With loyal customers being worth 10x more than driving a first purchase, your loyalty program can be worth its weight in gold. But the brands that are seeing these returns aren’t just creating the program - they are activating the loyalty data they have in ways that are meaningful, personalized, and a whole lot of fun.
We’ve spoken before about all the reasons why we love to recommend Talon.One and Braze for modern marketers looking to create winning experiences for their customers. Though each is extremely powerful on its own, the two are ultimately better together - offering a powerful combination for teams looking to enhance their loyalty and promotional programs. Talon.One is a flexible promotion engine that handles loyalty, coupons, discounts, and referral programs, while Braze excels at personalized customer engagement across channels.
In our work across both platforms, we’ve seen brands leverage their loyalty program data to create truly delightful experiences built on Braze. To offer both inspiration and real-life examples, below are five loyalty campaigns you can build with Talon.One and Braze:
Some years back, Spotify showed us how fun it could be to see a summary of your personal brand journey. Since then, many brands have executed a similar Year in Review campaign. By showcasing a personalized summary of a customer's interactions with the brand throughout the year, such as their purchases, rewards earned, favorite products, or memorable moments, a Year in Review campaign fosters a sense of appreciation and strengthens the emotional connection between the customer and the brand.
We’ve seen this done well by a popular CPG customer of ours who wanted to drive app engagement with a highly personalized and creative end-of-year experience for their loyalty members. The brand pulled data from their loyalty platform into Braze to dynamically populate their year-end messaging with a variety of stats — including customers’ program tier & join date, specialized product drops, and most-shopped categories, earning them a 40% impression rate on the app and laying the foundation for other disruptive brand experiences.
Gamification can (literally) bring the fun factor to the customer experience by transforming routine brand interactions into enjoyable and rewarding experiences. Incorporating game-like elements, such as challenges, points, badges, leaderboards, and progress bars, can motivate users to interact with the app more frequently and for longer durations in order to earn loyalty points, discounts, or exclusive content.
Stitch recently supported a national quick-service restaurant chain in building out a gamified in-app experience as a new and engaging way to interact with their customers in their app and drive sales of popular menu items. By implementing an innovative, in-app matching game — powered by Braze — their users play to win rewards, thus boosting engagement with the app and enabling the brand’s marketing team to monitor user engagement throughout the experience due to the extensive tracking system for button clicks, user scores, and reward points.
Brand collaborations and strategic partnerships can be a powerful way to create a sense of community and shared value among customers. When customers feel like they are part of something larger than just a transactional relationship, they are more likely to remain loyal. Not only that, but unique brand partnerships can generate creative campaign ideas that can be a way to activate exclusive experiences or behind-the-scenes access to loyalty program members.
We’ve seen this done creatively via our work with a global gaming company who recently partnered with a QSR chain. Gamers can order dinner from the QSR, upload their receipt, and receive an exclusive game skin, only available to those who participated in the brand partnership campaign.
Ideally, the next phase of this campaign would be to implement order tracking from the QSR into the in-game experience — powered by Braze and Snowflake. Talk about a truly experiential brand collaboration!
A more general category of campaigns, "surprise & delight" can be understood as a strategy that leverages unexpected rewards and personalized gestures to create positive emotional connections with customers, ultimately fostering loyalty and brand advocacy. With the data available from a brand’s loyalty platform, Surprise and Delight campaigns can be highly personalized and deeply engaging.
We’ve seen our customers do this in a number of ways, but a top luxury resort and casino operator hit the nail on the head by offering real-time incentives to casino players. These timely offers can keep players engaged longer, increase spending, and improve overall customer satisfaction. They used player loyalty data to generate personalized messages and assign offers, which were sent directly to the player’s wallet via the casino's gaming platform, encouraging longer play. This solution allows the casino to deliver offers in ~45 seconds — directly impacting an incremental increase in revenue, creating stickiness with guests, and further positioning the casino as a leader in delivering an exceptional guest experience.
In the same way that a brand would want to recognize a customer’s birthday, recognizing loyalty milestones (such as anniversaries of joining a program or reaching certain spending thresholds) demonstrates that the brand values its customers and their continued engagement. It can also be key in motivating continued engagement and higher spending as customers look to maintain or increase their engagement with the brand. For example, if customers know they'll receive a special reward for reaching a certain tier in a loyalty program, they may be more inclined to make additional purchases to reach that level.
A major online retailer recently worked with Stitch to improve their loyalty program, including incorporating loyalty milestones, such as tier changes and available rewards, into their app. As members of their loyalty program comprise 95% of app transactions and have a 166% higher lifetime value than non-members, this strategy, powered by Braze and their loyalty data, was crucial to overall business success.
With the right combination of tech, data, and strategy, brands can not only build a loyalty program that is unique to their customer journey, but they can activate it in ways that feel engaging and personal to their customers.
Inspired by any of the campaign types or examples discussed? Stitch can help you take your loyalty or Braze program to the next level.
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