--- title: "Your road to fans with kiosk loyalty & rewards" author: "Terry Morrell" url: "https://books.gainloyalty.com/4/rewards-masterclass" --- When you think of _“Reward_”, what comes to mind? Your mind may go back to your younger days when adults gave you treats for good behaviour. This psychology has a strong base in loyalty & rewards. These days, technical sophistication makes that experience feel personal and gives customers choice of rewards based on their loyal behaviour. This web book looks at rewards in the context of using our kiosk loyalty & rewards solution to stimulate loyal behaviour. Our clients benefit from our expertise to **brand & align** the kiosk solution to their business model and engage, entertain and inspire their customers. Get in touch to find out how we can help or read our other web book_ “why loyalty is important_”, instantly available on our website (no email or download required). Rewards Design Motivation and choice remain the hallmarks of empowering customers to choose to be loyal to your business, increase their economic value to you and be an advocate to others. All things that are at best, difficult to buy. ## Where to start? Consider how you'd like to target your rewards programme. For example, Customer Retention, Average Spend, Repeat visits, Attracting or repelling customer demographics, New product/service development, Events, Commercial or Charity collaborations or promotion of other business lines. Gosh! most of above is probably what you’d like... Loyalty & Rewards has evolved to meet the dynamics of modern business and deep variety of your customer base. ## Value in the eye of the beholder Your range of rewards will be viewed in different ways by your customers. The perception of value by your customers will be as individual as they are, who will identify and priorise your reward benefits according to their lifestyle. This is a competitive advantage and driver of customer loyalty fully supported by our kiosk loyalty & rewards, versus something to iron out. Reward Types We recommend starting with a subset of the following reward types to suit your business: While you may reward customers with complimentary items or services, we’d suggest using the ‘free’ word sparingly to position your rewards as earned or exclusively available with a purchase to maintain their perceived value / exclusive status. ### Discount Price reductions on items or total purchase. A classic, but needs careful handling to avoid dysfunctional behaviour or negative perceptions of your pricing generally. Our recommendation is to use discounts sparingly and mix with other reward types. ### Product / Service Complementary product or service. It's tempting to deploy these rewards, as they have been a staple of loyalty & rewards. Our recommendation is to target products / services you wish to invigorate or test. ### Charity Donation Empowering your customers to save for rewards that are charity donations can be a powerful way to gain deeper loyalty with your customers. These types of rewards can also help you reach new customers that value altruistic options with loyalty & rewards. Once customers redeem a charitable reward, you have several options to fulfil the donation depending on links with local charities, which will vary depending on your location. ### 3rd Party You may have trusted business connections that you share customers with or would like to. 3rd party rewards can be a great way to expose your business to new customers and of course work in reverse. Practically, this means your rewards can feature in 3rd party kiosks and 3rd party rewards can feature in your kiosk. Reward point valuation of rewards is the key element to get right between all parties. ### Exclusive Rewards not available to purchase outside the reward programme can generate very high perceived value. i.e., these rewards have to be earned and redeemed exclusively in the loyalty & rewards environment and cannot be bought. ### Merchandise Branded items that promote your business have long been a powerful marketing & PR tool. As your customer moves towards being fans, they will covet branded items to publicly declare their support. ### Temporary Rewards for specific events or campaigns can become collectors items. This is a broad category that can be memorable experiences or items. ### Seasonal Seasonal rewards can develop to become part of a customer's habits that value and advocate. Rules Of The Game As an independent business, you’re naturally more nimble than a multinational. Therefore your rules can be much less onerous and based on goodwill. That said, protecting your business from potential abuse is sensible. To keep the kiosk as self-service as possible, we’d recommend 1 point per customer visit. However, if it’s legitimate for customers to trade with you more than once a day, point collection restrictions can be adjusted to facilitate that.  The kiosk solution by definition is about ‘checking in’ by customers in person to prevent remote point collection (we do support online shop point collection to complement your kiosk solution if required). Should customers check in to the kiosk multiple times, a message will appear to show they have reached their limit of points for the day, but they can still redeem a reward if they wish, refer a friend or form a family group. ## Valuation, redemption & gifting A key metric is to base reward valuation on your current average spend per customer. A basic example - a complimentary slice of cheesecake would typically require more points to qualify for in a cafe than a restaurant, due to average spend per visit. A well balanced rewards list provides customers with redeem options from a few to many points. This spectrum makes your rewards appealing to tourists, locals and those trying out your business.  