you want to focus on, we identified many mechanics along this field of tension that can make individual loyalty work for you.

Together we can identify your optimal position within this field of tension and where the right amount of tailoring and choice lies for your customers!

Implement personalization into your loyalty program with our software

Do you want to give your program members more choice and flexibility? Contact us directly to see how your existing loyalty program can benefit from a broader or better tailored choice offering.

Individual Loyalty is complex and requires a sophisticated technology solution to work properly. But with our LMS software you are perfectly set up to make Individual Loyalty happen for your new loyalty program.