To meet those pesky, every-changing customer expectations, marketers need time to think creatively. That’s where automation in a loyalty program platform can assist.
Keeping track of what customers redeem, when and how takes constant attention. Juggling disconnected tools, or worse, manual tracking, slows everything down and wastes resources. Teams lose valuable time compiling customer profiles across disparate data systems. Especially considering how protectively some departments guard information, even for internal use.
On top of that, customers expect personalized messaging that reinforces why they should choose your offer over the competition. Promotions that feel like they’re tailor-made for them, not selling to them. This requires understanding customers' unique pain points, preferences and buying behaviors. And to stand out, offers need to feel fresh and relevant.
By delegating repetitive tasks to loyalty program software, teams can focus on the strategic and engaging work that drives real, measurable growth.
Related: 5 metrics you should use to measure customer loyalty success
How can brands deliver relevant, relationship-building marketing at scale?
Savvy leaders embrace comprehensive tech tools to stay ahead. When a unified platform brings together a wide range of customer engagement data, team members gain space to focus on strategic planning and creative innovation.
Automation handles things like:
- Journey orchestration and management
- Next best action/offer
- Machine learning-driven decisioning and personalization
- Touchpoint engagement and management
- Loyalty program milestones
- Redemption management
- Subscription and status monitoring
- Analytics, insights and experimentation
- Voice-of-customer feedback
Your team can use that time and insight to build smarter campaigns and dream up new uniquely ownable engagement opportunities.
By consolidating this information, brands form a complete view of the customer's journey. Mapping every touchpoint allows marketers to spot opportunities for deepening customer trust. When automation tools inform stronger segmentation and grouping, marketing teams design campaigns that resonate on a personal level.
They can respond quickly to changing dynamics, sending smarter messages aligned to what’s happening in people’s lives, not just a calendar holiday.
What role does customer engagement data have in loyalty marketing efforts?
The foundation of effective loyalty marketing is understanding where customers are in their relationship with the brand. Engagement data provides the insights to make that possible.
With the right loyalty program software, you can go beyond basic stats and integrate qualitative feedback into your segmentation models. This means campaigns can be designed around emotional drivers (not only transactional events, which can be increasingly important for brands who longer sales cycles) and increase the likelihood you’ll foster a sense of belonging, make customers feel seen, valued and more likely to stick around. Engaging customers on this deeper level helps develop brand advocacy and long-term loyalty, which ultimately leads to sustained growth.
Marketers can accurately gauge customer sentiment and intent by feeding data points into an advanced scoring system. Customer loyalty software dynamically segments and assigns customers into relevant groups and tracts based on their scores.
For example:
- Highly engaged customers might receive exclusive offers at meaningful milestones
- First-time customers could receive a personalized welcome or onboarding kit with their own referral code and other quick-hit value-adds that drive first 90-day behaviors
- Less active customers could be targeted with escalating re-engagement campaigns tailored to their needs
This flexible targeting motivates every customer to move through the funnel automatically, but it’s their unique profile and place within their journey that dictates what’s next.
Related: How comprehensive engagement data can help your customer loyalty program evolve
How can marketers turn customer engagement data into timely communications?
Automation in customer loyalty programs isn’t just a convenience. It’s a strategic personalization enabler.
The best marketing automation tools incorporate predictive analytics and machine learning to transform raw customer data into action. These insights help marketers anticipate customer needs and craft journeys that feel intuitive and natural.
Think:
- A unique incentive to encourage a new customer to develop the ideal behaviors the brand wants to see
- New product information and offers proactively triggered in advance of a previous model’s phase-out or product sunset.
- A location-based message sent just when it matters most
Combining engagement-based rewards with geo-targeting and other segmentation strategies allows brands to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, via the right channel.
By continuously measuring campaign performance and updating customer scores, customer loyalty software helps brands orchestrate smarter, more adaptive customer journeys, driving real business growth over time.
Talk with our experts to uncover how Horizon fits into your current tech stack and helps you build stronger customer relationships at scale.