Build Powerful Loyalty Programs in commercetools

If you’re running an ecommerce business, you probably heard all about the benefits of loyalty programs. Unfortunately, while costs are growing in every area, the CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is no exception. That’s why it’s high time to think not only about getting new customers but also about finding a way to keep the existing ones as close as possible.

{{EBOOK}}
{{ENDEBOOK}}

Though commercetools is an almost-complete solution for ecommerce, adding advanced loyalty and referral functionalities requires a third party. Voucherify is the fastest way to implement a loyalty program into your commercetools webshop – it’s as easy as installing the plugin and setting up a loyalty program using an intuitive creator.

Obviously, all the standard loyalty mechanisms are available in Voucherify, but our headless architecture takes it way farther. The core of Voucherify loyalty programs is the possibility to customize every tiny detail. That flexibility makes API-first tools matchless on the software market. Moreover, it makes all loyalty programs created in Voucherify compelling solutions for all the toughest customer loyalty challenges your company might face.

Combining the stretchability of two MACH solutions opens up a world of possibilities and makes it easy to reach marketing goals at scale, which is especially important for rapidly growing businesses.

‍Read along to learn:

• What can you achieve with the Voucherify plugin?
• How to set up the integration and launch loyalty programs in commercetools?
• How to build a loyalty program in Voucherify?

What can you achieve with the Voucherify plugin?

Before diving into the loyalty program creation, let’s see what you can get from using Voucherify as your loyalty software:

• Custom earning rules
• Custom attributes
• Advanced personalization
• Loyalty tiers
• Loyalty points as currency
• Omnichannel messaging
• Fraud prevention and points expiration
• Loyalty analytics

Voucherify plugin opens up a possibility to create loyalty programs for your commercetools stores. But since Voucherify is a headless solution, it enables webshop owners to develop literally any loyalty program – including custom rewards and customer segmentation. So here’s a detailed look on what you can achieve using the plugin Voucherify created for commercetools:

1. Set custom loyalty earning rules

One of the most crucial features of loyalty programs in Voucherify is creating custom earning rules. There are three primary earning rules – choose one or more, customize and combine them freely:  

• Paid order
• Custom event
• A customer entered the segment
• Tier changes: a customer joined, left, upgraded, downgraded or prolonged a tier membership.

With them, you can make your loyalty program fit your needs fully. Here are some examples of earning rules you can set with Voucherify:

• Add loyalty points for each paid order.
• Add loyalty points for signing up to the newsletter.
• Add bonus points for every fifth order.
• Add bonus points for every signup anniversary.
• Add bonus points if a member achieved the next membership level.

Of course, thousands of other combinations are possible – with the ‘custom events’ option, there’s hardly any limit to what you can achieve in terms of earning rules. You can also set limited time windows to each reward activity to make them more urgent and exciting for members.

2. Assign loyalty points your way

Voucherify doesn’t require choosing a single method of point acquisition – you can make your customers acquire loyalty points in dozens of ways. For example, ‘1 point for each dollar spent' is a popular rule, but you can take it to another level by adding ‘2 points for each dollar spent above $200’! Encourage customers to purchase more by rewarding them with additional points.

Another example? Send a token of gratitude to all customers who regularly shopped for the past three months – in Voucherify, you can set a rule that doubles all their loyalty points. Of course, you don’t have to double them – depending on your needs, you might add some bonus points for customers who kept the 3-month streak. Make sure your customers won’t store their loyalty points for years – encourage them to spend their points by setting up point expiration dates.

Learn more: What is loyalty points expiration?

3. Reward customers however you like

When creating a loyalty program, one of the critical aspects is rewards – you can’t expect a loyalty program to work well without attractive gratification for all dedicated customers who have supported your brand for a long time. Voucherify integration lets you reward customers however you find suitable. Discount coupons, physical items, digital rewards (such as a free month of subscription), additional loyalty points, permanent discounts, free shipping, you name it.

