Loyalty reimagined.

In a time when customers are jumping ship faster than ever before, a great loyalty program can do a lot to keep them on board—and inspire new people to join you. A recent Connected Shopper Report found that 78% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand with a loyalty program. However, only 22% say they are satisfied with the level of personalization offered to them by these programs. Fonsey Foo, Customer Success Director at Charket, elaborated on the importance of personalized loyalty programs, “Consumers always have options to fulfill their purchasing needs. Trust in brands plays an important role in making buying decisions. A successful customer loyalty program helps build such trust.”

Investing in loyalty programs can have a direct impact on revenue. Brand Keys found that just a seven percent increase in loyalty is all it takes to boost lifetime profits by 85% per customer. And according to a recent Salesforce report, companies see a 25% higher average order value when customers receive personalized recommendations. Bottom line: there's a huge opportunity here for companies that do it right.

At Charket, we believe personalization is the key to your success for loyalty programs. If you treat your best friends like casual acquaintances, you won't be very popular. The same is true with customers. Getting the same offer as everyone else or just earning points after you've purchased several times from the company is not as compelling as an experience tailored to your shopping history, preferences, customer journey, and value you represent as a lifetime customer.

As Fonsey pointed out, loyalty management needs to be memorable for the customer - this defines what will bring them back. Businesses need to take the behavioral data they're gathering from loyalty programs and combine it with other information they have about their customers to deliver personalization at scale. The problem is that the data needed is often siloed in different departments running on different systems, including eCommerce shopping carts, customer service teams, inventory management, and post-sale support. This data can be difficult and time-consuming to unify. For example, it can create long delays when siloed departments need to find a way to get marketing data on customer demographics to meet information about their past sales or opinions they've shared with service agents. Or a company might offer a simple point and discount program at a time when their customers really prefer personalized, experience-based rewards.

What would help, Fonsey says, “running a successful loyalty program for WeChat customers involves delivering memorable end-to-end experiences, creating value, and personalizing offerings based on customer preferences.” At Charket, we've found that Salesforce helps businesses deploy effective loyalty programs quickly by uniting data for all teams to access and empowering team members with the right tools to personalize interactions with WeChat customers across the journey.

Because an effective loyalty program is a “must-have” for more companies than ever before, Salesforce has released a new Loyalty Management solution. It makes the process of setting up a program even easier, faster, and more cost-effective than ever before. It's an end-to-end solution that empowers businesses to create intelligent, differentiated experiences that grow relationships and increase customer lifetime value.

A recent Salesforce study found that 53% of customers say they feel an emotional connection with the brands they buy from the most. Loyalty programs can play a key part in building this connection—but only if they show an understanding of who each individual customer is and what stage they're at in their journey. While points-based rewards might be appealing at first, brands must find ways to strengthen connections throughout the entire customer experience. This can range from giving extra incentives for repeat purchases to offering access to exclusive events.

Salesforce Loyalty Management comes equipped with an integrated technology stack, including Marketing Cloud and Salesforce CDP, as well as the ability to connect to your existing systems, to create personalized offers and unique experiences throughout the customer journey. Built on the trusted Salesforce platform, Loyalty Management gives businesses the underlying infrastructure to build their programs, and also the flexibility to fully configure the program to fit their specific needs, decreasing their time to value. The mechanisms of a great program already exist within Loyalty Management. Point accrual and redemption rules, offers, and member management simply need to be configured to your needs. This allows for a faster time to market and saves on the development costs of building a loyalty program from scratch.

At Charket, we're seeing a number of ways Salesforce Loyalty Management solution can benefit two of the industries we work with:

Retail: Creating lasting loyalty by meeting customers on WeChat with personalized rewards they can redeem using WeChat.

Travel & Hospitality: Building trust and transparency with WeChat customers by expanding program benefits and connecting loyalty to their entire travel experience.

The eventual loss of cookies and other third-party identifiers means that companies will need to rely more heavily on first-party customer data to execute personalized marketing campaigns. With privacy being a big concern right now, people are only willing to give up their information if they feel like it's going to be used to give them a better experience. Salesforce Loyalty Management enables companies to go far beyond simple “earn and burn” programs and offer customers real value. Companies and their customers also get the reassurance that Salesforce takes data security very seriously. It's their number one value. They utilize some of the most advanced technology for Internet security available today. And you'll always be 100 percent in control of all your data.

In the future, we believe more and more companies will be elevating their loyalty programs to stay competitive. Fonsey emphasized the wide array of services Charket offers, “Charket offers a suite of AppExchange native apps that help Salesforce customers connect WeChat, WeCom, LINE, WhatsApp and SMS directly to their Salesforce CRM. Charket apps cover the entire customer journey from sales and marketing to customer service and the ongoing engagement.”

Loyalty solutions are easy to set up and maintain and provide visibility for organizations that want to provide these programs. They are so easy to implement, leaving the high cost behind us, and now we are able to equalize the marketplace and create great loyalty programs for any size business. Tiered offers, access to special events, and personalized product offerings will become commonplace. Now is the time to focus on loyalty programs. With Salesforce, you'll be able to put your ideas into action faster and more cost-effectively than ever before.