Gifting points can be targeted to business objectives. Controlling and adjusting gifting is important for gifts to be perceived as gifts and not ‘the norm’. Popular gifting options: - Joining your loyalty & rewards - Referring friends to join - Specific days, times or events Data... ## Monitoring & data insights Being aware of recruitment and reward redemption are two initial metrics, followed by general engagement indicated by point collection by members. These key metrics and more are available in the _"Manager App"_ or dashboard. Email alerts can also be set-up for key system events. ## Customer admin Should manual intervention be needed, a range of options can be used from undoing a redemption, to removing/adding points and various adjustments to customer data (eg fix typos in a customer email address). ## Communication toolkit The dashboard is equipped with communication features like email & sms, including a content creation tool and various automation tools. This can be a secret weapon to directly communicate with your customers, where social media posts have to be funded to reach your audience. ## Rewards / rules change Most settings can be adjusted instantly via the dashboard and have support material and we are always available to to assist. ## Advanced features There are several ‘advanced features’ available depending on specific challenges or business model adjustments you may make. We’ll alert these to you during initial set-up or as your business changes. Customer Recruitment ## The kiosk experience The back end preparation is to present your business, your rewards and communications in the best light to your customers. The kiosk experience is the initial loyalty & rewards touchpoint for point collection and rewards redemption. It's designed to be self-sufficient and customer empowering. Staff involvement is only needed for certain types of instant redemption. Customers can also refer a friend and form family groups via the kiosk, as well as check in using their membership QR code or mobile phone number. ## Plastic cards & smartphone wallets Since the widespread adoption of smartphone wallet technology, there has been a steep decline in the use of plastic membership cards. However, they are still popular in certain niche markets and can still play a role in brand awareness. We provide a design and fulfilment service in the UK for these. Your kiosk supports plastic cards, smartphone wallets and mobile phone numbers as ways to _“check in”_ your loyalty & rewards for customers to collect and redeem. Smartphone wallet integration is also branded to your business, giving you important positioning on your customers phone and additional functionality to view rewards, points balance and their history of transactions. ## “At Table” customer recruitment Customers are not typically looking out for a loyalty kiosk and may bypass the counter in certain types of business (eg table service restaurants). In this scenario, you can deploy the Staff App. This affords staff the opportunity to recruit customers via an app on their phone. You have the option to track and reward customer recruitment by staff, as part of any staff incentive scheme. ## Website, social & email exposure Embed codes and links are fast, integrated ways to make your loyalty & rewards visible online. These are easy to deploy on your website or we can provide a companion website to your loyalty & rewards. ## Using QR codes on menus, posters, point of sale, table pop ups, chalkboards etc For high footfall businesses, QR codes can blend into eye-catching materials. Imagination is the only barrier to using this low cost option. First Wave Of Customers Of course, _“going live” _straight away is an option. However, there is an opportunity to define and fine tune your Loyalty & Rewards by engaging your customers through a structured process. Here are phases we've seen clients gain value from: ## Design Your existing customers are likely to be members of multiple loyalty programmes, which may bring essential insights and ideas to help you differentiate yours where appropriate. Gaining design input could be in the form of a survey, workshop, conversations or even a competition. ## Pre-launch Building anticipation with existing customers can also stimulate new customer interest in your business. This could take the form of bonus points for pre-launch sign-ups, which also gives you the opportunity to begin using email communications to educate members about your loyalty & rewards other engagement opportunities such as events. That simplicity of direct communication (done with care) can be effective, compared to social media that can dilute your message or not even be seen by your audience. Testing this direct communications method with this group of customers can help identify topics, frequency and general style of the content. ## Launch This phase can itself extend over a period of time with ‘launch’ rewards / events to reach as many customers as possible, before you settle into general live operations. Keeping some launch vibe going into normal operations can be achieved with special events, new product launches and the like. Supporting that with bonus points and special rewards becomes second nature with kiosk loyalty & rewards. ## Post Launch Making tweaks, embedding awareness and knowledge among staff and customers is essential for confidence building before deeper adjustments are made to give time for true insights to appear. Regular reviews of your business objectives to adjust the direction of travel for loyalty & rewards is highly recommended. Delivering Business Value Once your loyalty & rewards is active, the focus becomes recruitment and member engagement, plus ensuring the redemption experience is the best it can be. We’d recommend frequently re-visiting your original objectives to develop targets and strategies. It’s worth noting that some metrics may only be possible from using the Gain Loyalty system or you may need to reference your EPOS, your business accounts to maintain a view of how Loyalty & Rewards plays its role in delivering business value, or as part of a business transformation exercise. Example metric categories: - Customer Retention - Average Spend - Demographics - New Products/Services - Events - Commercial Collaborations - Business Development - Charitable Giving ## Direction of travel Loyalty & Rewards is not a “set & forget” sport. Keeping your rewards motivating to new and existing members requires tweaks and changes. A simple change like adjusting the number of points required for a reward to retiring or launching new rewards will reflect the pace of change your customers tolerate. That said, having a diverse range of dynamic rewards is considered best practice, even if you maintain old favourites. ## Fans Our strapline is _“turning your customers into fans”_. What this means to you and your business can take many forms. One thing worth noting before we finish this web book is creating _“Fans”_. Once you're entering this pashe of your journey with loyalty & rewards, Gain Loyalty has expertise and functionality as support you! www.gainloyalty.com