Category: Customization

Why curated customer loyalty reward triggers keep multi-demographic audiences engaged

Why curated customer loyalty reward triggers keep multi-demographic audiences engaged 

Grace Alexander

MarTech Blogger | June 6, 2022


Customer engagement isn’t a one-and-done process. Capturing attention is only the first step when it comes to building lasting relationships between brands and their audiences. The most successful companies in this regard are those that actively fight back against disengagement and loss of interest using lifestyle marketing.

When businesses offer a narrow selection of rewards and loyalty offerings, they’re at heightened risk of losing customer attention over time. Having a variety of potential incentives for customers is a powerful advantage for a business, as is using automated triggers to guide each individual to the rewards that best suit them. 

Why do some customers lose interest in rewards? 

Simply having a rewards program is no longer a major differentiator for a business. Rather, a company that is serious about loyalty must consistently prove that its rewards offerings have value and meaning to customers. 

 Engagement is the goal of a customer rewards program, and that in turn is contingent on offering rewards that fit audience interests and meet or exceed their expectations. There are a few traits that can determine whether a rewards program fires up consumers’ interest or is quickly forgotten: 

  • Does everyone get the same rewards? If there’s only one rewards progression, a company may find itself failing to connect with a significant portion of its potential audience. Consumers today are very diverse, so an ideal rewards program will offer customized incentives to hold interest. 
  • How frequently are rewards given? If a business offers a low-frequency rewards program, requiring numerous interactions before consumers receive anything valuable, they may find that interest is low. The vague promise of future value is not very compelling to customers, so brands should reach out often. 

As Hubspot noted, the most effective companies at building loyalty achieve this goal by giving generous rewards often and fully integrating these programs with their overall sales processes. Rather than tacked-on additions, these businesses’ rewards offerings are fundamental parts of the way they sell their products and services to customers. 

Hubspot suggested that when organizations achieve a high level of integration between rewards and the rest of their business, the rewards program ceases to be its own separate entity. Rather, these businesses simply offer their loyalty incentives at all times, inviting customers to engage more deeply. 

How do you counteract customer disengagement? 

It’s one thing to create an environment conducive to audience engagement. It’s another to actively fight back against parts of the customer journey where buyers may fall out of touch with businesses. When working on this type of engagement strategy, it’s important to remember that nearly any interaction can be customized to keep customer interest. 

 Customer behaviors follow patterns. By collecting interaction data, businesses can map out the paths their audiences are taking. Do people typically disengage after a certain amount of time? Is there a supplemental experience that could make an ongoing connection more fun or entertaining? 

 McKinsey & Company Partner José Carluccio recommended that companies look into their breakage patterns, determining which segments of their customer bases are not engaging with loyalty programs. Figuring out which types of customers aren’t staying engaged is the first step to improving the relevance of rewards offerings and triggers. 

 Once businesses have determined where customers are disengaging, as well as which groups of consumers are most likely to break off engagement with the brand, they can respond by adding new elements to the program. Carluccio recommended offerings such as periodic reminders to clients that they have unredeemed rewards as well as more redemption options, potentially even including charitable gifts. 

What is the value of customized customer rewards triggers? 

One potential cause for disengagement — or a lack of engagement in the first place — is the use of rewards triggers that don’t match up with how segments of a company’s audience actually interact with the brand. Customization can resolve this issue, attaching loyalty points to nearly any activity and bringing a wide swath of customers into closer contact with the brand. 

 Companies can reward both online and offline interactions with custom rewards triggers. In-store purchases, app engagements, sign-ups for services, logging in to accounts — these and more can help customers earn points in a rewards scheme. 

 The ability to create a highly customized rewards-earning process helps businesses engage with their audiences in two ways. On one hand, it allows brands to reach their customers where they are, offering points for their preferred interaction styles. On the other, it lets organizations map out preferred customer journeys, encouraging certain types of activities. 

 To start creating these better-directed customer journeys, brands can map out the ways their customers prefer to interact with their rewards offerings. American Express recommended using diagrams of consumers’ dealings with organizations, across multiple channels and over time, to identify the gaps where disengagement is most likely to occur and target those weak spots. 

Businesses that understand how their customers interact with their offerings, and how they’d like to, are well-positioned to update their rewards triggers. Creating new sides to a loyalty program can open up the strategy to a wider selection of customer groups and demographics than ever before. 

Perx customization helps your brand thrive 

No two brands are exactly alike, which means customization is always relevant from a rewards and loyalty standpoint. This is one reason to choose the Perx Loyalty and Engagement Platform as the backbone of your organization’s rewards and loyalty program. 

 The Perx platform’s Rules Engine allows a high level of control over rewards triggers, right out of the box. By designing a system of tailored rewards based on what various groups of customers actually want for your business, you can deliver a rewards program with fewer obvious points of disengagement and a smoother customer journey overall. 

The value of a rewards strategy is at its greatest when consumers actually want to use it and engage with it. Customization via a powerful rules engine puts this goal within reach for your brand. Request a demo of the Perx Loyalty and Engagement Platform to see this solution in action. 

