Offer time-sensitive discount to promote co-branded Mastercard

A co-branded Mastercard provides the perfect vehicle for merchants to offer a seamless loyalty experience to their members. Members use a single card to earn points and redeem rewards not only with the merchant sponsoring the loyalty program, but with co-brand partners as well. For merchants, the co-brand card keeps your brand front and center with the consumer, and enables you to collect more data about buying habits that you can then leverage for more personalized offers.

Strategy

Offer an immediate discount to accelerate adoption of a co-branded Mastercard by your loyalty program members.

Here’s the scenario: Koalla Retail and Mastercard have partnered to launch a co-branded credit card. To accelerate its adoption, Koalla runs a promotion where members who apply for the co-branded Mastercard get a 30% discount on their first purchase from the Koalla catalog after activating the co-branded Mastercard. Let’s look at how to implement this solution in the SessionM platform.

SessionM solution

The SessionM loyalty platform enables you to forge stronger, more loyal and more profitable relationships with your members. The platform provides an integrated set of capabilities - including data management, loyalty management, offer management, campaign orchestration, and analytics & optimization - that enable you to build compelling member loyalty programs.

Key modules

The strategy described in this article uses the following modules:

Offer
Management

  • Single use, multi-channel closed loop offers
  • Define offer type, value and restrictions
  • Select eligible menu items
  • Real-time validation at POS
  • Comprehensive offer reporting and tracking

Campaign
Orchestration

  • Manage scheduled and behaviorally triggered campaigns across email, push, SMS, digital channels
  • Real-time interaction management
  • Rules-based promotions
  • Centralized and actionable campaign analytics

See SessionM Features for a full discussion of SessionM platform features and functions.

Implementation workflow

The following procedure describes the workflow for implementing the loyalty program described in this article. The procedure captures the workflow at a high-level, providing you with a sense of the scope involved in implementing this program in the SessionM platform.

Take note

In addition to the core SessionM capabilities, this strategy leverages the optional Co-brand Optimizer feature. Co-brand Optimizer integrates the core SessionM loyalty capabilities with the co-branded credit card capabilities provided by the Mastercard Reward System (MRS) . Co-brand Optimizer enables outside spend transactional data collected by MRS to be ingested in the SessionM platform.

Most loyalty solutions force brands to manage their co-brand programs separately from their multi-tender loyalty programs. Credit card issuers typically only share minimal data with co-brand merchant partners (for example, total monthly points earned from the co-brand spend). And shared data is typically transmitted using manual batch files.

With Co-brand Optimizer, brands can manage their co-brand program as one component of the larger tender-neutral loyalty program. Co-brand Optimizer enables co-brand transactional data to be fed into SessionM so that merchants receive an ongoing feed of their customers’ outside spend activity. Merchants can leverage this enriched transactional data to unlock enhanced use cases for card acquisition, engagement and offers that the merchant can set-up and run directly.

The initial implementation of Co-brand Optimizer functionality is a managed service provided by the Mastercard team, moving to a client self-serve option once data flow connectivity between SessionM/MRS is fully complete in earrly 2024.

For step-by-step procedures for implementing the functionality in a SessionM module, see the Procedures section in the SessionM Help Center.

Step 1. Define custom event for new co-brand card application

Define a custom event named “Co-brand Card Activation that detects when a member activates their co-branded Mastercard. See About custom events for more information.

Step 2. Offer Management module: Define 30% discount offer

Define the offer. For this strategy, the offer is a 30% discount on the first item purchased from the Koalla Mastercard using the co-branded Mastercard. To amp up the urgency of this offer, it is valid for only one week after the member activates the co-branded card.

  • Name and describe the offer. Set the offer type to "Fixed Amount Item Discount" and set the percent check discount to "30%".

  • Set the start date for the offer's availability to "Today" and leave the end date blank. Leaving the end date blank keeps the offer available indefinitely. Set the redemption period to "7". This value determines the number of days that the offer can be redeemed once it has been issued to a member.

  • Publish the offer to make it active. The offer is now available for use in the promotional campaign below.

Step 3. Campaigns module: Define promotional campaign that texts discount offer to new cardholders

Create a promotional campaign that “listens” for the “Co-brand Card Activation” custom event. When the campaign detects that a co-branded card has been activated, it sends a text to the member notifying them of the 30% discount.

  • Name the campaign and set its end date to a date far in the future. A campaign with a distant end date is known as an evergreen campaign because it runs continuously.

  • Define the outcome (award) that the member receives. For this strategy, set the outcome to the "30% Discount" offer created in step 1.

  • Select the event that triggers the outcome. For this strategy, select the “Co-brand Card Activation” event custom event. Apply a restriction to the event that limits a member to a single award for activating the co-branded Mastercard.

  • Define the text sent to the member and the behavior (member action) that triggers the message (the “Co-brand Card Activation” custom event).

  • Launch the campaign. The campaign now "listens" for a "Co-brand Card Activation” custom event. When the campaign detects the event, it triggers the notification email and offers the discount.

Step 4. Campaigns module: Define messaging campaign that informs members about the co-brand card promotion

  • Create a messaging campaign to alert members to the promotion. Set the runtime the month of August. You set the runtime to the entire month so that you can repeat the promotional message several times while the promotion is active.

  • Use the default targeting of all loyalty program members for this campaign.

  • Define the messaging for the campaign. Set up an external message with a scheduled delivery method. Set the delivery date/time to "10am on 8/01/2023". Further indicate that the message should repeat every Monday in August (to remind members that the promotion is still active).

  • Launch the campaign. On October 1, qualifying members receive a text notifying them of the promotion for the co-branded Mastercard.

Analysis

Successful loyalty programs adapt and evolve. It’s crucial to evaluate your program to determine where it is performing well and where it needs to improve. Built on a series of intuitive dashboards, the SessionM Insights reporting & analysis tool enables you to understand program performance by measuring key performance indicators such as customer spend and customer frequency.

This strategy uses an offer. Using Insights, you can examine valuable metrics related to offers.

  • On an individual offer level, you can find information about how many times the offer has been issued, redeemed, expired and revoked.

  • Additionally, Insights provides information on the total offer performance, which includes metrics such as total offers issued over time, redeemed over time, expired over time and current offer redemption rate.

For detailed information on SessionM Insight features and functionality, see About Insights in the SessionM Help Center.

Key takeaways

Leverage "outside spend" transactional data

Co-brand Optimizer integrates the core SessionM loyalty capabilities with the co-branded credit card capabilities provided by the Mastercard Reward System (MRS). Co-brand Optimizer enables outside spend transactional data collected by MRS to be ingested in the SessionM platform. Brands that leverage this enhanced transactional can deliver more personalized experiences and increase customer engagement. Co-brand Optimizer unlocks enhanced use cases for card acquisition, engagement & offers that the merchant can set-up and run directly.

Build stronger relationships through smarter co-brand programs

Offering a co-branded credit card can lead to substantial growth in loyalty. It attracts new members while lowering acquisition costs. Existing members are less likely to turn to your competitors as they know they can reap better benefits and rewards if they make their purchases using your co-branded credit card.