The loyalty program market is growing rapidly with the increasing number of digital natives. Statistics also show that the global loyalty management market will be worth over $18.2 billion by 2026.
Digital natives have higher expectations from brands and are more likely to take their business elsewhere if they aren’t satisfied. To win the loyalty of this demanding generation, brands are rapidly transforming their loyalty programs to leverage the latest digital technologies such as gamification, big data, personalized rewards, and frictionless mobile solutions.
As a result of these changes in customer behavior and preferences, loyalty platform providers are also experiencing a surge in demand from businesses of all sizes to implement loyalty programs and drive measurable results.
Our PassKit is one of the best loyalty platform providers. It helps you create your loyalty program, design digital loyalty cards, distribute them on multiple marketing channels and track redemption rates with advanced analytics. What’s best, it provides a 45-day free trial to allow you to test all available features. All you need to do is create your free account today.
In this article, will discuss the importance of customer loyalty programs, give you tips on how to choose loyalty platform providers, and provide you insights into the top customer loyalty software on the market. But first, let’s briefly explain what a loyalty platform provider is.
What is a loyalty platform provider?
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A loyalty platform provider is a company that provides the technology and tools to create, manage and grow a custom loyalty program. It provides everything from customer relationship management (CRM) software to customer data analysis.
Providing these services, loyalty platform providers help you build and maintain customer relationships by offering incentives, discounts, digital gift cards, or other benefits to boost customer engagement. In addition, you may offer custom rewards or special deals for repeat customers, like VIP status or exclusive access to events.
There are several different types of loyalty platform providers. Some are full-service companies that do all of the work, while others specialize in one aspect of the process. Others provide technology tools that make it easier for organizations to run successful loyalty programs. Whatever their focus, they all share one thing in common: the goal of growing customer loyalty.
Why use customer loyalty solutions?
Today’s buying scene is complex. To increase post-purchase customer retention, you need to do more than give out coupons to your clients.
To appropriately reward customers’ loyalty that doesn’t involve buying, you can set up a rewards program that will motivate your customers to stay with your business. These rewards can be available for a limited time or only once.
So, how do you build the right rewards program for your customer base? By using the right loyalty platform provider!
You can expand your new and existing customers’ reward choices by using customer loyalty platforms. Building personalized loyalty programs also helps you differentiate yourself from your competitors by providing a more personalized experience for customers.
Going for a robust loyalty program software should let you change your rewards based on the customer journey, customer segmentation, and the kind of loyalty behavior you want to encourage.
What to consider when choosing a loyalty program provider?
Picking the right loyalty platform provider can be challenging. Customer loyalty programs need to be highly flexible and well-managed to succeed. In addition, the new piece of software must fit into the existing infrastructure without requiring the implementation of new tools.
In most cases, it’s not about having a ton of features but rather establishing a scalable technology stack that can complement future business expansion.
Your customer loyalty program strategy should guide the selection of customer loyalty software. You should also take into account present and future commercial and technological needs.
Here are the three key things to remember while choosing loyalty platform providers for your business:
Defining essential business and technical criteria
If you’re looking for a customer loyalty software provider, you may already know what type of loyalty program you want to create.
Questions to answer
- How do you want your loyalty program to work?
- Will you need additional features in the future?
- What components do you need to cover the most common use cases?
- What technical and security requirements does the customer loyalty software provide?
Preparing an explicit request for proposal (RFP) that outlines the business and technical requirements can make selecting a loyalty platform provider more effortless. It will also assist you in clarifying your loyalty program vision.
Defining total costs
Look at your customer-centric metrics and do some simple math to see whether even a tiny boost will provide enough value to justify the expense.
Questions to answer
- Do you believe client loyalty is essential for your business operations?
- Is customer retention one of your top three goals this year?
- What do you want to achieve with your loyalty program in the future?
These answers should assist you in selecting the proper loyalty platform provider. If you’re in a highly competitive business, a solution that lets you create a personalized customer loyalty program will help you get an advantage over your competitors.
Include the IT team in the process and assess their capabilities
Large and medium-sized businesses will likely have significantly greater resources to adopt customer loyalty programs. When deciding between on-premises and SaaS, the IT component is essential.
