1. FOOD FOR THOUGHT
TOP 10 COOLEST THINGS
GOING ON IN LOYALTY “POS is dead, long live the new ‘invisible payments’.
Loyalty programs are changing, and the pace of change is Goodbye IBM and Aloha POS, and hello cloud-based
faster than ever. Here are the top 10 cool things you need computing.”
to think about in 2013 when putting together a loyalty
program.
10. BIG IS GOOD, BIGGER IS BETTER 9Loves where it’s just about the shoes.
If you are going to launch a loyalty program, go for the 5. GAME MECHANICS
gusto or don’t go. Firms putting less than 1% of their Game mechanics is today’s rocket fuel of loyalty programs. It’s the
marketing budget and who don’t have 100% C-level buy-in new juice, or icing on the cake that will generate the engagement
will not succeed. you need. Want LTVs and more revs? Think gamification. It used
Winning example: www.playatmcd.com to be social, but social is yesterday’s story—it’s now an assumed
ingredient.
9. YOU’RE NOT ALONE Examples: Badgeville.com client implementations by Taskrabbit, Prosperloans and
There are now 8000 and growing national loyalty programs. Active Trainer
Most of your customers are members of at least 50, where
it used to be maybe 5—their grocer, a private label credit 4. PAYMENTS ARE THE NEW PLCC (PRIVATE LABEL CREDIT CARD)
card like The Gap, and maybe an airline or cash-back credit What Alliance Data was to the industry, Square and others will
card. Now you can join a loyalty program or two every time be. The days of the PLCC are over. Millennias saw their parents
you go to a local farmer’s market AND pay with Square! lose their homes because of their debt and having too many
Example: www.jayscheesesteak2.com
credit cards. Today it’s all about ACH, debit and avoiding credit
card games. Don’t be seduced into tying your program to a PLCC
8. AWESOMENESS IS EXPECTED
unless your target customer is in their late 50s.
Punchtab.com (and to an extent Belly) allow any merchant Examples: Starbucks’ mobile apps, SquareWallet, LevelUp, PayPal wallet, Google
to look and perform like a mature million dollar program. Wallet and increasingly features inside Apple’s Passport.
The storytelling, program rules (tiers, thresholds, award
types) and functionality are increasingly available out of the 3. POS IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE NEW ‘INVISIBLE PAYMENTS’
box, very inexpensively and very well understood. Years POS is short for ‘point-of-sale’ or the cash registers you see in
ago, I ran around trying to get anyone to listen to my ‘What retail stores. Goodbye IBM and Aloha POS, and hello cloud based
is Loyalty’ presentation—those days are long gone. computing. Previously, 90% of one’s time designing a loyalty
Examples: www.starwoodhotels.com/preferredguest and www.punchtab.com program was around the closed POS in store and 10% went into
the program after you figured out how to make it work with POS.
7. APIs AND EASY CONNECTIONS Now the numbers are the opposite—you put 90% into designing,
There are no loyalty islands—NOT deeply integrating and building, iterating the loyalty program that runs across all your
connecting through Facebook,Twitter, Paypal, Janrain, consumer touch points.
Shopkick and perhaps most importantly Apple Passbook is
loyalty suicide! It’s not just about you and your program, it’s 2. THE OLD ADAGE OF ‘FIRST BUILD YOUR MEMBER BASE
as much about where you are connected and with who. AND THEN MONETIZE AND REWARD’…FORGETTAABOUTIT!
In a day where celebrities can acquire a million twitter followers
6. WHAT’S YOUR SIGNATURE INSIGHT? in a day, you need to be ready to reward and monetize out of the
What is your unique point-of-view, your point of gate. There is no time to wait around, engage, shoot and shoot
differentiation, your north star? What do you do/bring to again-twice! In today’s world, the lifespan of a loyalty program
market that’s truly different? And who are you targeting? member is maybe 20% of what it was 5 years ago. With this
Just focus on your unique attributes and build from there. reduced half-life, you have less time to fully execute—and you
Are your members bald, Yankee Fans, super cheap? need to drink the Red Bull 24x7 out of the gate.
