B2B loyalty programs are a great way to capture success in the face of many businesses’ pain points. Customer retention, a lack of sales growth or margin protection, and losing share of wallet to competitors are expected issues that all companies deal with and can all be addressed in the design stages of your program.
However, they are not simply implemented and left to succeed—many problems can cause your program to fail without frequent analysis and modification. We’ve outlined the common reasons a B2B loyalty program can fail and how to avoid them.
It’s not uncommon for more complex programs to fail to connect with channel partners, which can be attributed to a lack of a compelling value proposition. Your program needs to understand the audience it’s designed for and why they would be interested in it in the first place.
Suppose your program’s rewards, incentives, or benefits do not align with your partners’ needs or don’t provide adequate value. In that case, your program will likely lose traction or fail to connect in the first place. The best way to avoid this is by thoroughly researching what motivates your partners and tailoring the program accordingly.
This comes in the design stages for 212F, which is why we always say, “strategy first, rewards second.” If you don’t understand what would drive your customers to take part, you’re setting your program up to fail.
The best way to drive awareness and engagement within a program is through communications, which is also one of the driving reasons for creating a program in the first place. The ability to create relevant communications tied to your brand that create positive sentiment within your customer base must be noticed!
If your customers aren’t aware of the program and its offerings, the desired engagement cannot be met. Your communication strategy needs to consistently inform and teach your channel partners about the value they can draw from engaging with the program.
Using our Engagement Loyalty Model (ELM), we break your customers down into segments based on their engagement and purchasing habits. We use these segments to provide relevant and tailored communications, allowing your brand to speak individually to each customer—despite your audience being made up of hundreds or thousands.
Using your program communications to keep your brand front-of-mind at purchase times (habits of which can be gained through appropriate customer research) and using bonus offers or campaigns to drive additional sales during slow periods are some of the biggest wins you can draw from a B2B loyalty program – make sure you’re using them appropriately!
A B2B loyalty program can offer everything your customers could possibly want, but if the hurdles to register, engage, and redeem are perceived as too high, they’ll never actually reach that point. Complex programs can be doomed to fail simply by seeming too time-consuming to actually feel ‘worth it’ to participate in.
If your customers need to navigate convoluted processes, submit mountains of documents, or face technical challenges while trying to participate or redeem from the platform, they won’t feel as excited to actually gain the value you’re offering, reducing engagement. This means your program needs to be simplified and streamlined into user-friendly tools and platforms.
We’ve known this since we started designing our programs and platforms in 1996, which is why we manage the entire process, from strategy and design to continued maintenance and reporting, with our in-house data team, 212F Labs.
We break everything down into easily processable steps that your customers and channel partners will love. This allows them to focus on the reason they’re here—doing business with your brand and the value it gives them!
Similar to the need to simplify your program mentioned above, it’s crucial to provide regular updates, training and assistance for their journey through your B2B loyalty program.
By providing guidance and relevant materials to help your customers and partners maximise the value they can draw from your program and leveraging the available resources, you can ensure they won’t encounter any hiccups that could taint their experience with your brand.
These processes go hand-in-hand with a joint approach between your sales and marketing teams. The two-pronged attack of touchstone communications and face-to-face relationship-building with BDMs and sales teams will keep your brand front-of-mind and ensure a positive and streamlined experience with your program.
This is also why we provide in-house customer support through account managers and support centre call staff based in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland – we ensure that all of our staff have the appropriate knowledge to assist any customer should any issues arise and solve them on the spot, sharply reducing wait time and allowing them to keep drawing the value they want, keeping them actively engaged in your program!
The final issue that your program may encounter comes down to analytics. Do your customers have visibility into their progress? Does your brand understand more about your customers through their engagement in the program? If the answer to either of those questions is ‘no’, your program is in trouble from both ends.
Accurate and relevant tracking and reporting are essential to your program’s continued success. Our platforms are designed with user experience in mind, ensuring that your customers and channel partners can easily understand their progress in your program. This is supplemented by the frequent and relevant communication strategy we discussed earlier.
Similarly, with our internal engagement model and in-house data team, alongside ongoing monitoring and reporting from account managers, we can provide your brand with insights on where your customers sit within the program currently and the steps you can take to move them from being on the way out to back on the winner’s podium, redeeming rewards and making purchases through your business, moving share of wallet to your products as opposed to losing them to competitors.
This is not a comprehensive list of all possible reasons a B2B loyalty program may fail to succeed. Still, these are the largest ones to consider as your brand starts on your program journey. For these reasons and more, it is critical to partner with an agency that understands these common pitfalls and has put relevant precautions into the program design to ensure that both you and your customers can get everything you want and more out of it!
