Identify & Implement Engagement Drivers For Your Channel Program

Channel engagement is a hot topic of discussion among B2B marketers for good reason. Quality channel partner and customer engagement is proven to have a positive impact on brand-customer relationships that leads to increased sales and stronger loyalty. However the key to success isn't just boosting engagement in general - it's driving the right types of engagements that resonate with your various channel audiences. 

Identifying and implementing the right types of engagement and engagement drivers can be tricky, but it will also provide a major strategic advantage for your program. If you are looking to level up your channel or brand loyalty, there are some important considerations before seeking out solutions:

First, Identify Your Audiences

Sometimes there is a disconnect between who, at which level, and when your target audience could benefit from a nudge, new information, or recognition during the loyalty process. It’s important to categorize and analyze each different audience prior to launch. Identify each audience to understand the unique needs at every level of engagement to deliver an effective experience each time they interact with your brand. 

Understand Their Experiential Roadblocks

Second to identifying audiences is understanding your audiences. To create optimized timing from program education to nurturing and engagement, the individual needs of each end user group must be understood. Understand, based on audience insights, potential roadblocks in the loyalty experience in order to create the most optimal path to engagement. 

Create Specific Goals

• Ensure the program structure is multi-faceted and aligned with your business objectives by incentivizing brand, category, or individual item purchases.
• Design the program to drive growth. Reward customers for sales growth over a fixed period of time such as YOY, QOQ, or MOM with a variable percentage or fixed multiplier.
• Reward orders are processed by certain methods at a higher rate than others. For example,  If online is more important than phone or fax, those order types can be worth more points. 
• Gamify the program by creating levels based on sales volume of customers. For example, automatically move up a customer's level as required volumes are attained.
  
  

Here are a few common roadblocks to B2B loyalty engagement and how the right platform solves them:

Lack of Communication

The key to high enrollment rates is presenting the details, benefits, and mechanisms in a clear, simple format. With the right technology and management, suppliers and distributors can communicate with end customers through tiered user levels to not only provide laser-targeting messaging and information, but also to strengthen core relationships that could otherwise be strained by a lack of valuable customer data. 

It helps to know your customer: With the right platform, timely, customized, and automated omnichannel messaging becomes easy to build, track, and manage. With communication integrations like sms text, mobile apps, and targeted promotions, brands can configure a system that puts the right information in front of the right people at the right time to drive program success. 

Point Systems That Miss The Mark

The reward needs to be meaningful; rate of return back to your customer needs to fall in line with their expectation based on their overall spend or purchases. Many programs fall short in meeting the reward expectation of the customer.

The right type of engagement isn’t one size-fits-all: Rigid, static, or inflexible point systems don’t allow brands to customize rules to drive the actions specific to your business goals. Some objectives are to increase category purchases and increase average order value, others are to grow partnerships–there is no one-size-fits all approach to a system as complex as channel loyalty. Disconnected or irrelevant point systems can create more problems than solutions. Advanced point logic allows brands to configure highly customized triggers and rules to automate the correct connections. The right solution will provide point rule agility based on brand KPIs and objectives.

Build Awareness 

Building awareness is key to program success. Spreading program awareness takes thoughtful, organized action. A loyalty program is more than just a way to fast-track growth, retention, and revenue; it is also an opportunity to collect valuable customer data to make guided decisions as the business grows alongside the program. It’s imperative to align program management with marketing principles to mitigate and distill the influx of information in order to effectively scale. 

If you have an existing program, we have the tools to modify, adjust, and bolster your program with custom flexible tools and configurations. To learn more about how Brandmovers loyalty team can help you boost engagement within your channel program, reach out to us today!