On the other hand, if you have limited resources and a budget, you need a loyalty platform provider that will allow you to create your loyalty program without coding or design skills and manage all activities by yourself.
Questions to answer
- Do you require an on-premise solution?
- Do you have an internal IT staff or a partner you collaborate with?
- Will they have sufficient time to learn how to use the new software?
- Is dedicated staff currently supporting your other applications?
What to do next
Choosing the best customer loyalty software is a matter of strategy. In that sense, here are the key points to summarize what we explained above:
- Consider both the present and the future requirements
- Determine the level of flexibility you require
- Determine how you want the loyalty program to evolve
- Evaluate the ownership of the loyalty program software
- While calculating the costs, examine the full TCO of the loyalty system, including the license, hosting, maintenance, updates, and future expansion costs
Now that you have a clear understanding of loyalty platform providers, let’s discuss the top five vendors on the market.
The best loyalty platform providers in 2022
After carefully observing and analyzing the currently available customer loyalty software on the market, here’s the list of the best customer loyalty programs to check out.
1. PassKit
PassKit is a SaaS that enables businesses of any size to increase sales, loyalty, and retention rates using customers’ familiarity and trust with Apple Wallet and Google Pay.
PassKit assists business owners in rewarding customers and integrating their online and offline experiences without friction. It provides the most straightforward method for converting physical store cards and vouchers into digital passes.
New and existing customers can store and use digital loyalty cards, membership cards, or coupons with their built-in digital wallets without downloading an app. It ultimately enhances their experience.
When business owners incorporate the PassKit loyalty platform into their operations, they can immediately monitor pass distribution and performance. Also, the solution is simple to integrate with your existing POS and CRM, so no replacement software is required.
You don’t need any coding skills, complex development, or advanced setup to implement your contactless loyalty rewards programs. Due to its simplicity and contactless features, PassKit usage has increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Who is it for
Clients who use our loyalty management software
PassKit is an excellent solution designed for small and large businesses. If you own a store, coffee shop, nail salon, hotel, gym, restaurant, catering business, or similar, PassKit helps you keep existing customers and acquire a new customer base with customer rewards.
It is also popular across multiple industry verticals, including retail, travel, hospitality, F&B, entertainment, insurance, and finance.
Why choose PassKit?
Unlike other solutions listed in this article, PassKit provides you with advanced analytics. It gives you the option to set up a loyalty program, design your digital loyalty cards, and track your redemption rates.
Using PassKit, you’ll see if the customer has installed your loyalty card into their mobile wallet, on how many devices they use your digital passes, how they use them, and whether they deleted them. Following, you’ll be able to use that information to track performance and optimize your loyalty program.
Other than that, here are a few more reasons to choose PassKit:
- It’s fast to set up, so it saves your time
- You don’t need any coding or design skills to use it
- You don’t have to develop your app
- You can distribute digital passes on multiple marketing channels
- It allows CRM and POS integration to track all loyalty data
- It’s contactless, so it’s safe to use during the pandemic
- It’s paperless, meaning its environmentally friendly
PassKit enables you to make smart business decisions by combining offline and online data in real-time. To start using PassKit for your business, create a free account today.
Free trial
Yes. Each pricing model comes with a free 45-day trial.
Pricing
PassKit offers two billing models:
- For multi-use passes (e.g., membership cards, loyalty cards, etc.)
- For single-use passes (e.g., tickets and coupons)
PassKit’s monthly plan is fully customizable. It allows you to pay for how many members you have and the number of loyalty cards you need to create.
Here’s an example of the basic monthly plan:
- $39.50/ 250 members
- $44.00/ 350 members
- $50.75/ 500 members
- $73.25/ 1000 members
For more information, visit the Passkit Pricing page.
2. Loopy Loyalty
Loopy Loyalty is a PassKit child product that enables business owners to create, manage, and assign digital punch cards for customers to use after each transaction. When customers collect sufficient loyalty points, they can redeem them for rewards.
It assists business owners in retaining customers, driving customer loyalty, and encouraging repeat online purchases. Loopy Loyalty supports Google Pay and Apple Wallet, allowing customers to easily earn rewards on their mobile devices.
Who is it for
Loopy Loyalty is ideal for small businesses such as coffee shops, bars, restaurants, hair salons, massage parlors, and gyms to increase customer engagement, retention, and loyalty.
