Customer Loyalty Management Software: Popular SaaS Solutions
How do you work with customer loyalty? You earn trust by delivering quality service and providing customers with benefits they can’t get anywhere else. Instead of chasing new clients, you could put more effort into maintaining relationships with the old ones. Today, companies can build loyalty from their customers by understanding how to make their lives better and more convenient.
In a post-coronavirus world, it can take a long time to get back to normal operating conditions. Use this time to think about your current customer relationships and how to keep them “healthy.”
Customers are generally people of habit, and many of them are happy to receive additional value for being loyal to their favorite brand. Previously, loyalty programs were primarily used by airlines and chain stores, but the trend has shifted and brands in many industries now offer programs to reward customers for their loyalty.
Loyalty programs are often overlooked, but they can be a vital tool in building trust with customers if implemented wisely. Below are some statistics showing the importance of using loyalty programs.
Loyalty in Numbers
- 87% of Gen Z consumers want to receive bonus points for visiting a brand store, restaurant, etc.
- Gen Z is quite willing to overpay for additional benefits, as reported by 77% of respondents
- 82% of Gen X consumers participate in at least one loyalty program, and 77% of them request their rewards at least once a quarter
From a business perspective, the importance of loyalty programs is pretty obvious! Consider the following statistics to better understand this:
- Mid-size businesses lose 15% of their customers every year (based on the U.S. market research)
- Attracting new customers can cost up to 10 times more than retaining the past ones
- 68% of millennials say they need a loyalty program to keep buying from a brand
- The cumulative loss of businesses due to customer churn is estimated at a staggering $1.6 trillion a year
- 54% of consumers continue to buy from a brand if it offers bonuses or loyalty points ¹
Given this, it should come as no surprise that the loyalty management market is likely to grow at a phenomenal 23.3% per year, and its value is projected to reach $9.28 billion in 2024 against $2.617 billion in 2018. ²
Reward systems are one of the most flexible and efficient ways for a brand to interact with users. Incentives for activity, cashback for purchases, rewards for reviews, personal discounts, premium functionality, special offers and bonuses, reputation systems, and much more.
While studying the applications, I came across some popular SaaS solutions in loyalty management used by global brands. Here are my findings.
Best-In-Class Loyalty Management Software
Oracle CrowdTwist
CrowdTwist is a cloud-based customer loyalty management platform. The service allows brands to apply an individual approach to their customers and create loyalty incentive programs using the collected behavioral data.
CrowdTwist allows you to track a variety of spending behaviors and customer habits, including reading articles, making purchases, writing reviews, referring friends, and more.
Built-in predictive analytics automatically collects customer data and transforms that data to deliver personalized, targeted content and rewards to maximize conversions.
Website: https://www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/products/loyalty-marketing
Key features:
- Omni-channel
- Customer behavior data-driven
- Flexible customization of brand loyalty programs
- Segmentation and personalization
- Rewards management
- Reporting and analytics
SAP
SAP is a full-featured CRM platform that suits the needs of the vast majority of businesses and offers an advanced customer loyalty and reward management module, among other things. SAP is an enterprise-level, high-tech software — no more, no less.
Website: https://www.sap.com/products/crm/marketing.html
Key features:
- SAP consulting and expertise on the development and implementation of loyalty programs
- Customer loyalty program management through web channels, interaction centers, and social media
- Loyalty points and reward accounts management
- Access to cross-brand collaboration within the platform allowing for a wide range of goods and services to be used in loyalty programs
Annex Cloud
The Annex Cloud marketing platform provides solutions for loyalty management, referral marketing, and services for managing user-generated content. Many well-known brands are using this platform, including Hewlett-Packard, Bed Bath & Beyond, GH Bass, Olympus, and VF Corp.
Website: https://www.annexcloud.com
Key features:
- Omni-channel
- Collection of customer behavioral characteristics
- Management of paid memberships, club loyalty
- Loyalty campaign gamification
- Receipt-scanning service with rewards accrual
Epsilon
PeopleCloud Loyalty is one of the most advanced and scalable cloud-based loyalty management platforms in the industry. Epsilon is positioning its product equally suitable for brands with high demands for software and for small companies, obviously trying to capture the entire market both in the enterprise sector and in the small–medium business area.
Website: https://us.epsilon.com/epsilon-peoplecloud-overview/loyalty
Key features:
- Client ID profiles (based on the data collected both on- and off-line)
- Personal rewards offered based on real-time data
- Built-in integration with other Epsilon products
- Epsilon consulting and expertise on the development and implementation of loyalty programs
- Scalability and high performance
Clarus Commerce
Clarus Commerce is a hybrid loyalty management solution provider. The company develops, implements, maintains, and optimizes premium loyalty programs, investing its own resources while providing the brand with a platform for managing the developed program.
