Loyalty partnerships

Making loyalty work for you

Although the economics of loyalty are well understood and outlined within any marketing text book, the economics of a successful loyalty programme are complicated and often dependent on a web of partnerships and supplier agreements. Experience has shown that an effective partnership strategy can help to address a range of strategic goals. Partnerships can help gain a critical mass of customers and/or encourage frequent interaction. Partnerships can also be used as a means of reducing the cost of rewards and maximising the return on the data collected and the investment made in the programme.

Delivering the promise

The process used will depend greatly on your strategic needs but may include:

• Strategy - How can partnerships help attract customers, build frequency of interaction, raise revenue and reduce costs?
• Selection – Which partners would offer the greatest potential?
• Concept development – What will the customer proposition be?
• What will the partnership proposition be?
• Contact strategy – How will I generate interest and access key decision makers?
• Implementation – How will the partnerships be integrated within the existing infrastructure?
• How will the partnerships be communicated? How will staff be trained?
• Management – How will partnerships be managed in the long-term?

Account experience

Affinity Solutions’ consultants have a wide experience in the facilitation, negotiation and management of a number of high profile loyalty partnership projects including:

• The development and implementation of a multi-partner loyalty strategy for Alliance & Leicester. Successes to date include the facilitation of partnerships with 14 key retail brands including, BP, Vodafone, Currys, Hertz and Green Flag
• Development of a partnership strategy for a leading UK grocer with annual sales in excess of £8.3 billion. Our role was to devise a partnership strategy to reduce the cost of rewards by negotiating a range of partnerships. This partnership loyalty programme subsequently reduced its annual points liability by £2 million
• Development and implementation of credit card partnership strategy for a leading travel brand which successfully integrated a credit card proposition with an existing loyalty programme
• Strategy development, management and implementation of key loyalty partnerships for Shell UK’s SMART programme which included working with 12 key brands including Dixons Stores Group, Hilton Hotels, and Victoria Wine