Surprise and delight members with "buy one, get one free" offer

Adding that little extra special something, like a surprise and delight element, to your loyalty program can boost interest, increase spending and promote loyalty. Unexpected perks trigger an emotional response that members want to experience time and time again. Blending surprise and delight elements into your engagement strategy builds a strong bond with your members. They will be more inclined to repeat positive actions in hopes of receiving more benefits.

Strategy

Surprise and delight members with "buy one, get one free" offer.

Here’s the scenario: On July 1, you want to reward members of your program who have demonstrated exceptional loyalty with a "buy one, get one free" offer. You want to target members who have either spent over $1,000 since joining or who have made over 50 purchases. Also, to qualify for this offer, members must have made a purchase in the last 30 days. Let’s see how this is done 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

As you follow this workflow, note how attributes stored in the member profile are used to select the target audience for this campaign. The SessionM platform orchestrates customer data from various sources, such as point-of-sales systems, ecommerce platforms, social media channels, marketing automation platforms, and customer call centers into a single customer profile that contains comprehensive customer profiles. The customer data includes event attributes, demographic data, and calculated metrics.

You can create the target for a campaign by selecting attributes (for example, amount of last purchase) to segment your member base. Audiences can be built based on standard demographic attributes such as age, gender, state, and custom behavioral attributes such as most recent purchase or total amount spent.

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

Step 1. Offer Management module: Define and publish "buy one, get one free" offer

  • Create the “buy one, get one free" offer. Set the offer type to "Buy X Get Y Percent". Set the discount percent as 100%. Set both the buy purchase quantities and get purchase quantities to 1. So while the offer type is technically a discount, the discount percent is set to 100%, making it free. The offer becomes active when the member has two or more items in their cart.

  • Set the promotion to span the month of July. Set the redemption period to 30 days after issuance so that members have 1 month to redeem this offer. Set the frequency restriction to one per year. This acts as a secondary safeguard to prevent members from receiving more than one offer.

  • Select the items and/or categories from your brand's catalog eligible for this offer.

  • Publish the “buy one, get one free” offer. The offer is now active and ready for use in a campaign.

Step 2. Campaigns module: Define messaging campaign to inform members of award

  • Create a messaging campaign to notify members of the "buy one, get one" offer. Set the runtime to match the offer's issuance period defined in the Offer Management module in step 1 (that is, the month of July).

  • Target the campaign using the following attributes stored in the member profile:

    • amount spent over the lifetime of the membership ($1,000 or more)

      OR

    • number of items purchased over the course of the membership (50 or more)

      AND

    • whether the member has made a purchase in the past 30 days

  • Configure the messaging for the campaign. Set the delivery date and time. Select the email provider. Select the template that provides the content of the message. Add the "buy one, get one free" offer created in the Offers Management module in step 1.

  • Launch the campaign. On July 1, qualifying members receive an email notifying them of the "buy one, get one" offer.

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 the offer. On an individual offer level, you can find information about how many times the offer has been issued, redeemed, expired and revoked. Additionally, there is 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. Use this information to understand the performance and financial impact of this offer and campaign.

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

Key takeaways

Show appreciation for your members' loyalty

“Surprise and delight” builds loyalty with members through unexpected gifts or rewards. Who doesn't like a surprise? Showing genuine appreciation for your members creates a powerful connection on an emotional level. Your members are now more likely to continue to purchase from your brand in hopes of receiving more benefits.

Target your audience using behavioral attributes

SessionM orchestrates customer data from point-of-sales systems, ecommerce platforms, social media channels, marketing automation platforms and customer call centers into a single comprehensive customer profile. Audiences can be built based on standard demographic attributes such as age, gender, state, and custom behavioral attributes such as customer lifetime value, risk of churn, and recency, frequency, monetary spend (RFM) metrics.