PointLoyalty - loyalty programs online

Being on a conference in a place where usually spend vacation time…
One of the local companies demonstrated an interesting technical solution for solving next problem of internet shops:

Some company announce that it is ready to sell certain product at X price instead of standard Y – if the whole stock of N product items will be bought at the same time.

Then the customer is involved into getting N buyers of the product for this company, not only the company itself.
Of course, the program can be much more complex – the price can depend on the date, one can define a limit for price decline, there can be various options to handle purchase refusals, but the essence is this: “Hey, customer, let’s get those N other buyers and you will get the product cheaper”.

What will happen if the internet connection will be lost? This is one of most frequent questions we hear from our customers who are interested in our online product version.
Our answer – nothing bad will happen. It is of course not very good that customer transactions will not be processed immediately but we believe that it is not fatal for the business – the calculations will take place later. When network connection will get restored – transactions need to be sent once again (this moment must be considered during the integration process).
We can see 3 categories of system robustness according associated costs:
- No additional integration – transactions data is getting lost when the there is no connection to internet
- Keep customer transactions and send them once internet connection is restored.
- Allocate backup internet connection channel – absolute robustness.

How expensive is the loyalty program and how fast it is possible to start it?

Marketing forums novice members always ask such a question and never get a straight answer. This happens because it is impossible to give answer not asking in turn – what exactly you plan to do?
Here are some issues you need to take into account.
Time and human resources must be spent on:
- study previous experience,
- choosing strategy,
- training personnel,
- adopt customer care procedures,
- order, install and setup support software,
- educate employees to use the software,
- establish channels for rewarding customers,
- etc

Further it depends on you.
If your company is a big clumsy monster – you’ll stuck in months of official red tape. If your company is fast and mobile – everything is not that ugly.
It is easier to establish such programs for companies working in online business sphere.
Their advantages are mobility, technically advanced personnel and high initial level of business automation.

When our solution is used as a technical platform for creating bonus points based loyalty programs – pilot version of the system can be launched within one week timeframe.

Us usual – from our email exchange:
Pay attention that we DO NOT provide full scale trainings on loyalty programs organization for your particular business. We assume you have marketing people responsible for business development or you use services from according consulting companies. We can only give some hints on what to start with, or point out some common marketing issues besides full technical support on establishing loyalty system in your organization.
So, in our trainings we concentrate on all technical issues in using bonus programs, details of PointLoyalty Manager functioning and some initial steps of overall organization of customer rewards system in your company. In any case if we encounter marketing issues which go beyond our competency we will recommend marketing specialists for you.

We have discovered recently an interesting view on advantages of using SaaS software - see article «SaaS v. on-premises Software: Which One is More Green?».
The author claims (with numbers and calculations) that using SaaS solutions in your business help you reduce global energy consumption.
We never thought about this aspect of on-demand computing but we found it encouraging – we do useful things in terms of our global environment protection!

Talking to the audience, different from the representatives of trading companies, at best we face with the difference in terminology when discussing the customer rewards systems. In worst case we face with the initial lack of understanding of why the company needs to encourage and keep its customers.

Terminology
If the representatives of trading organizations set the problem of loyalty programs creation and use exactly this term, then in other areas the given terminology is not established. Bonus systems, systems of prize points calculation, encouragement systems, systems of customers rewards…..Everything, but not the loyalty programs; although, as we have mentioned before, the difference in terminology doesn’t affect the essence of creation of such programs.

Usage
If the representatives of trading organizations understand the importance of rewards systems’ creation, then for the owners of other business trends the necessity of such a system is not initially obvious. Thus, acquaintance with our product will help not only to meet the exciting needs, but also to form the specific market - at least you have something new to offer to your customers.

In general
Always and in every scheme:
- We have a customer
- We have the rules of his/her encouragement
- We have a scheme of bonus calculation according to a set rules.

Thereby, if you are interested in creation of your customer’s rewards system – you can be sure that our system is created for you. Well, you can try at least And do not be confused by the unusual terminology, you can always use your own when designing the individual templates and rules.
For all questions on possibility to use our application for your Company, please, contact the support service - support@pointloyalty.com

- We want to remind to all our customers and those who just make themselves familiar with PointLoyalty system – please contact our technical support team if you have any questions.
- We can also arrange a personal presentation using the phone or Skype. Please pay attention that such consulting is free of charge and does not mean you to subscribe for advanced support.

In books on marketing it is possible to find a lot of materials why bonus points are better then discounts. There are also many comments from customer loyalty experts on according internet web sites. But our clients ask us quite often – why do you offer only bonus points system, we want to get a flexible enough discounts.
For PointLoyalty Manager it is absolutely not relevant how you use calculated bonus points. You can name them “calculated discounts” and redeem them as you want. If you are working with PointLoyalty Manager in online mode you can use bonus points to reduce total amount of each customer’s receipt.
Everything depends on rules you define in the system.

We refined PointLoyalty Manager integration system. Clients can send their data using SSL channels to calculate bonus points earned by their customers.
PointLoyalty REST API remains unchanged. To utilize SSL connections one needs to access REST resources using according protocol:
- HTTP Demo Resource - http://www.pointloyalty.com/wl/rest/demo?login={name:demo, password:demo}&!output-type=XML
- SSL Demo Resource - https://www.pointloyalty.com/wl/rest/demo?login={name:demo, password:demo}&!output-type=XML

Pay attention that if you are using web browsers for viewing demonstration REST resources you need to manually add our website to the list of SSL allowed sites.

Client libraries (Java and PHP) were refactored to support SSL connections (Beta release issued). Take the latest version of client libraries from our site if necessary.

Why integration with our solution is profitable?
If you are a supplier of some software (traditional or SaaS) such as sales tracking system or a e-commerce support software – integration with our product will be very useful to you.
You will get an additional functionality in your product without significant efforts from your side. Your customers will be able to charge bonus points for their clients’ actions and create advanced loyalty programs.

Here are the advantages of integration with our product:
- Additional functionality
When you look for your competitors – you can often find that there is much similarity in offered products. Integration with a customer rewards system “PointLoyalty Manger” will help you to stand out against a background and enhance functionality of your product. Integration is simple and does not require much effort from your side.

- Additional profit
You can make this integration module optional and charge additionally for enabling it. You can charge on subscription base, on amount of established reward programs, on amount of processed transactions, etc

- Cutting costs
In essence we propose you to outsource important but non-core part of your system. This way you don’t need to support this part, spend resources on its further development, bugfixing, etc.

On all integration issues http://www.pointloyalty.com/web20.html - please contact technical support of PoinLoyalty company.