Top 6 Questions Asked About B2B Loyalty Programs

We see customer loyalty programs everywhere. Most people are familiar with the B2C programs offered by their local coffee shop, grocery store, or clothing boutique, but there is a wide offering in the B2B marketplace as well. No matter which industry our sales team talks to, we are asked many questions about loyalty programs. We have compiled the top six most commonly asked questions to help you understand the steps involved in running an effective and profitable program. 

1. How much work is required to build and operate a loyalty program?

In addition to building a program website, you need to take the time to compile and analyze your data to determine customer purchase habits and design offers that will change customer behavior. You also need to set up a system to track and award points and issue rewards. You might think this is something you can take on yourself, but do you or your team really have time in your schedule today to commit to it? 

Lift & Shift is a full-service loyalty program provider. We personalize your customers' experiences to build a stronger relationship with your brand. We work with you to create relevant customer experiences that encourage repeat sales and drive new buying behavior. Our dedicated account manager works with you to ensure your sales team understands the reward program and understands how to use it to achieve their sales targets for each participating customer. We also provide you with access to a user-friendly sales team support portal where they can access reward program participant data 24/7.

Our programs require less than an hour of your time each month, and we handle the rest.

2. You say you use my sales data to determine the rewards. What kind of data are you talking about?

We securely and efficiently work with your monthly transactional data to administer your reward program and use our custom data analytics to help you unlock the value of that purchase data to identify opportunities or problems that can impact sales growth. The data is sent to us by whichever method works best for you. Usually, it's a single file detailing the unique customer number, date, product, quantity, and price, as well as any other measure that could factor into the analytics, such as web orders. 

We understand the concerns you may have about sharing this data and have the security systems in place, including encryption technologies, firewalls, and antivirus software, to protect it. 

3. We tried a loyalty program at my old company, and it didn't work. How do you know it will work this time?

A loyalty program doesn't simply work on its own; operating a program requires experience, insight, adaptation, and commitment to its success. Often, a company will attempt to build and manage a reward program without understanding what is involved in creating and maintaining a best-in-class program. At Lift & Shift, we implement and operate your program using best practices accumulated over years of running successful programs across multiple industries. To ensure its success, we:

• Design the program to align with your company's sales goals and profit margins. Programs should be designed to encourage growth. As the customer becomes more valuable to you, they earn more rewards.
• Secure sales team buy-in. It is critical that your sales staff be trained on the intricacies of the program and how they can promote it effectively. This is a long-term commitment, as they are in regular contact with participants and can encourage participation in the program by highlighting offers that will trigger purchases. 
• Offer an incentive to join. It doesn't need to be big, but it needs to be enough to persuade a customer or potential customer to sign up and agree to allow for regular contact and promotions.
• Send consistent, informative communication. Once the customer or channel partner joins, they need to know their progress in the earning cycle. The communication provides an emotional connection to your brand, reminding the participant that you care about their experience. Regular email notifications with offers directly connected to their buying habits will grab their attention and encourage increased buying behavior.
• Make participation easy. Since the objective of a loyalty program is increased sales and active engagement with your brand, you need to ensure the customer continues to participate. 
• Offer rewards that program participants want. Lift & Shift offers over 1M+ exciting rewards to maximize the program's value. Customers earn points and redeem, making a stronger connection with your brand. Our vast selection of reward options allows each customer and channel partner to choose what appeals to their interests.

4. How much does a B2B loyalty program cost?

Custom program costs can vary depending on the type, size and scope of the program. The most cost-effective program structure is growth-based, where the majority of the reward program costs are tied to the points issued as participants spend more of their category purchases with you. You set the rate at which you release points. The incremental profits earned from the new sales growth will pay for the program costs many times over. A well-designed program should effectively pay for itself.

5. How long does it take to set up a program? And what’s involved?

Program set up, such as building a customized reward website, reward email template, and collateral materials, can be relatively quick if decisions are made in a timely fashion. Once Lift & Shift has your sign off on the reward structure and reward website copy, it can take as little as eight weeks to bring the program to the launch stage. 

We will also work with you to ensure your sales data is in an acceptable format (this is rarely a problem) and will help in developing your initial bonus offers.

Another important task that should not be overlooked is creating time to train the sales team (inside and field sales) on the program and how it should be used. This can be done remotely or at a sales meeting or trade event.

6. How do you calculate a loyalty program's return on investment?

The key to optimizing a reward program's ROI is to ensure the program contains a significant growth-based reward structure - where program goals are 100% aligned with the sales goals of the organization, and the reward offer values reflect the profit margin associated with the product/service being promoted. 

A Lift & Shift reward program is designed to increase the purchase frequency, transaction size and total dollars spent by each participating customer. Programs can also be used to promote new product launches, cross-category purchasing, product training/knowledge, etc.

Unlike many other sales and marketing tools, reward programs are highly measurable. Program impact can be easily tracked by comparing the changes in purchase behavior of participating customers with non-participants, both before and after the program launch. Reward programs can see an ROI as high as 700% when reward offers are properly structured to reflect sales objectives and profit margins.

For more detail about how to calculate program ROI, read our blog post, The Complete Guide on How to Calculate ROI of Loyalty Programs.