Voucherify enables advanced reward customization. For example, you may give your loyal customers $100 worth of credit but allow them to spend it only in the “new collection” category – that’s a great way to increase your customers’ interest in the products you’re most eager to sell.

Learn more: What are the best loyalty rewards?

4. Introduce loyalty tiers

Even if you want to reward all your customers who shop regularly, you’ll probably notice that some of them are… more loyal than others. So how to make them feel exceptional? By creating a tiered loyalty program!

Think of special rewards for those who – for example – spend at least $1000 or for those who shop regularly – no less than once a month. Add a bonus for customers who stick with your brand for three years or longer. In Voucherify, you can design a 100% flexible and customizable loyalty program – whatever’s best for your company and customers.

Loyalty program tiers are the best way to incentivize customers to return regularly to your commercetools store. Make sure they know about higher tier rewards – they would be motivated to shop more if they realized that there is yet another prize waiting for them.

5. Create unique promotions

Using the power of (meta)data, you can create one-of-a-kind promotions. Here’s an example: you can set up custom attributes to launch a promotion only for loyalty program participants, who live in Canada, made at least one purchase last week, and have had an account in your store for more than a year.

All that information can be stored in customer segments. You can build a segment containing only young adults (all you need is their birthdate) and then create complex promotions targeted at this very group. It’s a perfect example of a simple solution that saves a lot of expenses – the more specific and concrete the target audience is, the better results you might expect.

The versatility of Voucherify lies in all the things it can do besides loyalty programs. Voucherify is a Promotion Engine, which means it can drive various promotional campaigns simultaneously – some of them are unavailable in commercetools by default, some are much more flexible and customizable in Voucherify. See what other sales promotions you can launch in your commercetools store using Voucherify:

• Fully-featured referral programs
• Promotion stacking
• Order-specific and product-specific flexible discounts
• Advanced free item promotions
• Dynamic discounts with values changing upon custom formula
• Proportionally split discounts
• Customizable BOGO promotions

6. Allow customers to track their points and rewards

In Voucherify, you can quickly create customer cockpits – a customer cockpit is a personal space that can display all the information regarding loyalty programs and other promotional campaigns (referral programs, gift cards, discount coupons and so on).

Learn more: What are customer dashboards?

The API-first approach makes it easy to get any information from Voucherify API and send it to the cockpit. Thanks to the headless built, you can build your own frontend solutions to show customers their loyalty progress and allow them to exchange points for rewards on their own.

How to launch loyalty programs in commercetools?

Everything you need to integrate Voucherify with commercetools can be found by clicking here – we’ve uploaded all the files necessary to implement the plugin into commercetools to GitHub. Your development team will also find a detailed guide on installing the plugin there.

Connecting Voucherify with commercetools allows you to run loyalty programs within your online shop. From the customer’s perspective, the loyalty program will be invisible – all actions by Voucherify are performed under the hood, so it’s fully white-labeled. Once you publish the loyalty card and assign it to a specific customer, they’ll be able to shop in your store and collect loyalty points to their digital wallet.

Takeaways

Creating a loyalty program for an online shop built on the commercetools foundation has never been easier. The Voucherify plugin opens up tons of options available for your development team. Instead of building your own loyalty solution, your company can just benefit from what’s already done. Moreover, knowing that Voucherify enables you to run a bunch of other promotional scenarios at the same price makes it not only a time-saving but also a severe money-saving solution.

Keep in mind that the Voucherify plugin for commercetools is open source. If you need to make any adjustments, feel free to do so – it’s just the base for whatever your development team has in mind. What's more – functionalities available within the integration are just the beginning. We’re constantly working on improving the plugin, so if you need anything in particular, you can always send us your ideas regarding the integration – here’s the link to the contact form.

{{CTA}}

Connect commercetools with Voucherify

Install the commercetools plugin

{{ENDCTA}}