It seems that the 2018 obituary for offline communications and tactics in loyalty and channel incentives programs has been premature. Indeed, we have seen an increase in program sponsors allocating budgets to offline executions during the first eight months of 2018, signaling a retreat from the sole reliance on digital communications.

One of the growing challenges facing all loyalty practitioners is how to drive higher levels of engagement. Traditional methods such as bonus points and bespoke communications, whilst still effective, are losing their impact, particularly when competitor loyalty programs are also engaging in these tactics.

Motivforce has topped off the first half of 2018 by winning three prestigious accolades in the B2B loyalty marketing industry in recognition of its pioneering channel incentive programs, Know Your IBM and Lenovo LEAP.

Motivforce is in line for a host of accolades over the next few months as we’ve been shortlisted for three high profile awards programs with our clients IBM, Lenovo and Celebrity Cruises.

Just in case you might have missed it; a wind of change has started to blow in the loyalty marketing landscape. In Europe the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is about to go live and it marks a heightened privacy consciousness among businesses and their customers. And ultimately, we expect that the principles of GDPR will go global.

Even if you are not operating from the EU, it is not a bad idea to start reflecting on what the new model of data protection will mean for you and your program. Almost certainly, the bar will be raised and your program members will expect you to take your protection of their data to a whole new level.

So, are you GDPR ready? Read on

In today’s markets company success seems to depend increasingly on the capabilities of their business partners. The proliferation of online courses and just-in-time knowledge available through mobile is prompting organizations to pay attention to innovative modes of instruction. Yet, we often see that too many enablement programs focus on the wrong content. When we point this out to clients, we invariably get asked the question ‘But how can we design programs that link to our strategic channel priorities?’ Here’s input for starting that very strategic conversation.

The development of online education modules continues to be a growth market for Motivforce. While we keep expanding our enablement portfolio with some of our accounts in conjunction with the latest social loyalty tools (such as gamification), others are simply all about business partner learning. We often get asked to come up with a convincing business case that outlines how clients will start earning by learning.

We think there are four key benefits, all with direct important bottom-line implications. 

Incentive travel has been seen as the ultimate incentive reward since the 1970's and 1980's when it really started to gain traction. The reason for its success is that it taps into our primal human nature, the adventure of travelling.

Humans have an adventure instinct to visit new places and to be able to do that as a reward is an incredibly enticing driver to achieve the required business outcome.

There has been a lot of debate in recent months about the most effective metrics to use when assessing the performance of a loyalty or incentive program.

To see the real effect of the power of loyalty and incentive program it is also recommended to use Confrere Analysis.

Loyalty and incentive programs are powerful tools. Used effectively they can generate habitual behavioral loyalty, increase sales revenue, decrease customer churn, increase share of wallet and limit variety-seeking behavior.  Many of these results have been empirically tested in academic research and in award winning case studies.

The future of loyalty programs is mobile. This mantra has been reiterated across many loyalty marketing industry trend reports. It is a mantra that clearly has face value. In fact, it is a no-brainer, as much of our life now revolves around our little handhelds. Most loyalty programs are migrating to mobile platforms, allowing their members instant access any place, any time. Being able to check your points balance, the latest reward additions or quickly swiping through a learning module in a client’s parking lot definitely ups the convenience factor. But, it does not guarantee an engaging mobile program experience. That is why a number of forward-looking brands have started to engage their members by inviting them to share their ‘must-share-moments’ with the brand and explore the face value of the mobile camera.

In our conversations with organizations that are assessing B2B loyalty and incentive programs, a number of negative perceptions inevitably surface.

Here are the top 5 myths about loyalty programs and our evidence as to why they simply aren’t true. 

Over the past 20 years, the structure of B2B loyalty programs has grown from simple sales incentives that reward for achieving sales targets to rewarding for profile performance.  Profile performance is the concept of creating the ideal participant profile and rewarding for all behaviours that a participant demonstrates in adopting this profile.

There are many variables to consider when creating the ideal channel loyalty program participant profile and these are broadly classified into the following 5 types of loyalty program participant profiles:

Our research has shown greater loyalty (measured by sales and other valued added behaviours) amongst program participants who are active in enablement tasks, compared to those who are not.  In looking at correlations between those participants who have undertaken enablement tasks, versus those who have not, we have observed three traits....

Technology is now defining the route which companies need to take in order to stay relevant and is changing at a rate so fast that organisations and to some extent, society is struggling to keep up.

And whilst digital transformation can start with the introduction of new tech, business transformation is inevitable, which can mean a complete overhaul in a company's products, positioning and ultimately, business goals.

Are you thinking; "do enablement & incentive programs build loyalty with Channel partners and resellers?" 

If so then here are some key questions to consider if you're thinking about launching a B2B Loyalty Program or even how to re-engineer an existing one

Many loyalty and incentives programs have built status tiers to segment and reward their most active, profitable, engaged and loyal participants.

However there are a number of pit falls that destroy the integrity and motivational pull of loyalty programs if the tier strategy is not properly planned. Here are our 5 tactics to manage downgrading participant tier status...

Motivforce recently undertook a study looking at the most appropriate and effective way to respond to a B2B Loyalty Program participant’s feedback – particularly in the social media environment but with direct implications to contained environments. The results revealed that the most effective response is when help desk employees put themselves in the shoes of the customer before they respond.

How does your company approach enablement with your resellers and is your incentive strategy driving the right performance behaviours?