Welcome members to gold tier with bonus points

Exclusivity makes members feel valued. Implementing tier levels in your loyalty program challenges members to reach new levels of spending and engagement. By structuring the rewards to provide more value as members climb tier levels, you promote a sense of exclusivity. Celebrate with your members when they advance to a higher tier. This is a major achievement and you should congratulate members for their loyalty to your brand.

Strategy

Welcome members to the gold tier with bonus points.

Here’s the scenario: To achieve Gold tier status in the Koalla Clothing loyalty program, members must accumulate at least 3,000 points. When members cross this threshold, they earn a bonus of 250 points and gain access to an even more valuable set of incentives. To celebrate their achievement, you want to send them a congratulatory message about the point award and showcase the new incentives available to them. Let’s look at 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:

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

As you follow this workflow, note the use of tier entrance behaviors (rules). Tier entrance rules determine when a member qualifies to advance to a higher tier in a loyalty program. A member must satisfy the conditions in the rules to enter the tier and receive the specified outcomes. Tiered loyalty programs have similar rules governing purchases, events and tier maintenance. In this strategy, the tier entrances rules state that a member must have a balance of at least 3,000 points. When a member reaches that threshold, they receive 250 bonus points and receive an email notification of the award.

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

Step 1. Tiered loyalty program in place

For the following implementation workflow, assume that the Retail tiered loyalty program is already in place. (See How do tiers work in a loyalty program? for a detailed description of the Retail loyalty program.) The point economy has been set up, the tier structure is in place, and the available incentives have been defined for each tier. In this workflow, we’ll define the processing that takes place when a member achieves gold tier status, and then set up the messaging campaign that notifies members of the change in tiers.

Step 2. Economy Rules module: Define outcomes when member enters Gold tier

Configure the outcome for when a member enters the Gold tier in the Koalla loyalty program. In this case, entering the Gold tier triggers a custom event named "entered_gold_tier" and the member is awarded 250 bonus points.

  • Select the loyalty program. Select the Gold tier. Within the Tier Entrance Behavior section, define a "Must have current balance" rule where the value is 3,000 points. Define two outcomes for this rule:

    • Click Edit in the Outcome box. Select Points and add a reward of 250 points.

    • Click Edit in the Outcome box. Select the Trigger Event Outcome tab. Identify the event that triggers the outcome (in this example, entered_gold_tier).

  • Save the rule. Now, when a member enters the Gold tier, the "entered_gold_tier" event is triggered.

Step 3. Campaigns module: Define a messaging campaign that welcomes member to the gold tier

  • Create a messaging campaign. Assign a name to the campaign and set its end date to a date far in the future. (This is an evergreen campaign, which runs continuously for a long time.)

  • Add an external message. Set the delivery method to "Triggered". Within the behavior builder, define a rule based on the "entered_gold_tier" event. Choose the message provider and template for the email. The email is triggered when SessionM detects that a member has qualified for the gold tier.

  • Launch the campaign. The message is sent when a member enters the Gold tier and triggers the "entered_gold_tier" event.

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 your loyalty program performance by measuring key performance indicators such as customer spend and customer frequency.

This strategy uses a tier structure to drive the loyalty program. Using Insights, you can track sales by loyalty tier.

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

Key takeaways

Reward your best members

High-value members drive profitable growth. For many brands, a majority of sales often come from a small, dedicated core of their customer base. Loyal members are significantly more valuable to a brand than new or one-time customers. Strengthen your relationship with these members. Make them feel valued. Give them your best.

Use tiers to motivate increased spending

A tiered loyalty program offers increasingly attractive benefits at higher levels of spending and brand engagement. In tiered loyalty programs, members obtain a specific status level based on how much they engage in behaviors that support your brand (purchasing its products or advocating for it). Structure the tiers in your program so that they compel members to spend more: the higher the tier, the better the rewards.