Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Complex offer rules

Monday, December 28th, 2009

We have met various offer rules while developing software for loyalty programs management.
Designing our system we wanted it to support any kinds of bonus calculation rules depending on the current purchase and the history of previous customer behavior. Sometimes people say they don’t need such universal approach and their rules are simple and straightforward. We tried to recall the most complicated rule we had to support according to customer requirements:

Assign N% from purchase sum as bonus points
- if customer is from category “X”
- if the purchased item belongs to subcategories “A” and “B” (2 rules in fact)
- if the purchase is made during certain timeframe
- if there were purchases of goods from “Z” category (during certain timeframe)
- the sum of previous purchases were less then M (during certain timeframe)

And only if all of these conditions are met we add N% to customer’s account.

We don’t actually know how such complex rule was explained to customers - this is not our business – at present time we support even more complex rules. As to questions on whether to use complex rules – the client is always right :)

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Administrator Console

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

From time to time we get requests to add administrator console to have control over multiple clients having their own loyalty programs, i.e. to add master-administrator mode.
At this time we think there is a better way to handle such problem. If you want to act as a loyalty program operator – you can create multiple individual loyalty offers for your partners using a single account in the system.
In this case you will be able to create offers with separate settings for each partner (action attributes, etc) and will be able to get reports for each partner separately and combined reports for all partners.
With this scheme only you can create loyalty offers, but that’s what you need if you want to control the process of creating partner loyalty offers.
If you need that your partners could create loyalty offers by themselves and you only get reports on every partner – make several accounts (one for each partner). The task of creating additional reports we will perform as a customization services.
In case of local installation of PointLoyalty Manager on your servers you will have access to all system data and will not experience such problems at all.
Please contact our sales department and we will be able to find convenient solution for your needs sales@pointloyalty.com.

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Informing your loyalty program members directly on your web site

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

We already described how to place «Member Console» widget on your Company web site – please see an example.
We also wrote about using our utility for tuning the application appearance (colors, backgrounds, fonts) – see widget design customization.
To make things easier we put our widget with custom design settings on external website as an example – please see it here.
More information on the Member Console you can get on description page.
Once you have questions – consult our support – support@pointloyalty.com.

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Member Console integration

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

How to place Member Console directly on your website? Simple javascript example is described in «Javascript Flash Player detection and embed script» article.

Here is a code sample:

<html>
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/swfobject_source.js">
</script>

<div id="flashcontent">
This text is replaced by the Flash movie.
</div>


<script type="text/javascript">
var so =
new SWFObject(
"http://www.pointloyalty.com/module/member.swf?client-name=test&demo=true",
"mymovie", "1024", "768","8", "#336699");
so.write("flashcontent");
</script>
<html>

You can create HTML file, copy the sample code above and run it locally or on your application server. Pay attention that design issues are not covered in the sample.
To display the data for particular member you need to supply username and password of this member when invoking “Member Console” widget.

“http://www.pointloyalty.com/module/member.swf?name=username&pswd=password“

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Posted in PointLoyalty Member Console, Uncategorized, integration, new features | 3 Comments »

Loyalty – definitions

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

After taking part in discussions on forums it appeared that people have different understanding of ‘loyalty’ term. Here we try to list some of definitions

Customer loyalty can be defined as a positive attitude of customer towards a product, brand, retail shop, service, etc

Loyalty – unresponsiveness to offers from competitors

Loyalty – readiness to sacrifice something in order to continue relationships. If there is no readiness to sacrifice – there is no loyalty. Loyal employee is ready to sacrifice his time or extra efforts on workplace. Loyal customer is ready to spend some time in queues or pay little bit extra, etc. If one is going to make some recurring purchase because of the good price – he is only practical in his decisions, but not loyal. If there is no readiness to sacrifice - there is no loyalty.

Loyalty – is a trust of a regular client + his trust ‘on credit’ (we he can excuse some discomfort in order to continue cooperation). So, the level of loyalty = level of trust on credit.
Meaning of loyalty – Company intentionally invests in its buyers trying to minimize risks from its own errors, which can influence company’s market position.

Loyalty of a customer (supplier) – customer (supplier) readiness to take certain damage to continue business relations.

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Loyalty on Demand

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Software itself and approaches to work processes automation are changing every year. Nowadays, additionally to traditional custom software development and deployment of existing automation systems it is possible to add a new type – renting software.

Usual terms used to describe software rent:
SaaS – Software-as-a-Service
SoD - Software-on-Demand

There are evident benefits for the customer: making project start cheaper, payment for real usage, reducing costs and resources required for installation and support, predictable schedule of payments, etc.

This approach is also rational for software vendors since it allows penetrating new markets easier. On a global scale SaaS is not a new thing and it is late to speak how this approach revolutionizes the industry, but it is too early to say it became commonplace.

At current time the crisis will probably push some companies to use SoD. It is hard to live without further automation and the path for cutting costs will force companies to search for new solutions. We expand our services exactly in this direction. So, if you think about ‘loyalty on demand’ solutions, you are probably our future client.

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Coalition loyalty programs

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

The more closely we look at coalition loyalty programs the less attractive they appear for member companies. It often looks like the brand of the program operator is advertised much more then the business of participating company. Besides, business offers of any company are getting lost in the long list of various offers from other coalition members and a customer will not associate the company brand with the bonus offer.

If some things are hard to explain it is easier to declare them an axiom. One of such axioms sounds like: “Small companies can only take part in coalition loyalty programs”. The main reason for this is a high cost of rolling out their own loyalty solutions. In our opinion the costs of launching a company own loyalty program is often overestimated.

We don’t want to say then any coalition loyalty program is a mistake. If you can consciously choose a small number of partners then you can gain significant benefits from cooperation, but if the program unites any firm of any kind of business then it makes no sense to join such program.

Here are a list of drawbacks of coalition programs getting any partner without selection:
- focus on coalition program brand, not the partner
- linking of reward program to partner brand is lost in customer mind
- bad or unclear organization of rewards

Such programs aim more to somewhat reckless people, not the loyal customers, but because of usually small rewards even this passion quickly disappears. Don’t forget the saying: “if you want something done right do it yourself”.

We are not arguing for hiring an army of programmers, marketing people, etc. It is sometimes enough to understand whether the coalition is really needed and what partners you want to cooperate and why. Please also consider that creating your own loyalty program is not that expensive nowadays.

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We are searching partners for cooperation!

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

We are searching partners for cooperation – all IT and marketing consulting companies and individuals working on automation of marketing solutions.
Our goal:
- Make PointLoyalty Manager product used as a main system for organizing bonus points calculations.
Your interest:
- Guaranteed share of local installation cost and support fee.
- Potential to get additional orders on integrating the product with client’s software
- Consulting on using the system and consulting on common customer loyalty programs’ issues
- Attracting more customers by offering a new product as our official partner.

For details on partnership agreements, education issues, etc please contact sales@pointloyalty.com.

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About this blog

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

With this record we open a series of posts about customer loyalty programs.

We are going to collect all related information and give our own view on the problem of building effective bonus loyalty programs and different aspects of their technical implementation.

We have our own solution for managing loyalty programs - you can take a look at www.pointloyalty.com

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