The rigor of loyalty program design

A program design should answer questions such as:

• Do I go for a stand alone program or do I need strategic partners?
• Do I implement a family card with householding of points?
• Is a 2.5% margin in terms of giveback sufficient?
• Does my loyalty software need to allow my store managers to run independent points based promotions?
• Mag-stripe? Smart Card? RFID Card?
• What rewards do I offer that will not be difficult to fulfill?
• What will my average member earn at the end of a year?

We at Cartesian answer over 100 such questions that are critical to loyalty program design. Different aspects to our rigor span:

• Analysis of past transaction data
• Scenario building of program rules and outcomes
• Market and competition scan, customer and channel feedback
• Benchmarking of program design against international programs
• Budgets and ROI projections for min. 3 years
• Software and technology scan, specifications writing
• Database audit
• Process audit, process mapping

For more on the need for loyalty program design, and what it entails, click here.
For more on Loyalty Concept development, click here.