Reward members who share posts on social media

While the primary goal of your loyalty program is to grow revenue, purchasing products is not the only way that consumers add value to your brand. Social media activities such as sharing posts and making referrals increase your brand's visibility, which also contributes value. Make it a part of your loyalty strategy to identify members who act as brand advocates and reward them. Don't limit rewards to spending only - reward engagement as well.

Strategy

Reward loyalty program members who share post on social media with points.

Here's the scenario: As part of its ongoing loyalty program, Koalla Retail awards 50 points to members who engage in social media activities that promote its brand. For example, members receive 50 points for sharing Koalla product posts.

Koalla is preparing to release a new line of sports ware and plans to boost its social media presence to support the release. Koalla wants to enlist its loyalty members to promote the new release as well. So Koalla launches a campaign that awards members double points during the months of July and August for sharing posts on social media. Let's see how this is done in SessionM.

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 that this strategy uses two different methods to reward members for sharing posts:

  • tier event rules in tiered hierarchies. A tier event rule runs when a member in that tier performs a designated event. For example, the “profile_complete” event presents a member who has filled out the SessionM profile with an offer. Each tier level can have its own set of rules. Tier rules are always in effect. See for more information.

  • event-based behaviors in promotional campaigns. A behavior refers to the actions that you want members to perform. Behaviors can be simple (buy a coffee) or more complex (buy a coffee and a scone, muffin or bagel during the morning hours at a new store in Boise). In a promotional campaign, behaviors are actions performed by a member that trigger the presentation of an offer or an award to a member. See What is a behavior in a SessionM campaign? for more information.

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: Tiered loyalty program in place

Assume that the Koalla Retail tiered loyalty program is in place. (See How do tiers work in a loyalty program? for a description of this program.) The point economy has been set up, the tier structure is in place, and rules and incentives have been defined for each tier. Specifically, a tier event rule has been defined in each tier that awards 50 points for sharing a social post. This rule leverages the "post_shared" custom event to detect when members share a post. See About custom events for more information.

In the remainder of this workflow, we’ll set up a promotional campaign that handles the point awards and a messaging campaign that informs members of the promotion.

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

Define a promotional campaign that features a rule that awards double points for sharing posts during the months of July and August.

  • Select the Campaigns module and create a promotional campaign.

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

  • Use the default targeting of all loyalty program members.

  • Define the campaign behavior. Define a rule triggered when a member shares a social post. Set the outcome to an award of 50 points. (Note that this rules works in conjunction with the tier event rule that awards 50 points for a shared post. Combined, the rules award 100 points.)

  • Launch the campaign. SessionM "listens" for shared posts and awards 100 points.

Step 3. Campaigns module: Create a messaging campaign

  • Create a messaging campaign to alert targeted members to the promotion. Set the runtime the months of July and August so that you can repeat the promotional message several times while the promotion is active.

  • Use the default targeting of all loyalty program members.

  • Define the messaging for the campaign. Set up an external message with a scheduled delivery method. Set the delivery date/time to "10am on 7/01/2023". Further indicate that the message should repeat every Tuesday in (to remind members that the promotion is still active).

  • Launch the campaign. The SessionM platform emails members at the indicated message send times.

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 a point reward to incentive sharing posts on social media. Using the Incentives tab in Insights, you can compare high-level KPIs across all tiers for a more granular breakdown of information. Performance for each tier can be analyzed with the points status counts.

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

Key takeaways

Reward engagement, rather than simply spending

Encourage your loyalty members to promote your brand on social media. The impact of members sharing messaging such as news and offers with their families and friends is huge. Reward engagement: When loyalty members advocate for your brand, give them a reward or special benefit (in addition to a nice thank you). Make members feel connected so that they continue to promote your brand on social media.

Rules can reside in loyalty program tiers and in campaigns

Rules can reside in loyalty program tiers and in both promotional and messaging campaigns. Rules located in tiers are always in effect. Rules (behaviors) located in campaigns are in effect for the duration of the campaign. This strategy demonstrated the use of rules in tiers and in promotional campaigns.