Uncover insights from Motivforce's latest research on channel partner loyalty programs. Learn strategies to navigate mixed feelings, foster genuine gratitude, and boost overall program ROI.

Gamification is the use of game-play mechanics for non-game applications and it has grown in popularity as a loyalty program tactic. Indeed, when used effectively digital games have achieved fantastic results.

 Equally, there have been numerous examples where the gamification execution has failed to deliver. This can be extremely problematic for businesses as the financial investment and staff resources required to design and deploy gamification can be considerable.

 The top three reasons why gamification tactics and campaigns failing to deliver the desired ROI have been identified as:

Over the past 10 years we have seen the rise of the pre-paid card (both MasterCard gift and reloadable) as well as the use of online retail vouchers, become the preferred reward medium in our loyalty and incentive programs.

‘Motivation’ is a complex concept, but it’s what drives loyalty. It determines why your loyalty program participants are willing to increase your share of wallet, or even go the extra mile for your business.

But how can you measure ‘motivation’? Most agencies and pundits will only tell you how to measure ‘loyalty’. Often this is done using the basic method of asking program participants ‘the only question that matters’, aka calculating your Net Promoter Score (NPS). But the science has repeatedly shown that the NPS is at best marginally related to loyalty program success.

If you already operate a successful B2B loyalty program in one market but your business is international, you may well consider rolling the same program out across other countries and regions.

However, replicating your program in overseas markets is not always that straightforward. There are some key elements that you need to make sure you get right. Here are some helpful tips and steps to guide you as to the best way to go about it.

Gamification is the use of game-play mechanics for non-game applications and there are many case studies illustrating the increased motivation when game elements are incorporated into work activities. The closed nature of the audience and our access to detailed analytics allows us to precisely manage the effectiveness of the use of games in our programmes.  

When planning a destination for your incentive travel rewards program,  a number of things must be considered to ensure its success. The question will be raised “How do I choose the correct destination for incentive travel reward?” This is where a professional incentive travel agency can assist by providing a wealth of knowledge and suitable options based on your program requirements budget and the target audience.

Just in case you might have missed it; a wind of change has started to blow in the loyalty marketing landscape. In Europe the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is about to go live and it marks a heightened privacy consciousness among businesses and their customers. And ultimately, we expect that the principles of GDPR will go global.

Even if you are not operating from the EU, it is not a bad idea to start reflecting on what the new model of data protection will mean for you and your program. Almost certainly, the bar will be raised and your program members will expect you to take your protection of their data to a whole new level.

So, are you GDPR ready? Read on

Over the past 20 years, the structure of B2B loyalty programs has grown from simple sales incentives that reward for achieving sales targets to rewarding for profile performance.  Profile performance is the concept of creating the ideal participant profile and rewarding for all behaviours that a participant demonstrates in adopting this profile.

There are many variables to consider when creating the ideal channel loyalty program participant profile and these are broadly classified into the following 5 types of loyalty program participant profiles:

Our research has shown greater loyalty (measured by sales and other valued added behaviours) amongst program participants who are active in enablement tasks, compared to those who are not.  In looking at correlations between those participants who have undertaken enablement tasks, versus those who have not, we have observed three traits....

How do we attract members to our loyalty program without having to invest hugely? How do we boost the business from acquired members that justifies the generous spend on those mid-tier members in our program? These are questions that keep C-suite executives awake at night. At Motivforce R&D we are introducing a new approach that we call loyalty hacking. What’s with the hacking you may ask?......

Our loyalty professors Ko de Ruyter and Debbie Keeling share their latest research and how to avoid channel partners having mixed feelings about your loyalty program. How does this impact program ROI and what can you do about it? 

Recently one of our clients came up with the idea of running a bundle promotion.
Bundle promotions are commonly seen in our B2B loyalty space and the concept is well accepted by customers.
However, here we need to pause and remind ourselves of the purpose of running a promotion. 

The concept of Social Loyalty has been growing over the last five years, but we predict that 2016 is the year when it will truly take off in terms of our clients. Social media is one of the most absorbing tasks that individuals undertake on a daily basis. Indeed for Millennials, their life is built around their social media habits. Thus savvy program designers are looking to leverage this existing infrastructure to drive their own programs.

Clients often point out that many loyalty program members cheat and that making compliance rules stricter hardly seems to have any effect. It’s not like they’re all bad apples, it’s just that a lot of members seem to curb honesty, here, there and everywhere.

Some of us at Motivforce have been avid Star Trek fans since our early years. Mind you, not the super nerdy types who glue on pointed ears and pretend to chat via chest-fitted communicators at conventions. Nerdy enough though, to sometimes use the show as a frame of reference when confronted with the realities of work life.