Loyalty programs still lean heavily on cash rewards, but brands have plans to further develop their programs to include gamification, personalisation, values-based rewards, and cryptocurrencies, a report from Comarch found.
“We should expect companies to develop multi-brand loyalty programs to extend customer lifecycle and increase perceived value in the near future,” the report, based on research from Forrester, found. “Building and running a multi-brand loyalty program, which allows consumers to earn and redeem points from any company that is part of such an initiative, is the most popular approach both in B2C and B2B.”
Multi-brand loyalty programs include two or more companies who build an end-to-end loyalty ecosystem to allow customers to earn points from any company within the ecosystem.
Additionally, most businesses want to integrate their next loyalty platform into their current IT solutions, or they have done so recently.
The nature of loyalty programs is evolving, but the most established programs are B2B, with B2C yet to become a major trend.
“Contrary to what most would assume to be taking place – considering how successful the retail programs by brands like Sephora or Starbucks are – this is the reality of small and mid-size companies. The majority of the programs (57 percent) have been operational for less than two years. In B2B, those programs are almost twice as likely to have been running for more than 2 years (44 percent, compared to 24 percent in B2C),” the report found.
The industry is now on a precipice where the true impact of the B2C loyalty programs on the business environment will be visible, “especially considering how e-commerce, and thus the use of digital media, has skyrocketed in the past two years during the COVID-19 pandemic; and because small/mid-size retailers can now use cloud-based modern loyalty management platform to create programs that will be competitive against large players.”
The latter half of this year might see more companies launch their own programs to keep up. And those programs will likely be integrated into current IT systems.
“This is most likely because creating an interoperable ecosystem of IT solutions can help create more personalised, more prosperous – and more immersive – customer journeys, as well as improve business communications with partners and clients,” the report found.
