In this article, you'll learn how to create a Loyalty Program in Talon.One. Before you start, your system must be integrated with Talon.One and have at least one active Application.
Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs in Talon.One automatically open reward point wallets for each customer that opts in, and new options to govern these wallets in the Rule Builder.
Using loyalty rules, you can choose which customer actions are rewarded with points and how you allow customers to spend these points; as currency, in exchange for discounts, free items or store credit. Really it's entirely up to you and what makes sense for your business.
Your Loyalty Program can be as simple or as granular as you wish by enabling the optional Sub-ledger feature during program creation. With Sub-Ledgers enabled, each customer can have multiple balances within the same program, each tied to different entities.
This is useful if you want to separate loyalty balance across multiple outlets, brands or products without having to create a new Loyalty Program for each.
Step 1: Create a Loyalty Program
In the first step, we'll need to create the Loyalty Program itself.
- From your Talon.One dashboard, select "Manage Loyalty Programs".
- On the Management page click "Create Loyalty Program".
Here you should enter the Name: The permanent internal name for this program, and the Title: The name shown in the Rule Builder, which can be safely changed later. You can also give your program a short description to help you identify it later.
The "Reward Expiration" section lets you set how long these collected points are valid before expiring. You can choose to keep them valid indefinitely or set an expiration time in days.
The "Enable Subledgers" section lets you turn on sub-ledgers if you want to run a loyalty program which gives customers multiple loyalty balances.
If you are governing multiple outlets, Subledgers would allow you to specify that points earned at one outlet can only be redeemed at that outlet, allowing customers to have multiple separate balances concurrently without the need to create a separate Loyalty Program for each outlet.
*Note: This cannot be changed later.
Finally, choose the application(s) where you'd like this program to be active, then click Create to complete this step.
Step 2: Create Campaign(s) Where Points Are Added
If you don't already have a Campaign set up, create a New Campaign now in the application you connected your Loyalty Program to in step 1. Give your campaign a name and select "Loyalty Program" as a feature you'd like to activate for this campaign.
If you want to add the Loyalty Program to an existing campaign, open that campaign's "Settings" page, click on "Features", check the box marked "Enable Loyalty" and then save.
When you go to the Rule Builder for this campaign, you'll have access to 3 new features:
- Condition: "Check loyalty points", allowing you to check this customer has redeemable points.
- Effect: "Add loyalty points", allowing you to add points to the customer wallet when the transaction takes place.
- Attribute: "Current Balance" (and "Current Subledger Balance" if enabled) can be found in the attribute palette, so you can use the customer's point balance as a variable, or modify it as an effect.
Example 1:
On orders over $100, 10% of the order total will be credited as points to the customer's point wallet.
- Condition: Session Total is greater than or equal to 100
- Effect: Add Loyalty Points: Session Total * 10%
Now that we have a campaign set up where customers can collect points, let's set up a campaign for redeeming those points.
Step 3: Create Campaign Where Points are Redeemed
While it's possible to run multiple campaigns where customers can earn points, we recommend only having one campaign for spending them, to ensure your customers have a clear idea of the points' value.
Since spending requires us to check internally if the customer has sufficient balance in the program, this is implemented as a condition in the Rule Builder: "Check loyalty points".
If you use this condition in a campaign, the points will automatically be deducted when the customer has sufficient balance, so you don't need to deduct points as an effect.
Example 2:
In this example, we'll use a custom session attribute, which we'll call "pay with points". This will indicate that the current session should be paid for with point balance.
A customer has 1,000 points in their wallet and has added an item to the checkout you've marked as costing 700 points.
- Condition: Attribute "PayWithPoints" = true
- Condition: Loyalty points can be redeemed: Session Total
- Effect: Set Discount: Session Total
The customer pays for their order in points. The number of points used being deducted from the session total, leaving the customer 300.
Please note: loyalty points are redeemed in order of their expiry date, ascending. This means that Talon.One will always redeem the user's points which have the nearest expiry date. If a user has some points with no expiry date, Talon.One will redeem these after all points with an expiry date.
Now you know how to set up your first Loyalty Program in Talon.One.
These are just basic examples of what's possible with your Talon.One integration. Depending on the data points you send, you can build rules to meet any of your promotion requirements.
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