Creating a winning Channel Loyalty Program: 8 Features that help you stand out

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In business, it is far easier and inexpensive to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. The cost of acquiring a new customer can be five to eight times that of retaining one. This is why keeping your customer is one of the primary objectives of businesses worldwide. But rising competition and decreasing brand loyalty make it challenging to achieve. A tool that can help you engage, interact and retain a customer is a channel loyalty program.

But creating successful channel loyalty programs is difficult. Grey collared professionals of a B2B Loyalty program are not the same as a B2C loyalty program user. However, the task at hand could be uphill but not impossible. For the success of your channel loyalty program, it must have some key features. What are these features, and how are they crucial for your business? Let’s dive deep right into it.

Critical Features for an Effective Channel Loyalty Program

Simple and user-friendly platform

This is the single most critical feature to have for your loyalty program. It should be simple and user-friendly. Simple enough so busy professionals can learn to use it as fast as possible.

Also, gray-collared professionals are not the most tech-savvy audience out there. This is why you must ensure that the learning curve for your platform is not steep. To make your platform even more user-friendly, you must make it multi-lingual.

Web and App version

60% of the total internet users use a mobile device. They are portable and easily accessible. This is why every internet platform should have mobile accessibility, and your loyalty program app is no exception. Moreover, your loyalty program should have a web and mobile app version. The web app will allow anyone with a shared or family phone to access the platform and also eliminate the need to have the latest OS (Operating Software) on your phone to access it. Obviously, the design should be compatible with these devices to help your target audience further.

Practical and relevant rewards

Rewarding the loyalty of your customer just for the sake of it is not going to get you anywhere. What you need to do is have practical and relevant loyalty rewards. One way to do this is to have a dynamic rewards system to help you have a surprise element to the prizes. You can also use this opportunity to connect with your channel partners on an emotional level. How to do this? By giving them family or business-oriented rewards.

Technical Knowledge sharing

Providing training resources to your channel partners to help them upskill and stay updated with industry trends is a great way to win their trust. Provide technical knowledge which will help them understand the product or technology better. By doing this, you imply that you are invested in their success. This is great for winning the trust of your customers and also provides you with an edge over your competitors. Also, use this opportunity to help them understand your product better. The more they know your product, the better it is for your business.

Prompt customer support

Even if you have the world’s best loyalty program, your customers can face technical issues and have concerns and questions that need to be answered as soon as possible. The best way to handle this is to have dedicated customer support. Having trained customer support employees is an asset to have for your platform. To take it one step further, have multilingual customer support. But what language should be included in multilingual customer support? This should be in accordance with your customer base and their primary language. Also, provide chat support options because not everybody will call you to resolve the issues.

Gamification elements

A loyalty program is a serious affair. But this doesn’t mean your platform should be all about business. Make it fun by adding gamification elements to your app. When done rightly, these gamification elements can increase participation, improve engagement and promote a healthy sense of competition. You don’t have to go out of the way to reinvent the wheel for this one. Simple points, badges and leaderboards can go a long way to improve your channel loyalty program.

Business-friendly dashboard

The dashboard for your loyalty software has to be customized to the business needs. An ever-evolving dashboard will help your business in this. It will only show the metrics which is relevant to your unique business needs. You can work with the company to understand more about what metrics are relevant to you and how to track them.

Offline engagement events

Your loyalty program may be online, but that doesn’t mean all your outreach should be through the world wide web only. There's no alternative to in-person human interaction. Leverage this for your business by creating offline engagement programs for your customers. This would be an excellent opportunity for your business to interact and form a personal relationship with your customer. This also is a great way to acknowledge top users. As long as it is meaningful and interactive, it will provide outstanding results for your business.

Conclusion

Channel loyalty programs are an excellent way for a business to improve engagement, enhance brand loyalty and strengthen long-term relationships. But for your loyalty program app to achieve this, it must have features like prompt customer support, offline engagement events and a relevant rewards system.

If you’re a B2B brand looking to create a successful loyalty program, check out iPuraskar. A simple, easy-to-use and completely customizable application with dedicated customer support. We have served auto, paint, and several other industries. Due to this, we have interacted with retailers, mechanics, electricians, painters and the other channel partners of these industries.