Michelin is the world's leading tire company, which manufactures and provides a wide range of tires and related services. In addition to tires, Michelin also delivers digital mobility support services and publishes travel guides, hotel and restaurant recommendations, maps, and road atlases.
With its headquarters situated in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Michelin has a global presence spanning over 170 countries. The company boasts a workforce of over 100 000 employees and operates 67 production facilities across 17 countries.
Key challenges
- Finding an API-first and flexible promotion & loyalty engine to save engineers’ time.
- Connecting loyalty technology with event streaming systems and CDPs fast and at scale.
- Building a loyalty technology stack that would support quick time-to-market for pilot projects to experiment with innovative loyalty strategies.
Facing the need for flexible promotion codes management and a future membership program, Michelin took a strategic leap – leveraging external partners instead of internal development. This enabled them to move quickly and adapt easily to market demands. The collaboration started with Voucherify, powering both discount coupons and automatic promotions. This success paved the way for an even bolder step: piloting a tiered membership program in the French market.
Michelin selected Voucherify as their loyalty partner for several reasons, including:
- API-first infrastructure and high flexibility enabled by metadata and custom events.
- Competitive pricing and price-to-value ratio.
- Comprehensive functionality coverage.
- Enterprise-class features, including ISO 27001 compliance.
- Room for development, including enterprise features such as event stream connector (Kafka).
Michelin’s speedy integration with Voucherify wouldn't have been possible without a dedicated Technical Integration Manager who provided Michelin’s team with detailed use case instructions, setup guidance, and API endpoint explanations with specific payloads.
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How does the Better Motion program work?
Given the specific market conditions, Michelin decided to run a point-based membership program split into two levels, instead of pursuing an earn-and-burn loyalty model.
The loyalty program is structured around two tiers:
- Silver Tier – from 0 to 4999 points.
- Gold Tier – from 5000 points.
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Loyalty points allow members to access statuses that come with specific benefits. The membership status is updated dynamically based on the current points balance. Loyalty points are valid for 24 months from the earning activity.
Through advanced use of custom events and metadata, Michelin can reward members for very specific purchases based on tire type, diameter, or quantity. On top of that, they can quickly build reward actions based on:
- Declaring specific purchases.
- Registering up to 5 vehicles (with bonus points granted for electric vehicles).
- Celebrating birthdays.
- Completing their profiles.
- Referring friends.
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Any type of custom event and order can be enhanced with custom properties to build advanced earning rules, such as 100 points for purchasing tire X and 150 points for purchasing tire Y but in a specific size.
Program members can also earn points by referring family and friends to join the program – unlimited referrals are possible, but only the first 5 are rewarded with points. The referral program is operated by Voucherify too – allowing Michelin to manage all campaigns within a single tool.
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Loyalty status, earned points, and earning history can be viewed through the customer wallet on Michelin's website. Voucherify offers a range of GET APIs, enabling Michelin to pull relevant details and build dedicated loyalty dashboards where members can view their membership details and claim rewards.
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Besides member-only promotions, Gold members can also access a portfolio of attractive partner discounts powered by Obiz.
Thanks to the iterative approach to integration, Michelin started its pilot loyalty program for their large customer base in France and will steadily roll out the program to other countries if the pilot proves successful.
The architecture behind the Better Motion program
Thanks to Voucherify's API-first architecture, integrating loyalty endpoints with Michelin systems was straightforward.
“From the input point of view, the integration process is excellent. With clear documentation and customization options, implementing Voucherify into our services has been hassle-free."
Following the principles of composability, Michelin developed a comprehensive architecture to connect separate micro-services.
The loyalty flow is built on top of a Kafka connector that stream events between systems. Customer data and events are streamed from Blueconic CDP to Voucherify APIs via a custom middleware that collects and translates pieces of data into API payloads. Besides being the data destination, Voucherify also operates as a data source for loyalty events which are streamed via Kafka back to Blueconic CDP, which in turn feeds personalization and messaging supported by Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
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Michelin uses Salesforce to identify program members and manage email marketing activities. Through a two-way process, data is sent to Voucherify containing both customer and order information, triggering events based on user actions. Voucherify then awards loyalty points accordingly. Voucherify events are communicated via webhooks, providing feedback on customer actions such as points earned and their history.
With metadata, Michelin can store and work on custom customer properties and events, such as:
- Registration date and source.
- Date of birth.
- Opt-in for T&Cs and communications.
- Number of auto tiers and diameter.
To identify customers, Michelin uses the same ID across Voucherify and other systems. On an everyday basis, the management of the program with Voucherify takes only one team member – drastically reducing the cost of operations and management.
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