4 Goals Every B2B Loyalty Program Needs

B2B customer engagement and customer loyalty mirror many of the same principles we apply for B2C consumers. However, B2B loyalty marketing does have unique challenges.

In another article, we highlighted the 3 Core Principles every successful B2B loyalty program should follow and that Brierley incorporates into every B2B loyalty solution we consult on or design.

In this article, we delve deeper into how you can maximize the success of your B2B customer loyalty solution with these four fundamental goals.

B2B Loyalty Program Goals

There are four fundamental goals every B2B loyalty program needs to succeed, each of which will be discussed in more detail below.

1. Reduce confusion
2. Define your B2B customers
3. Identify and track your B2B customers
4. Improve both rational and emotional loyalty

By ensuring every loyalty solution Brierley consults on or creates has these goals, our B2B loyalty strategists improve brand’s loyalty and their loyalty marketing ROI.

1. Reduce Confusion

Every B2B loyalty program should have a goal of reducing confusion, for both you and your business customers. All customer engagement and loyalty programs should be as intuitive and simple to understand as possible. If you are considering a new B2B loyalty solution, remember many of the same rules apply as they do to B2C loyalty solutions.

Identify all the other top customer discount programs and initiatives your business has in place. Brierley’s loyalty strategists and consultants find that brands often have preexisting marketing campaigns and loyalty initiatives that can either be eliminated or consolidated under your new umbrella loyalty program.

Managing all of your brand’s customer loyalty and engagement initiatives under one loyalty solution will reduce confusion for both you and your clients.

If your business offers multiple loyalty programs that are disconnected and hard for you to explain, it's likely that your clients will have a hard time understanding them too. To improve customer engagement and appreciation for your loyalty programs, make sure they are easy to understand and work together seamlessly.

2. Define Your B2B Customers

One of the goals for your B2B loyalty program should be to help you define your business customers.

Who is your target business customer?

Identifying your target B2B customer may be harder than you think! For example, you may think your target customer is small business owners, but often they aren’t the ones who make these kinds of decisions, especially as the scale of the business increases. In this example, expand your target business customer to include people like office managers or administrators who are more likely to have a say in purchasing decisions.

You may have larger client organizations with multiple locations, each with independent managers or decision makers, as was Brierley’s experience with a large medical device provider. If that’s the case, your B2B loyalty solution may need to consider multiple potential types of ‘members’. To maximize B2B engagement, each member should have unique contacts, rolling up to a master relationship, with unique benefits and rewards that appeal to all levels.

3. Identify and Track Your B2B Customers

Once you’ve identified your target business customers, how will you identify and track their purchases and other engagement?

At a minimum, you should perform a review and identify your existing technology platforms, including:

• all customer touchpoints
• data platforms
• point-of-sale systems
• communication platforms

This list should include any other system or platform where other data flows to identify gaps and opportunities.

In our experience, we have found that in many cases, although there may be a unique customer identifier like account number or customer ID, not all systems that the customer encounters capture it, much less retain the information necessary to enable the reporting and personalized customer experience you are striving for.

Accordingly, to ensure any proposed loyalty solution is technologically feasible, Brierley’s loyalty program design strategists and technology experts conduct a thorough technology and data infrastructure review as part of our customer engagement and loyalty program design process.

4. Designed for Both Rational Loyalty & Emotional Loyalty

Successful customer engagement and loyalty programs must be designed to build both rational loyalty and emotional loyalty. Your loyalty solution should appeal to your customers’ heads and hearts. B2B customers enjoy discounts, rebates, and earning points toward rewards as much as B2C consumers, and you need to forge personal, emotional ties between B2B customers and your brand.

If you have a rewards program, great B2B rewards for business customers include:

• concert tickets
• sports events
• vacations

You should also consider adding exclusive “money-can’t-buy” experiences tied to your brand. Some outside-the-box rewards that business customers might value could include:

• access to senior leaders in your organization
• input into new products and services
• invitations to serve on VIP customer panels

All of these can be used as ways to elevate their customer experience (CX) further while growing closer ties with your brand.

For small business B2B customers, reward programs could offer content and tools that help them grow their businesses, retain employees, and generally make their businesses more successful. Examples could include digital and/or in-person networking opportunities, forums, and guest speaker/webinars, and initiatives with local universities’ business schools.

Measure Customer Loyalty with BLQ

If you need help understanding where your brand currently stands against your competitors in terms of customer loyalty, Brierley offers our proprietary Brierley Loyalty Quotient (BLQ) technology.

The BLQ is designed to measure both rational loyalty — attributes like price, quality, and convenience — and emotional loyalty, which would include attributes like love and affinity toward your brand compared against your competitors and industry standards.

Consult with B2B Loyalty Experts

The core principles in designing successful B2B customer engagement and loyalty solutions are similar to those of consumer-facing loyalty programs. However, by considering these four additional goals that should be part of every B2B loyalty solution, you’ll be several steps closer to operating an exceptional loyalty program for your business customers.

If you’d like to see how Brierley’s customer engagement and loyalty strategists can help your brand create and/or optimize a relationship-focused loyalty solution for your B2B customers, please contact us today.