For the modern financial institution, loyalty is more than just traditional rewards like travel, merchandise or cash back. The right loyalty program will help your financial institution deliver innovative and quality earning and redemptions to your cardholders aiming to build your cardholder engagement and grow your financial institution’s revenue and retention, while also making you highly competitive against other financial institutions. At ampliFI, we call them innovative rewards because they deliver outstanding solutions to modern problems seen throughout many banks and credit unions nationwide. We’re sharing our secret to creating an innovative rewards program and the must-have items that will help drive spend and revenue for your organization.
Real-Time Redemption Opportunities
Outdated loyalty programs are focused on standard earn and burn loyalty and outdated redemption options, like merchandise or a statement credit. With innovative rewards, you can take earning and redemption into real life situations through real-time rewards. Giving your cardholders a holistic suite of redemption and earning options that allow for them to utilize their points in a way that suits their lifestyle is the first step to delivering a quality loyalty program, which is why ampliFI’s real-time rewards suite is our number one loyalty platform feature among clients!
ampliFI’s real-time rewards suite offers three ways that cardholders can redeem their points in near real-time. When using Pay With Points, cardholders can redeem points to cover the cost of their transaction, which will be reflected on their statement as a credit toward that purchase. With Fuel With Points, cardholders can redeem points for a discount on fuel at the pump when using their rewards-linked card, which has grown in popularity in 2022 with the increase in commuters returning to work and gas prices. Finally, our newest addition to real-time rewards is Checkout With Points, which allows cardholders to redeem points for discounts and purchases at participating retailers that they love. All together, these three features allow cardholders to choose their redemption options while also driving usage and spending, giving your financial institution a boost to your bottom line.
Customized Earning Options
Many look at loyalty programs as a basic earning rate that cardholders receive for using their card, but it can be so much more than that. With the ability to offer customized earning and redemption options, your cardholder engagement will drastically improve as they begin to use their card more frequently to maximize benefits. Give your cardholders the power to choose their loyalty experience by offering a variety of earning options, including card-linked offers which deliver bonus points to cardholders for shopping at participating local and national merchants, and promotions that are customizable and timed to encourage spend and usage during select periods to improve revenue and engagement.
In a recent case study from 2021, an ampliFI client utilized a promotion to drive card usage during the holidays at Target, Amazon and Walmart. We implemented a promotion for them that required cardholders to spend a specific amount on their rewards-linked card at these retailers during a designated period. As a result, they saw a 1,317% increase in Amazon spending, a 307% increase in Target spending and an 1,145% increase in Walmart spending during the promotion period. Overall, this yielded an 1,169% lift in spending and a 745% lift in transaction volume. This example showcases the benefits of observing cardholder spending habits and crafting promotions to meet your cardholder where they want to be met.
Complete Financial Institution Integration
When developing your loyalty program, it’s crucial that your cardholder experience feels cohesive, creating a cyclical cardholder journey that continues to re-engage them to build usage and engagement for long-term retention and satisfaction. One major area of innovative rewards that is crucial to this experience is building out your rewards program as if it is a part of your financial institution. As a processor agnostic company, we are able to integrate your cards and cardholder experience directly into our platforms, delivering a rewards experience that is branded to your financial institution and easily accessible through single sign-on technology from your online banking website and your mobile app. Additionally, we are able to integrate your program into multiple back-end systems that deliver program analytics and performance data, allowing you to manage your cardholders and program features easily from a singular dashboard. This gives your financial institution the power to drive your loyalty program in a strategic direction to meet your goals.
Overall, innovative rewards are more than just expanding your options for cardholders – it’s about creating a cohesive loyalty experience and strategy that builds genuine loyalty, satisfaction and retention for your cardholders through customizable earning and redemption opportunities, meeting your cardholders where their wants and demands are. Your financial institution can create a mutually beneficial experience that drives cardholder engagement and portfolio revenue for your organization, creating a successful long-term growth opportunity for you.
Curious about our innovative reward options and custom loyalty programs? Let us know your goals and we’ll help drive you into the future of rewards to meet them. Contact us today to learn more.