Modern Loyalty Architectures with Salesforce

Antonio Figueiredo

Published in

Salesforce Architects

5 min readOct 26, 2021

Image of a graph increasing with a rocket.

The true purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.

— Peter Drucker

As loyalty programs have evolved from cards to today’s mobile-first programs, it has become increasingly clear that points-based programs don’t really work anymore. The companies that recognize this are moving beyond points and miles into experiential loyalty programs.

Companies that shift their loyalty strategies to deliver more convenient, seamless customer experiences drive more value to their members. Today, customers want to feel valued by the companies they spend their money with. Customers expect to enjoy a personalized experience at each step of the customer journey, but many loyalty programs today offer little differentiation across industries when it comes to perks, and the organizations that offer these programs are largely failing to truly personalize their loyalty offers.

What is loyalty?

Loyalty programs help businesses engage their customers with unique experiences that strengthen their relationships and ultimately lead to lasting customer loyalty. Effective loyalty programs elevate the overall customer experience.

These programs are important, since earning loyalty equates to higher sales, higher profits, and most importantly, brand affinity. In fact, 91% of customers say they’re more likely to make a repeat purchase after a positive experience, according to Salesforce’s 2020 State of the Connected Customer report.

Stat 52% of customers expect offers to always be personalized

Traditionally, customers have joined loyalty programs with the lure of earning points, coupons, or other rewards. These rewards of the past were synonymous with spend-driven models that focused on earn-and-burn monetary benefits. This model, however, isn’t truly effective at keeping customers coming back because it does not build an emotional and meaningful connection between the brand and the customer. True loyalty is an outcome of a consistent and personalized customer experience.

Although the methods for building loyalty vary, it’s important to keep a broad mindset when considering the elements of the membership experience.

Loyalty starts with trust

Loyalty is achieved in two ways: by delivering a holistic experience for the customer and by building trust with the customer. Earning loyalty takes time because the customer has many options every time they make a purchase. Every touchpoint between the company and the customer is a chance to build loyalty and strengthen the relationship.

You can make your customers feel heard by better understanding them. Demonstrate that you’re leveraging the data they are voluntarily sharing to make their experience better. This builds trust and provides value for the customer outside of a one-size-fits-all discount or point allocation. The success of any loyalty program depends upon the quality of the customer experience and trust.

Retention versus loyalty: What’s the difference?

Let’s talk customer retention. One of the most important questions in business is, “How do I attract new customers?” But what about after the initial interest? Peter Drucker said it best: “The true purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.”

Businesses typically focus on attracting and retaining new customers, but the focus needs to expand beyond rational loyalty to emotional and experiential loyalty. With today’s fast-paced lifestyle, “showing up” at any business’s online presence is easy, but leaving is as simple as a single click. And regardless of industry, every business wants to keep customers coming back:

The restaurant owner wants people making dinner reservations and returning for subsequent reservations.
The shop owner wants increased foot traffic and repeat purchases.
A hotel brand wants people to make the brand their first choice when booking a stay.

A retained customer is only considered a retained customer until they make their next purchase. They always have a choice when shopping and just because they chose your brand this time doesn’t mean they’ll choose it again in the future.

A loyal customer, in contrast, chooses your business over and over, regardless of whether you’re offering a voucher or a promotion. Loyalty is more than repeat business.

A loyal customer has confidence in the brand, built by positive customer experiences throughout their relationship with it. A loyal customer not only chooses your brand consistently, but they also influence other customers to choose your brand. Loyalty goes beyond spending money — loyal customers vouch for you and serve as advocates for your business.

It’s time to reimagine loyalty management

A modern loyalty architecture is designed to optimize the loyalty management processes, increase engagement, and provide a better customer experience by applying data-driven insights about the customers in the moment. This enables timely and personalized rewards and benefits. The capability map shown here illustrates how you can enable the four main components of a modern loyalty management architecture:

Trust: Create trust by showing customers that you’re using a single source of truth for their data to create a better experience. Be transparent about how you’re using the data collected from the loyalty program.
Emotional connection and consistency: Modern loyalty is the outcome of a personalized and consistent customer experience with a brand. Creating a personalized experience across the entire customer journey with Interaction Studio and Social Studio unlocks engagement and creates an emotional connection with the brand. Check out this blog post to learn how calculating Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) as a leading indicator, or a prediction for future buying, enables brands to better allocate marketing dollars to their best customers and reward their loyalty.
Personalization: Trust results in customers sharing personal information, like purchase history, interests, and preferences in exchange for better curated and personalized experiences. Salesforce CDP captures, unifies, and activates your audience data so you can deliver personalized experiences across your engagement channels.
AI-driven insights: Intelligent loyalty means anticipating customer behavior with AI and proactively engaging with customers, especially those at risk for disengagement. Target these customers with promotion recommendations and personalized rewards to keep them engaged. Employ automation where possible to streamline the process and remove manual steps to meet customers where they are and strengthen the relationship.

Getting started

Getting your loyalty management program off the ground is now even easier with the new loyalty management resources available on the Architect Digital Home for retail, manufacturing, and travel and hospitality industries, as well as for general loyalty management. The resources below are based on best practices from successful Salesforce implementations across geographies and industries.

The capability maps detail the big-picture solution with loyalty management business capabilities powered by Salesforce Customer 360. The solution architectures detail the products and technology directly involved in loyalty management solutions for each industry as well as the relationships between systems. The process diagrams detail sample design patterns with the time-based interactions involved in the end-to-end flow of information required to facilitate a loyalty management process.

Each resource is available for download or you can open them in Lucidchart to start extending them for your own solution.