A B2B customer loyalty programme isn’t just about recognising and rewarding your loyal customers or distribution network. Sure, that’s the key objective, but the data you get in return is seriously beautiful and can help your business flourish!

McKinsey found that businesses that make extensive use of customer analytics have an immense impact on corporate performance, with the likelihood of generating above-average profits almost twice as high as those companies who don’t utilise the data. So if you’re struggling to get data, or if you're not fully utilising it, you'll want to read on!

Let’s take a quick look at some of the data a B2B customer loyalty programme provides…

• Contact details – understand who your distributors are that are selling your products.
• End consumer details – understand who the people are who actually use your product.
• Engagement statistics – see who your most and least engaged users are.
• Buying behaviour – see which products are most and least popular, how regularly users are buying them, and other trends.

It’s all well and good having this data and analysing it, but to really help the business grow, you need to think about how to actually make use of it and create action points. We’ll explore the 3 examples below in more detail.

• Creating target lists with tailored communication.
• Innovating your products for the end consumer.
• Deliver relevant and inspiring rewards.
   

Create target lists with tailored communication

51% of customers say their relationship with a brand starts when they feel the brand understands them and their desires – so customers who feel like a brand is listening to their needs are more likely to engage and purchase. There’s simply no denying that in the 21^st century communication with your customers’ needs to be personalised and relevant to them. After all, irrelevant communications could do more harm than good!

The data from your customer loyalty programme, combined with other sources, makes this nice and easy as you can use it to segment users into target groups. For example, you may be looking to gather feedback on a product or the programme itself, but you don’t want to send it to those who hardly use the programme. Or on the other hand, you may want to run a re-engagement campaign for those disengaged users. This way, you can understand what went wrong, tweak your approach and actively win them back. Whatever you’re looking to achieve, the data can help ensure you’re targeting the right people.

The juicy data can also provide you with buying behaviour information, such as what products a user is regularly buying and what with, then you can send them related product recommendations or add-ons. Or you may wish to promote a specific product to a group of users who very rarely or haven’t purchased it before. The opportunities to segment and tailor communications are endless! Just remember, it shouldn’t be a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Innovate your products to the end consumer

If your business model includes having an external sales and distribution network to sell your product, you may experience the challenge of not knowing who the actual end consumer is. Frustrating right? Because after all, this is who you create the product for!

Well fear not, a customer loyalty programme can help identify who these individuals are. As part of our customer loyalty platform, some programmes use a claims process so when a distributor makes a sale, they must enter order details before they receive their reward. This process can include them sharing who the product was sold to, or at the very least, the industry and type of end customer. As the claims start to build, you can begin identifying trends of who you’re actually selling to.

Once you understand who your end consumers are, you can go to town with innovating your product to be more suitable for them. One of our clients used the data from their customer loyalty programme to do just this - learn more about the end consumer. As part of the points claiming process, their distributors were asked to provide details on who they sold their product to. The data showed that the products were hugely popular in schools, enabling the client to innovate their product specifically for the children's market.

Deliver relevant and inspiring rewards

The average consumer belongs to 14.8 loyalty programmes but is only active in 6.7 of them. Brands are fighting for customer attention! So how can you ensure that your customer loyalty programme is unique and stands out?

Offering inspiring rewards is a great way to do so, but they need to be relevant and achievable. The reward should match the action it takes to earn it. For example, if a distributor sells £10k worth of products, a £10 amazon voucher simply won’t cut it. On the other hand, customers who complete a 5 min survey shouldn’t be getting a brand new iPhone in return.

Use the data from your customer loyalty programme to understand what the earning potential is and how many points users are earning on average. There’s no point showing luxurious holidays if there isn’t the potential to earn enough points to redeem this reward... and it may even be demotivating and disengage users.

So, whether it be segmenting the data for personalised communications, innovating products or delivering relevant rewards, there’s so much opportunity that your customer loyalty programme data can give you. Remember, rather than just analysing it, be sure to dive deep and come up with an action plan that will help your business grow.

Want to find out more about our customer loyalty platform? Book a demo with us and we’ll show you the ins and outs!