The overarching pitfall of most loyalty strategies is that:

• It takes too long to earn points and rewards.
• Rewards are not attractive or irrelevant.
• Program membership causes communication chaos with too many notifications.
• Brands decide to introduce large-scale loyalty solutions at once, without iterating.

To combat these issues, you need to look no further than a robust connectors between your promotion software and a CDP.

Here are key takeways to guide your loyalty strategy forward in 2023:

• Instead of rolling out a full-blown points program, start with CDP-informed promo codes (public and bulk) to see how they impact customer loyalty.
• Use customer attributes from CDP to define promotion eligibility rules and see how they drive revenue.
• Showing promotions where the user is shopping increases the chances for using them – even better if promotion visibility is informed by customer attributes served by a CDP.
• Adding the cart context to your promotion rules, enables you to roll out margin-sensitive incentives that not only nourish brand loyalty, but also ensure budget control.
• A CDP-fed Promotion Engine that understands customer attributes and cart structure gives you utmost control over who gets a discount, when and what kind – letting you build a powerhouse of loyalty incentives without large upfront investments.
• Promotions can be effective when wired to your messaging platform – make sure to check how to work with a messaging queue in a scalable way.
• A CDP<> Promotion Engine integration helps brands build and manage a better promotion experience thanks to higher personalization, conditional offer visibility, and customer dashboards.
• Find a Promotion Engine that has dedicated features like parameterized discounts, budget limits, and stacking to prevent promotion loss.
• Non-functional requirements, such as security or scalability, impact promotions and customer loyalty too. Plan for them upfront, to pivot faster in the future.

The combination of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Promotion Engine can effectively support the development of both loyalty incentives and a full-scale loyalty programs. This powerful integration allows you to seamlessly link promotions and revenue-management strategies with loyalty mechanisms, fostering a cohesive and rewarding customer experience.

Zero-party data: What is it and how can loyalty programs help you collect it?

The elimination of third-party cookies is about to cause a seismic shift in digital marketing as they have been a fundamental component of digital advertising since the internet's inception. Brands must adapt to this change, and one potential solution is to gather zero-party data by utilizing loyalty programs. 

Unlike first-, second-, and third-party data, zero-party data is what customers intentionally share with a brand. In contrast to other data types, customers voluntarily provide their personal information and purchasing intentions, expecting a more relevant and improved customer experience in return. 

• First-party data – information that a company collects directly from its own customers or website visitors.‍
• Second-party data – information that one company acquires directly from another company's first-party data.‍
• Third-party data – information that is collected by a company from various external sources, such as data brokers, and is not directly obtained from its own customers or website visitors.

When a customer is willing to share extra information about their expectations and purchasing preferences, they are already invested in your brand. However, achieving this level of engagement is a challenging task that can take months. Learning how to gather zero-party data is essential to begin building a relationship with your customers.

Customer segmentation: What is it and why it matters for customer loyalty?

Customer segmentation happens when you divide a customer base into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, such as demographic data or behavior. This process is important for building marketing personas, which help brands adjust their messaging, positioning, and offering to fit the target audience's preferences.

Building a customer segment requires diving into the CDP (Customer Data Platform) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and other data sources to choose segmentation criteria and filters. Examples of segmentation strategies include demographic, geographic, CLV, activity-based, and preferences-based segmentation.

Note that some types of targeting can be considered intrusive if customers are not aware of the source of the data. However, utilizing segmentation can be a powerful tool for targeting high-value customers and finding patterns in customer purchases.

Learn more: Technical Aspects of Customer Segmentation – Data Synchronization

Learn more: Technical Aspects of Customer Segmentation – Data Integrity

To foster customer loyalty, it is essential to have a comprehensive grasp of the customer journey. To achieve this, brands use CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) that allow them to maintain ownership over all customer data coming in from different sources. 

If you want to provide personalized shopping experiences, including targeted discounts and loyalty programs, you need to connect your promotion software with a Customer Data Platform. Here is how Voucherify Promotion Engine integrates with the best-of-breed data tools on the market. 

Voucherify and Segment Integration

Segment is a Customer Data Platform that empowers brands to gather, refine, and utilize their customer information. By using a unified API, Segment users can take action on data originating from various customer interaction points.

Customers now expect personalized promotions, and the integration between Voucherify and Segment enables brands to use Voucherify as both a source and destination of customer data in both outbound and inbound models.

The outbound integration facilitates the continuous transfer of customer data from Segment to Voucherify. To develop data-driven campaigns, the following key actions can be taken:

• Create custom events in Voucherify.
• Create, update, and group customers in Voucherify.

The inbound integration supports the flow of data from Voucherify to Segment, with the following events supported out of the box:

• Redemption events (successful, failed, rolled back)
• Validation events (only if connected with any customer)
• Code publication
• Customer reward events

Thanks to the integration between Voucherify and Segment and its robust API, brands can quickly transfer customer data from Segment to Voucherify and vice versa, without requiring a separate app for customer data synchronization. The integration provides data-driven teams with access to a single source of truth about customers, resulting in more effective and targeted incentives and rewards.