Using a single platform, you can generate an unlimited number of digital stamp cards, customize them with your own text, images, and colors, process an unlimited number of transactions, and offer an unlimited number of rewards to your customers.
Why choose Loopy Loyalty
Loopy Loyalty is a valuable platform small businesses will appreciate.
You can promote and distribute your digital loyalty program through unique URLs, QR codes, email, text, and social media. Customers can store digital stamp cards in Apple Wallet or Google Pay, allowing quick access.
With Loopy Loyalty, users can receive and read location-based alerts when in the proximity of your business without having to unlock their mobile devices. It helps you increase foot traffic to your store, gym, coffee shop, or restaurant.
Company owners can generate and personalize stamp cards in minutes using the Loopy Loyalty web platform. As a user-friendly solution, Loopy Loyalty doesn’t require you to have any design or coding skills, and you don’t need to develop an app. You can even schedule a live demo to see if it fits your business needs.
Free trial
Yes. Loopy Loyalty offers a 15-day free trial with no credit card information required.
Pricing
Loopy Loyalty offers three pricing plans with different features:
- The Starter monthly plan costs $18, or $180 paid annually
- The Growth monthly plan costs $50, or $468 paid annually
- The Ultimate monthly plan costs $65, or $600 paid annually
If you want to see firsthand what Loopy Loyalty can do for you, create an account and start your free trial today.
3. Airship
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Airship is an experience platform that helps companies build, maintain, and grow their customer experience programs. Airship’s real-time data analytics tools are designed to give businesses the insights to improve customer engagement, drive better business outcomes, and grow their business by engaging with customers at scale.
It offers complete solutions for creating, testing, and deploying cross-platform mobile applications from a single, unified interface. By integrating with existing tools and services, users can quickly create an app that works across various devices.
Who is it for
The most common Airship users are mid-sized companies (51-1,000 employees). It’s popular in airlines, media, sports, finance, retail, and telecom.
Why choose Airship
Airship experience platform enhances your mobile marketing efforts. You can create digital passes and provide personalized customer experiences. With AXP, you can:
- Distribute digital passes on multiple marketing platforms
- Update passes in real-time and in context to prompt engagement
- Use customer segmentation and tagging
- Create custom data fields
- Use a single interface for multiple mobile platforms
- Send location-based notifications
- Send download links configured for each operating system your customers use
Airship can help you start quickly, identify new development opportunities, and consistently improve your outcomes as you manage loyalty programs.
Free trial
Yes. Free/Freemium version.
Pricing
Its pricing starts at $25k/year. The platform offers customized pricing on request.
4. Vibes Media
Image source: Vibes Media
Vibes Media helps brands foster personal relationships with consumers and enhance digital marketing efforts via intelligent mobile interaction.
The solution helps you maintain customer engagement while learning more about them through entertaining and educational two-way interactions. These customized experiences with rich information influence brand perceptions and boost customer retention over time.
Vibes Media aims to transform your customer loyalty program into a digital engagement engine for your most significant customers. The personal touch provided by MMS/SMS marketing, mobile wallets, and push notifications helps you achieve this goal.
Who is it for
Vibes helps users manage their mobile marketing campaigns and personalize interaction with clients. It also provides analytics and insights. It’s intended for businesses of all sizes. Industries such as retail and restaurant, financial services, hospitality, and the automotive use this customer loyalty software for their business efforts.
Why choose Vibes Media
Vibes multi-channel mobile automation helps during the entire customer lifecycle and includes technology for messaging at scale. Clients trust this platform because of its high security. You can use the platform to create interactive brand experiences, activate loyalty membership, trigger location-based notifications, send updates and deliver relevant messages to build lasting relationships with your customers.
Free trial
The company doesn’t provide a free trial, but you can request a demo.
Pricing
The company doesn’t disclose its pricing plans publicly.
5. FOBI
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FOBI is a data intelligence platform that combines technology and skills to close the data-to-customer loop through digital transformation.
FOBI allows data communication between online and on-premise platforms, providing clients with everything required for real-time data processing. It helps you grow income, enhance operational efficiencies, and promote personalized interaction via coupons and wallet passes.