Website: https://www.claruscommerce.com
Key features:
- Clarus Commerce consulting and expertise on development and implementation
- Personalized reward programs
- Flexible and user-friendly integration of the platform into the brand’s IT infrastructure
- Reports, analytics, and 24/7 support
Brierley
LoyaltyOnDemand® is Brierley’s intuitive loyalty management platform. It represents an ever-evolving, powerful tool in customer loyalty technologies, providing access to novel features in a bid to satisfy all loyalty management demands that modern brands could possibly have.
Website: https://www.brierley.com/loyalty-on-demand-new
Key features:
- Flexible management of user profiles
- Loyalty currency management (expenses, balances)
- Multi-currency loyalty programs
- Reward customization
- Physical and digital product catalogs
- Customer rewards for purchases or engagement
Square
The service is well suited for integration with a physical point-of-sale or an online store. A simple, convenient, and sleek service with monthly payments depending on the pricing plan.
Website: https://squareup.com/us/en/software/loyalty
Key features:
- Easy to control
- Loyalty programs customization
- Rewards for visits, purchase amount, number of purchased goods
- Custom name for the reward point
- SMS or print notifications
Open Loyalty
Open Loyalty is a cloud-based loyalty and reward management platform aimed at retail and e-commerce stores. The app comes with an admin panel that allows users to create customer profiles and track information based on purchase history and patterns. The app also helps administrators define different types of rewards, set prices, and target customers.
Website: https://www.openloyalty.io
Key features:
- Easy to manage and scale
- Easy and fast to integrate
- Loyalty programs customization
- Integration with third-party platforms such as MailChimp or Magento
Goody
Goody provides a multi-functional platform that combines loyalty management, marketing, and CRM tools. The service is used by some major brands.
Website: https://goodyhq.com
Key features:
- Easily customizable loyalty points management system
- Segmentation of the customer base
- Analytics, reports, support
- Third-party integrations
Loopy Loyalty
Loopy Loyalty positions itself as a small-business platform, offering a set of basic tools for creating, implementing, and managing a loyalty program.
Website: https://loopyloyalty.com
Key features:
- Easy to use
- Visual customization of the digital loyalty card
- Geo-based notification of clients
- QR rewards
- Analytics, reports, support
To Sum Up
Summarizing the advantages of loyalty management platforms, we can highlight the following list of requirements that are imposed on their developers and are considered important in the implementation of these solutions:
- The platforms need to have flexible, highly customizable brand reward structures
- Offer unique ways to enable customers to earn and spend loyalty points
- Provide multi-channel communication with clients
- Have the ability to segment the client base according to various criteria and the ability to offer real-time, topic-specific rewards
- Have easy and simple sign-up for clients and be otherwise user-friendly
- Have the ability to quickly scale
- Have the ability to integrate with external services
- Have a high level of data security
- Possess customer notification tools to increase engagement
- Have the ability to gamify reward mechanics
- Provide data analytics tools and support
As a bonus,
Pinpon
Pinpon is a rewards platform that helps brands grow their communities by improving loyalty and amplifying virality.
Brand’s customers take part in promo campaigns without leaving their favorite social media and get rewards that can be exchanged for exclusive prizes, perks, and gifts. It’s as easy as doing a poll in an Instagram story.
With Pinpon, the brand can:
- Drive omni-channel engagement with its community to boost customer loyalty
- Use various viral interaction formats: quizzes, polls, giveaways, feedback, voting
- Have a branded name for the reward point
- Apply blockchain processing, i.e., reward points cannot be faked
- Obtain ease of tracking, reward usage analytics, deep reporting, and engagement-based user rankings
- Receive consulting at all stages while the campaign is running
To become an early adopter, join the waitlist here: https://www.pinpon.io/brands.
Download the Pinpon presentation!
Bottom Line
- The use of loyalty programs by brands is now more important than ever
- Automation leads to better customer interactions and simplifies administration
- Customers today expect more personalization
- Omni-channel communications help brands fill the generation gap
- Marketing departments need clear and detailed reporting
- The rise of e-commerce makes loyalty programs a marketing must-have
- Loyalty program members want to receive rewards that match their habits, hobbies, and lifestyle
- Loyalty programs are increasingly gamified
References
- https://www.devteam.space/blog/top-10-loyalty-apps
- Loyalty Management Market — Growth, Trends, & Forecasts (2019–2024) https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/loyalty-management-market
- Oracle, The Marketer’s Guide to Brand Loyalty, April 2020 https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/dc/em/the-marketer-guide-brand-loyalty.pdf
- Oracle, Loyalty Cloud Brochure https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/oracle-loyalty-cloud-brochure.pdf