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The little rules engine that could: Creating the ultimate customer journey

The little rules engine that could: Creating the ultimate customer journey

Amrith Ganesh

SVP, Marketing & Customer Analytics | May 17, 2022


When dealing with customers digitally, it’s important to create a well-planned-out journey. This ideal set of interactions will keep people on the right track as they engage with the brand and deepen their loyalty over time. Creating this journey, however, can be a challenge.

Too many companies are spending excessive amounts of money to keep their customers on a preferred path. Rather than using an automated rules engine that will set rewards and triggers for loyalty and rewards programs, they’re working with expensive and restrictive manual efforts. These major expenses cut into the return on investment, offsetting the value and usefulness of loyalty programs and other engagement features.

What your organization needs to get out of this pattern is an effective, affordable rules engine. With the right rules in place, you can lay out a suitable path for your customers while keeping up a strong ROI.

More time conceptualizing, less time executing

Getting customers to engage with a brand in a specific way can be difficult and time-consuming if there are too many manual processes involved. When a business doesn’t have much automation in place and customer outreach is handled on a case-by-case basis, employees are investing time that could be better spent elsewhere.

A business that is manually guiding customers from one engagement to the next may be losing its ability to pull back, look at the big picture and form a strategy. Ironically, these companies spending more time controlling the customer journey end up with less control, because they can’t create an overarching plan.

Creating a smooth customer experience, where users are guided naturally from one interaction to the next, should be a major priority for businesses today. This is especially important because Gartner research has found that customer expectations are rising and 81% of marketers envision CX as the competitive battlefield of the future.

How can your business create a positive CX while performing less manual outreach? It all comes down to automation, powered by a strong rules engine. The custom triggers and outcomes programmed into the engine determine the path of a customer’s journey, with less intervention from your team. No matter how sophisticated your customer engagement strategy is, there’s an automation solution for you.

An continuous customer journey

When designing an automated, rules-based customer journey, you should make sure there are no obvious off-ramps for your customers. This means eliminating the inconveniences that may make a person stop engaging with the brand.

An off-ramp can be anything that hurts a customers’ enjoyment, such as an irrelevant reward, a long wait before re-engagement or a bad mobile experience. Ideally, each contact will lead to further engagements, with the customer setting their chosen pace. Each micro-experience is strung together into the next, creating a continuous and seamless journey.

Each time a customer engages with a brand, the interaction should be positive and resonant. CMSWire quoted Harvard Business School’s Gerald Zaltman, who states that 95% of customers’ buying decisions are emotional, rather than coldly logical. If your brand is making people feel good, they’re more likely to stay loyal.

CMSWire added that personal touches are a valuable element of the customer journey, as long as they are added seamlessly into the journey, and in ways that improve interactions. This is another area where automation is better than heavy manual intervention. Customers should be getting tailored experiences by default.

A rules engine is the behind-the-scenes technology that makes a never-ending, personalized customer journey possible. A good engine will allow your team to create an intricate system of triggers and outcomes to keep customers engaged indefinitely through earn and burn or loyalty points, rewards and hyper-personalized experiences that are immediately relevant to them.

With varied game mechanics for earning and using points on customized rewards, you can win the CX war and keep your audience interested.

Actions equal triggers, milestones equal rewards

Building out a loyalty strategy on a rule engine means creating customized loyalty actions. Common interactions serve as triggers, and when customers reach milestones in their engagement with the brand, they receive rewards.

These reward allotments and the triggers that activate them will differ for each brand, and they give you the chance to lead customers down ideal paths for long-term loyalty. Salesforce noted that rewards can be more interesting than just discounts on future purchases. Your brand can offer free subscription services to customers who reach a loyalty threshold, or even invite them to exclusive events.

When you’re using a rules engine to plan out a strategic loyalty and rewards program, you’re free to go more in-depth about what you offer to your most engaged customers. Your choice should reflect customer data and intensive research, so you can be sure you’re giving them rewards and experiences that fit their goals and lifestyles.

Loyalty programs may even include offers that don’t go directly into your customers’ pockets: Salesforce added that some compelling engagement programs involve charitable components. By engaging with your brand, people are contributing to worthy causes they care about.

Perx has the rules engine you need

To get started building the automation-driven customer rewards journey of your dreams, you can invest in the Perx Loyalty and Engagement Platform.

The rules engine enables deep customization without time-consuming and difficult manual adjustments. You can design compelling reward earning and redemption scenarios that encourage customers to interact with your business in specific ways, leading them on a journey that suits both their preferences and your objectives.

Customized rules can be based on the real-time information coming in from real customer interactions. This means you can tweak and optimize the program based on actual information rather than assumptions. Such a level of precision allows you to shape the customer journey and experience in ways that will deliver results.

Rather than having to build a rules engine from scratch, the Perx Lifestyle Marketing platform gives you this capability right out of the box. Request a demo to learn exactly how it works.

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Global businesses have driven over 5 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

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