Whatever it is—make your program standout for them first
and foremost. Forget offering rewards like Mini Coopers I spent $50M launching a free internet service provider (ISP)
and trips to Italy that nobody remembers, make the in 2000 (The Bluelight ISP) for Kmart, all just to get the email
rewards immediate. addresses so I could communicate across channels! Thankfully,
Examples: Sephora.com where you get $100 in samples and Nine West’s
those days are gone.

2. 1. TRAFFIC IS EVERYWHERE
And don’t think you need to just go to Facebook or
Twitter to find it. Find the consumer Internet play that
most closely aligns to your business. The band Green Day
found the bake-your-own music powerhouse, Soundcloud.
Soundcloud’s millions of registered uniques powered Green Real-time is the real deal.
Days’ NumeroUnoFan program to incredible heights. Green Members expect to be rewarded
Day has hundreds of thousands of loyalty fans thanks to
in real-time anytime, anywhere.
SoundCloud.
It’s called sense & respond.
.00 REAL-TIME IS THE REAL DEAL
There is an event-based transformation going on in loyalty.
Members expect to be rewarded in real-time, anytime
anywhere. It’s called sense and respond—not campaign
marketing—and it means you need to reward and provide
real-time surprise, real-time magic. Harrah’s does it with
their Total Rewards program—in Las Vegas and around the
world—you get points and awards in literally anything you gamification, email, POS and mobile all working really well
might do once you arrive at one of their properties, and together, but the Internet makes it both harder and easier
even before you get there! Vivek Ranadive’s book, The to execute. You simply need to collaborate with all the
Power of Now details how companies are changing it up amazing tools, sites, and connected possibilities as much as
and providing incentives to engage all the time. You got to you can, and be ready on day one to wholly execute on an
read this book! incredible scale. It’s a great day to be alive in loyaltyland!
Executing in loyalty today means you need to conduct an
orchestra, but it doesn’t mean you need to buy a concert Mark Goldstein founded and was CEO of Loyalty Lab, now a part
of TIBCO Software, the technology provider behind many of the
hall, pay 75 full-time musicians and instruments and
nation’s biggest loyalty programs. He has had his hand in launching
negotiate with a union. It’s more like E.D.M (electronic
over 100 national loyalty programs. Mark got involved in the loyalty
dance music) where you need to be Deadmaus5, have your world in 1999 when he Co-Founded and was CEO of Bluelight.com,
headphones on and an iMac in hand. Yes, you need to a business formed by Kmart and investors to find multi-channel
get CRM, coupons, samples, third party site integration, customers nationwide. Follow him on Twitter: @markgee.
Love at second sight and ever after. A few of our customers:
At TIBCO Loyalty Lab, we don’t take chances with your customers. 1-800-Flowers OSH The North Face
That’s why our approach to building loyalty is to keep them happy at Columbia Pharmaca Integrative Thrivent Financial
every stage of the relationship, giving them what they haven’t even NineWest Pharmacy Virgin America
thought to ask for. Our team of experts partners with you to redefine
how we think about customer retention. Through proprietary data,
metrics, and analytics, we help you anticipate action, predict needs, and
take advantage of every opportunity to strengthen your bond. So you’ll
never say goodbye again.
About TIBCO Loyalty Lab TIBCO Loyalty Lab www.tibco.com Tel: +1 415-633-1400
TIBCO Loyalty Lab, a division of TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX), helps 575 Market Street www.loyaltylab.com Fax: +1 415-659-8270
develop profitable and long-lasting customer relationships for some of the 15th Floor loyaltylab@tibco.com
world’s largest brands. Our on-demand loyalty platform supports end-to-end San Francisco, CA 94105
loyalty programs that can influence behavior across all channels – mobile,
social, online and in-store. TIBCO Loyalty Lab’s deep loyalty knowledge base
and technology solutions enable organizations to cultivate a deeper and more
sustained brand relationship with millions of their customers from the day their
programs go live.
©2012, TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, The Power of Now, TIBCO Software, and TIBCO Collaborative Information Manager are trademarks or registered
trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective
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