9March 2022such as Average Spend, Average Visits, Spend Across Brands and Products. Learn behaviors, preferences, and trends such as seasonal peaks by certain segments. If there is a current program in place and your focus is a re-launch be sure to work with Finance to develop a P & L for the current program. This P & L should provide a total view as well as a per segment view. The per segment view will be critical in helping you to determine which segments are both high spending and high margin. Retention of high-value segments should be a primary consideration for program development· Consider all program types currently in market. Be sure to evaluate not only peer programs but all category types in the marketplace. Remember, consumers don't evaluate their loyalty programs in a vacuum. They grab on to certain features and functionality that resonate and that becomes the expectation for all loyalty programming ASSESSCreate the vision for the future state by evaluating the current state. Do not become tied to a solution at this point. Instead generate your hypothesis and then validate and quantify. Because the ultimate deliverable from the assessment phase is a go-forward program option, it is imperative to back up qualitative data with quantitative measurement. As the program owner, you want to be positioned to defend your recommendation. Below are some research methods that have been effective in validating program design:· Surveys and internal discussions will provide a broad list of possible program options. A TURF or Maxdiff will help you to narrow these options down to those rewards or features that are a high priority for your customers· After ranking all potential program elements, next you must understand how this mix of values will impact desired customer behaviors. A Conjoint (Discrete Choice Model) will provide the basis for comparison across these multiple program components. The key measurements will be impacts on visits/spend and likelihood to shop. The goal is to take the output from this exercise and feed it into your brands economic and ROI modeling. Your objective is not to select the program with the highest increase on visits and shopping (this is likely the most expensive option) but to land on the loyalty approach with the strongest balance between ROI and desired impact on customer behavior DESIGNCombining the data elements from Define, Discover, and Assess will help to ensure that you create a program that delivers the optimal customer experience while simultaneously delivering the desired bottom-line results. Evaluate the key findings from each of these processes and use these data points as the foundation for your business case. This analysis will contain the recommended program design as well as the projected customer and financial outcomes to support your proposed approach.MEASUREAlthough the steps above will provide you with a viable program, at this point it is still theoretical. You must conduct a pilot to ensure that theory matches reality. If you have a national footprint you need to pilot your program in each region. Customers in different areas have different values. It is also important to think about customer mix within the pilot markets ­ even down to the store level. You want to cast as broad a net as operationally possible to ensure there are no false positives.The program pilot is critical and is your last safeguard prior to a full roll out. As the program owner you must be clear on what KPI's you will measure and the time it will take to get an accurate evaluation of each. Organizations are tempted to hurry through this phase, but loyalty programsrepresent significant investment with very real risk and customer impacts. Guard against the pressure for speed to market.As 1st Party Data becomes more critical to a retailer's ability to deepen their engagement with valued current customers and their ability to acquire more just like them Loyalty Programming strategy and an effective data management strategy will be the key assets leveraged to guide future business outcomes. But the road to this desired state is paved with "HOW." MTAlisa Stewart
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