FOBI offers 3 solutions:
- PassPro is an advanced wallet pass solution that increases the functionality of the mobile wallet. PassPro is a fully customized service designed exclusively for you to digitize your business and offer interaction and promotions more conveniently
- Passcreator is a DIY solution that helps you create, distribute, validate, and manage your mobile Wallet passes while interacting directly with your consumers via smartphones
- Qples puts a whole coupon business in your hand, assuring faster turnaround, cost-efficiency, and in-house optimization
Who is it for
FOBI is primarily intended for retail and CPG businesses along with sports and entertainment, and hospitality and tourism industries.
Why choose FOBI
Thanks to FOBI scalable engagement services, the solution will help you build client loyalty with targeted coupons, interaction, and promotions while executing omnichannel marketing and initiating segmented marketing based on geography, demographics, and time.
Free trial
There is no information about the free trial on the company website.
Pricing
There is no pricing information on the company website.
Loyalty platform providers: Our verdict
Loyalty and customer incentive programs have proven to be a successful strategy to increase customer retention and customer lifetime value, deliver excellent customer experience, and enhance brand loyalty during the past decade.
For those who are still unsure about what loyalty platform provider to choose, we recommend PassKit as the best solution.
PassKit is a digital loyalty platform that helps brands build and maintain customer relationships through customizable rewards, in-app purchases, and loyalty programs. By providing a highly personalized experience. By providing a highly personalized experience, PassKit enables you to create a more engaged and loyal customer base, resulting in increased revenue for your businesses.
PassKit is an end-to-end solution you can customize to fit any of your business needs, from onboarding and account management to reward fulfillment and loyalty analytics. Businesses of all sizes can use it, from startups to large corporations, so it is an incredibly versatile tool you can tailor to any budget.
And because it is fully integrated with Google Pay and Apple Wallet, you will create even more value for users who want to use their rewards across multiple devices. To start your journey with PassKit, create your free account today and use a 45-day trial.
Loyalty platform providers: FAQ
What is a loyalty program?
A loyalty reward program helps you offer incentives and special deals to your returning customers. With a loyalty program, you can reward each customer purchase. Reward programs help you increase client retention and loyalty.
What does a loyalty platform do?
A loyalty platform helps you create a loyalty program you can use as one of the most efficient strategies for boosting income and fostering consumer loyalty. Loyalty programs are also an excellent way to thank clients for their continued interaction, referrals, and brand advocacy.
How do I create my own loyalty program?
To design a customer loyalty program, examine the present level of client satisfaction, and define corresponding goals and budgets. Then, choose which clients to target and the strategies that will convince them to buy. Finally, increase customer loyalty and stimulate their spending through rewards with engaging loyalty programs.
What is the most popular customer loyalty program?
Starbucks Rewards (SBUX) is the most popular customer loyalty program globally. It remains the classic example of using personalized offers to retain customers.
The app works similarly to other loyalty programs. Users collect points or stars they can use for future purchases. It distinguishes itself from other reward programs by enabling customers to order in advance, pay in-store, and access special music playlists.
What are the different types of loyalty programs?
You can administer a loyalty program electronically or with a physical item, such as a punch card. Referral or purchase-based loyalty schemes are two main types of loyalty programs. The programs can be cash-back, point-based, referral-based, tiered, and compensated.
What is the purpose of a loyalty program?
A loyalty program encourages customers to continue purchasing from your brand rather than competitors. It makes them feel you value their presence and engagement with your brand.
What are the alternatives to a loyalty program?
Loyalty programs are not the exclusive means of gaining customers’ loyalty. Retailers like Amazon and Costco have garnered substantial customer devotion through membership programs.
Despite the recurring expense, many consumers gladly pay the annual fees to access the assortment of products, free shipping, and other perks provided by the two stores. And for individuals who utilize all the various membership services, the rewards can frequently outweigh the costs.
What is the best loyalty program app?
The answer depends on your business needs and the overall strategy of your loyalty program. What you wish to accomplish and how much money you are willing to invest are crucial factors influencing your decision.
If you operate a small offline business such as catering, a coffee shop, a hotel, a gym, a nail salon, etc., or are currently on a tight budget and exploring your options, PassKit is free for the first 45 days. It gives you enough time to test all features before your decision.