Learn more: What are the key benefits of integrating Voucherify with Segment?

With the Segment <> Voucherify integration, you get to build promotional MVPs in a sprint or quicker. Here is an example of a data flow needed for a post-purchase review campaign that incentivized UGC with gift cards powered by Voucherify:

Learn more: How to effectively use customer attributes for personalized promotions?

Voucherify and mParticle Integration

mParticle is an AI-powered Customer Data Platform that helps brands collect, unify, and activate customer data across different platforms and devices. 

The integration with mParticle provides the ability to construct personalized promotions using granular customer data that is maintained by mParticle's CDP. Additionally, the integration furnishes essential insights into promotion type and delivery, which can be utilized to enhance future consumer promotions. Voucherify and mParticle customer metadata can be synced, allowing you to target specific user groups with different incentives.

The integration facilitates both inbound and outbound modes, enabling you to receive customer data from mParticle in your Voucherify account and notify mParticle about key events such as code validation, redemption, and customers receiving rewards.

Brands can leverage these capabilities in various innovative ways, such as offering VIP-only promotions based on mParticle audiences or activating loyalty points and rewards. With the Voucherify integration with mParticle, transferring customer data between the two platforms is straightforward, obviating the need for your development team to create a separate app for data synchronization.

Voucherify and Braze CRM Integration

Braze is a versatile customer engagement platform focused on building lasting relationships between customers and brands.

Besides effective engagement automation through contextual messaging, integrating Voucherify with Braze allows brands to synchronize customer data between both platforms. The beta integration now supports syncing user data from Braze to Voucherify. In addition, it includes information about the audiences to which a user belongs, giving brands more tools to target and personalize Voucherify campaigns. Moreover, the integration will give the option to forward Voucherify internal events to Braze as custom events. For instance, Braze will be able to trigger a messaging campaign in response to a successful promo code redemption or new loyalty points collected. 

Learn more: How to build a loyalty program with Braze?

Learn more: How to build a referral campaign with Braze?

Learn more: Braze and Voucherify integration for personalized promotions

How to Fast-track a Referral Program with Voucherify, Segment, and Braze?

Pomelo is an omnichannel fashion platform that operates throughout greater Asia. To launch a multi-tiered referral program via their mobile apps and websites, Pomelo was looking for a Promotion Engine that would seamlessly integrate with Braze's messaging channels and CRM. Since their communications were already powered by Braze, Pomelo opted for Voucherify, which offers scalable pricing and native connectors for Braze and Segment that streamlined integration time down to days.

The new connectors Voucherify offers enable businesses to transfer data between the Promotion Engine and a CDP/CRM, allowing for targeted promotions based on customer attributes such as past purchases, browsing history, demographics, and actions. With CDP’s event tracking and user identification features, Voucherify campaigns can be automatically triggered and personalized based on real-time data. 

To build personalized experiences, brands must have a deep understanding of their customers. This requires access to first-party and zero-party data gathered from all their applications. This data gives detailed insights into a customer's purchase history, interactions with emails and websites, communication preferences, and interests, among other things.An excellent way to leverage this data is by enhancing existing loyalty programs with hyper-personalized experiences. When customers log in, the CDP can instantly retrieve their profile details and provide relevant content, rewards, and benefits. As customers continue to engage and set preferences and interests, this data is added to their profile, improving their experience.

However, customer loyalty can be built through funnel-aware incentives and promotions first, too. Before diving into setting up a loyalty program, start with this framework:

1. Public promo codes

Integration with a CDP gives you a way to modify the promo code experience depending on customer preferences, such as showing or hiding the promo code based on the customer’s location or loyalty membership status. 

2. Bulk unique coupon codes‍

If you need higher selectivity or want to track individual marketing channels, you can use unique promo codes. By connecting a CDP with your Promotion Engine, you can use customer attributes from CDP to define promo eligibility rules and see how they drive revenue.

3. Funnel-aware promotions‍

A Promotion Engine that understands customer attributes and cart structure gives you utmost control over who gets a discount, when, and what kind. Displaying targeted promotions in places where a customer is already shopping increases the chances of conversion. 

4. Promotion messaging

Targeted campaigns are much more effective when wired to your messaging platform. For instance, if a CDP tracks an event and notifies a Promotion Engine about it, it automatically creates a promo code according to the predefined conditions, then, if needed, notifies the customer through various channels about the offer. 

With all those elements in place, brands should then focus on the promotions UX and fraud prevention, which are also made easier through a CDP <> Promotion Engine integration. To experiment with codes with lesser fraud and promo misuse, you need to set up a safety net.

A Promotion Engine has dedicated features like parameterized discounts, budget limits, and stacking to prevent promotion loss. And if integrated with a CDP, security limits can be based on real-time data flow like the number of redemptions, number of site visit, or membership status.