Award triple points for purchase of specific items made with co-branded Mastercard

Today's consumers look for products and services that simplify their lives. They want a streamlined shopping experience that automatically integrates loyalty program activities. Redeeming offers and earning points should be transparent and unobtrusive, and not require additional steps. As you make it easier for members to participate in your loyalty program, they will reward you with increased engagement and spending.

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 with not only 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 you can then leverage for personalized offers.

Strategy

Award triple points for purchasing specific items from the Koalla Retail catalog using a co-branded Mastercard.

Here are the specifics: Koalla Retail wants to provide an extra incentive for its loyalty program members to use its co-branded Mastercard. For the back-to-school season, Koalla launches a promotion where members earn triple points when they purchase a Samsung tablet using Koalla's co-branded Mastercard during the months of August and September. Let’s look at how to implement this strategy 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:

Loyalty Programs

  • Point banking
  • Rewards for high value behaviors, advocacy and spend
  • Status and tiering rules plus outcomes
  • Benefits management with frictionless redemption
  • Extensive tracking on point liabilities

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. Economy Rules module: Existing loyalty program in place

For the following implementation workflow, assume that the Koalla Retail tiered loyalty program is in place. (See How do tiers work in a loyalty program? for a description of the Koalla Retail loyalty program.) The point economy has been set up, a 3-tier structure is in place, and rules and incentives have been defined for each tier. A purchase rule assigned to each tier awards 1 point for each dollar spent, regardless of where the purchase is made or how it is paid for.

Step 2. Campaigns module: Define promotional campaign based on purchase award

Define a promotional campaign that features a purchase rule that awards triple points for the purchase of a Samsung tablet made with the co-branded Mastercard during the months of August and September.

  • Select the Campaigns module and create a promotional campaign.

  • Set the runtime to begin on the first day of August and end on the last day of September.

  • Use the default targeting of all loyalty program members.

  • Define the behavior for the campaign. Define a purchase rule that only applies to purchases made with the co-brand Mastercard and the specified SKUs for Samsung tablets. Set the outcome to 2 points for every dollar spent. (Note that this purchase rules works in conjunction with the purchase rule defined in the tier that awards 1 point for every dollar spent. Combined, the rules award 3 points for every dollar spent on co-brand Mastercard purchases of Samsung tablets.)

  • Launch the campaign. During August and September, SessionM "listens" for purchases of Samsung tablets made with the co-branded Mastercard card. When a qualifying purchase occurs, SessionM awards triple points for each dollar spent.

Step 3. Campaigns module: Define messaging campaign that informs members about promotion

Define a messaging campaign that informs members of the back to school promotion.

  • Select the Campaigns module and create a messaging campaign.

  • Set its runtime to encapsulate the message send time. That is, set the start date/time before the time that the message is sent (for example, the campaign start time is 8/01/2023 12:00 am). Similarly, set the end date/time after the time that the message is sent (for example, 8/01/2023 11:59pm).

  • Use the default targeting of all loyalty program members.

  • Define the messaging for the campaign. Set up a text message with a scheduled delivery method. Set the delivery date/time to "10am on 8/01/2023". Identify the SMS provider. Write the content for the text.

  • Launch the campaign. A text announcing the promotion is sent to all loyalty program members at the indicated time.

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 features payment types. Using the Transactions tab in Insights, you can track sales and transaction counts by payment type.

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

Key takeaways

Make loyalty activities a seamless extension of shopping

Co-branded credit cards provide 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 with not only 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 you can then leverage for personalized offers.

Build stronger relationships through smarter co-brand programs

Having 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.