Loyalty programs in a mobile app

We can find a lot of examples of great use cases that work well in the mobile app medium. We’re going to present one from a client of ours in the retail industry that illustrates the benefits of connecting the offline and online worlds together. 

How does a loyalty program in a mobile app work? 

The main assumption of this particular program is to get one point for every unit of currency spent. Every customer using this app is able to check the history of points awarded and monitor current levels. After reaching a certain number of points, it is possible to spend them on shopping or use them in the form of vouchers and discounts.

Also, in addition to simply assigning points for money spent, we also offer personalized promotions. So how does it work?

They program is dedicated to specific users who meet certain criteria. To do this, we create the relevant user segments in Synerise and we direct the promotions we created to them. It can be, for example, a discount for people who have made purchases in the last 7 days for a specific amount of money, or a discount for people who added a product in the application to the basket but did not buy it, etc.

It is worth mentioning that the points are counted based on our analytics, which are updated in the real time, so we can be sure that the amount of money is always up-to-date, even if the customer spends some points for shopping or activates a promotion, everything works in milliseconds.  

Synerise gives users the opportunity not only to create basic promotions inside the app, but also to create more advanced promotions that connect the online and offline words. Let’s look at one of the latest inspiring examples.

An app to promote the app...  

Our client decided to connect the online and offline activities in a campaign available to their mobile app users. The main goal was to engage users and encourage new users to download and register the mobile app. 

The idea was that the customers could buy a product in an offline store with a promotional code on attached. This code could be registered in the mobile app and used as a voucher for online shopping.  

This is a great example of an omnichannel loyalty campaign that connects two different shopping touchpoints and encourages people to take some kind of action to gain extra benefits. It’s a good way to boost engagement and to increase the number of mobile app downloads.

How to create the whole process of voucher registration

In this kind of campaign, there are some very important requirements we have to meet in order to make it work. Otherwise, errors may occur that will compromise the effectiveness of the campaign.  

In this case, everything was based on the automation process, which help us to avoid any errors on the way.

First, we created a pool of a vouchers used on products in the store to Synerise in order to have a list of all valid vouchers. Every time users registered a voucher in the application, the entire process was automated.

FIRST CHECK - if the user ever previously received points from this promotion:

• If yes; then generate a proper event and send the user a mobile push: Sorry but you have already registered for this promotion
• If not; proceed further

SECOND CHECK - if the voucher the user registered is valid or not. To do this it should be found in the pool.

• If not; In that case, you can send the mobile push with the information: The voucher is not valid
• If yes; proceed further

THIRD CHECK - if this particular client ever registered this voucher before. Because we want to avoid a situation where the user tries to use the same voucher more than once. So, the system checks if this particular voucher is in our blacklist or not;

• If yes; we end the automation and we send a mobile push: Sorry but this voucher has already been used.
• If not; proceed further

Then, finally, the app can give the user the proper amount of points to use to make a purchase, and send a dynamic content campaign with information that: The voucher is valid and points have been added to your account

Also, automatically at the end of this process, this voucher is added to the blacklist so it cannot be used again. 

Summary  

This promotion was a great case of connecting two contact points in one complex campaign. It is also important that the whole process is managed by one automation which uses three steps to check whether all conditions have been met and whether the voucher can be considered as valid. 

The campaign results have been excellent. In the first stage over 5000 people used the vouchers and many of them decided to download the application because of this promotion. 

It is worth mentioning that this case is not only a good solution that will allow you to increase revenues but also to encourage your customers to download the application and to register in the loyalty program, which drives the number of users.