World knows the importance of customer loyalty programs but the stage is half-set when it comes to running channel partner loyalty programs. This blog is a compilation of 5 upcoming trends in the channel loyalty ecosystem that distribution-led businesses should keep an eye on.
Are These Trends Enough To Run Successful Campaigns?
The fact that trends keep on changing from time to time should give readers a rough idea that these channel loyalty programs trends alone will not make your loyalty schemes successful. A cutting-edge solution empowering seamless scheme creation with measurable KPIs to track the performance of schemes is the real game changer.
However, the following trends will help you get a clear picture regarding the overall scenario of channel partner space and how to tweak schemes to drive maximum participation from your channel partners.
5 Trends To Keep An Eye On
- Channel Partners Are Sales Influencers – Channel partners like retailers, masons, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc act as prime influencers for your business because last-mile sales go through them. Customers interact with them first and then with the brand they suggest to their customers. This trend is gaining a lot of traction with brands and influencers becoming an integral part of channel sales and marketing.
The fact that channel partners are closest to end consumers, makes them a crucial part of selling and marketing activities.
- Analytics-Led Scheme Creation – Since inception, analytics has been a critical part of channel loyalty programs. With paper-based loyalty schemes, companies had a limited scope of fetching data. But with the advent of digital loyalty schemes, companies now have the liberty to create schemes digitally as well as get a comprehensive view of the data sets to help them with strategic decisions.
This trend will continue and it’s going to get leaner with big data, predictive, prescriptive, and social. Soon, advanced analytics will be leveraged using statistical algorithms and predictive models to find unexplored correlations. Analytics certainly helps build more direct, meaningful, and personalized loyalty schemes for channel partners and ultimately, brands will benefit from it.
- Enable Sales Channel With Learning Modules – Channel partners are occupied with daily business challenges. As a company, you need to think out of the box and nurture them to become better in their trade by providing exclusive learning materials. Businesses should keep the content used in any kind of learning program to be immersive, creative, and highly interactive to bring about this transformation in channel partners.
In paper-based loyalty programs, companies only had the option to organize generic seminars and expect all of their channel partners to grasp all the modules in one go. This doesn’t happen with digital loyalty programs where companies can send personalized training materials from time to time with a phenomenal cut in their cost. Additionally, when companies invest in the training and development of their channel partners, they get back their loyalty which further gives them a competitive edge in the marketplace.
- Diverse Reward Catalogue – Rewards are powerful motivators for channel partners. This trend alone is enough to tell whether your schemes will work or not. According to studies, experiential rewards attract more engagement and have a long-lasting effect rather than cash discounts or direct-to-bank transfers.
The more diverse rewarding options are available, the more the chances of channel partners going for them. Cash is a great motivating factor, but shopping coupons, gift vouchers, sponsored trips, electrical appliances, insurance, or gold coins also can engage channel partners.
- Build a Digital Environment For Your Channel Partners – When you decide to transition from a paper-based to a QR code-based loyalty program, the scope increases to a great extent. The scope to personalize schemes, the scope of disbursing diverse rewards, the scope to nurture channel partners as well as scope to fetch real-time data – increase vertically and horizontally.
O4S Helps You Inculcate These Trends Like a Pro
With the channel loyalty management solution provided by O4S, companies can experience the above-mentioned channel loyalty programs trends in the real world. Our cutting-edge solution enables companies to disburse diverse rewards – the kind of rewards that encourage channel partners to go for it.
Additionally, the solution also acts as a data generator. Details of individual channel partners, their performance, and purchase behavior are available in real-time and through a comprehensive dashboard. These data points when compiled, give an in-depth view of the overall performance of channel partners and the loyalty scheme.
Conclusion
Channel loyalty management solution powered by O4S is your one-stop platform to plan and run digital loyalty programs for channel partners. The solution not only blends all the above trends but at the same time is your data generation powerhouse. Get in touch with our performance-driven team to get a competitive advantage with digitally managed loyalty schemes.
