In today’s markets company success seems to depend increasingly on the capabilities of their business partners. The proliferation of online courses and just-in-time knowledge available through mobile is prompting organizations to pay attention to innovative modes of instruction. Yet, we often see that too many enablement programs focus on the wrong content. When we point this out to clients, we invariably get asked the question ‘But how can we design programs that link to our strategic channel priorities?’ Here’s input for starting that very strategic conversation.

The development of online education modules continues to be a growth market for Motivforce. While we keep expanding our enablement portfolio with some of our accounts in conjunction with the latest social loyalty tools (such as gamification), others are simply all about business partner learning. We often get asked to come up with a convincing business case that outlines how clients will start earning by learning.

We think there are four key benefits, all with direct important bottom-line implications. 

There has been a lot of debate in recent months about the most effective metrics to use when assessing the performance of a loyalty or incentive program.

To see the real effect of the power of loyalty and incentive program it is also recommended to use Confrere Analysis.

Loyalty and incentive programs are powerful tools. Used effectively they can generate habitual behavioral loyalty, increase sales revenue, decrease customer churn, increase share of wallet and limit variety-seeking behavior.  Many of these results have been empirically tested in academic research and in award winning case studies.

The future of loyalty programs is mobile. This mantra has been reiterated across many loyalty marketing industry trend reports. It is a mantra that clearly has face value. In fact, it is a no-brainer, as much of our life now revolves around our little handhelds. Most loyalty programs are migrating to mobile platforms, allowing their members instant access any place, any time. Being able to check your points balance, the latest reward additions or quickly swiping through a learning module in a client’s parking lot definitely ups the convenience factor. But, it does not guarantee an engaging mobile program experience. That is why a number of forward-looking brands have started to engage their members by inviting them to share their ‘must-share-moments’ with the brand and explore the face value of the mobile camera.

In our conversations with organizations that are assessing B2B loyalty and incentive programs, a number of negative perceptions inevitably surface.

Here are the top 5 myths about loyalty programs and our evidence as to why they simply aren’t true. 

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....

Technology is now defining the route which companies need to take in order to stay relevant and is changing at a rate so fast that organisations and to some extent, society is struggling to keep up.

And whilst digital transformation can start with the introduction of new tech, business transformation is inevitable, which can mean a complete overhaul in a company's products, positioning and ultimately, business goals.

Many loyalty and incentives programs have built status tiers to segment and reward their most active, profitable, engaged and loyal participants.

However there are a number of pit falls that destroy the integrity and motivational pull of loyalty programs if the tier strategy is not properly planned. Here are our 5 tactics to manage downgrading participant tier status...

Motivforce recently undertook a study looking at the most appropriate and effective way to respond to a B2B Loyalty Program participant’s feedback – particularly in the social media environment but with direct implications to contained environments. The results revealed that the most effective response is when help desk employees put themselves in the shoes of the customer before they respond.

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?......

In January 2016 we predicted the top 10 trends that B2B loyalty marketing would witness during the course of the year. But did we get it right? Let’s take a look back ….

Personal development is recognised as the most effective way in which business relationships with business partners can be nurtured. And while business schools are having trouble to keep pace with these developments, this is presenting a very bright business future for online enablement. It is proven that certified business partners sell more...

Most companies have come to realise that offering online education modules continues to be an important driving force in establishing successful channel partner relationships. At Motivforce R&D, we often are asked to come up with a convincing business case that outlines how clients will start earning by learning, simply by making the switch to online enablement. These are the four key benefits on which we think such a case can be built:

In today’s markets, your company’s success depends hugely on the motivation and abilities of your business partners. Willingness is often fuelled by elaborate incentive structures, but ability is a different cookie. More and more firms are experimenting with online modules across multiple (mobile) platforms, so there are ample and innovative opportunities to work on your business partners’ tech, marketing and sales skills. Yet, we often see that the message cannot keep up with the medium. In other words, content is offered that is out of line or, at best, loosely coupled to strategic channel objectives.

Follow our 5 step process:

Thinking of or running an Employee Recognition Program?

The exponential growth of Big Data now makes it possible to predict the performance of teams on the basis of laws and patterns in social interactions.

The research highlighted the traits of the ideal team player and also successful teams.

Most loyalty marketers focus on rewarding customer or business partner behaviour. Yet, there is another important side to the loyalty coin and that is recognizing the performance of employees. There is a so-called profit chain that links employee motivation and behaviour with customer loyalty. We have witnessed an important shift when it comes to employee recognition programs; the focus is no longer on incentivizing individual employees, but on rewarding the performance of teams. 

In designing employee recognition programs, it is imperative to be very specific about the kind of behaviours that you want your associates to display (and get rewarded for). Many of our clients make the mistake of relating their incentives to broad and generic corporate values. Instead, the specs are important, as they make for easier and more transparent reward criteria. Also, do consider recognizing your operational managers. For many customer-facing employees, their supervisor, team leader or store manager is a role model who they look to for guidance on good practice. 

When Leicester City won the Premiership, at the Etihad, Manchester City’s home ground, fans stayed to applaud Leicester players and manager off the pitch, despite the fact that they had just humiliated their team. This is in line with recent research that shows that single-brand loyalty is rapidly eroding in favour of multiple brand loyalty. Customers often partially defect and as a result there may be a much higher ROI in trying to increase customers’ share of spending with your brand instead of trying to maximize customer retention intentions. Brand loyalty is a team sport!