Intro
Throughout Paharia’s book, Loyalty 3.0, Paharia has discussed the various elements of loyalty, gamification, big data, and motivators, the next step is building a loyalty program. There is a guide that should be followed when going through this process, called The Loyalty 3.0 Roadmap. It includes four steps: planning, designing, building, and optimization. In this blog post, I will discuss some of the first step, which is planning.
The Steps of Planning
To begin, Paharia lists the 8 steps within the planning step. Those 8 steps are:
- Identify the problem
- Identify your audience
- Identify the desired audience behaviors
- Establish your key performance indicators
- Create a mission statement
- Understand the playing field
- Calculate the ROI
- Sell it to internal stakeholders
What do these steps mean?
The first step, identifying the problem, essentially requires you to ask “what problem am I trying to resolve through this program?”. This will guide the whole direction of the loyalty program and helps narrow in on the focus of the program in general. The second step is identifying your audience, which can be either really broad or very specific. As Paharia mentions, it is essential in the development of a loyalty program that designers research and develop personas in order to know who they are intending to cater to (Paharia 2013, p. 192). Step three goes hand-in-hand with step two, as it is Identifying the Desired Audience Behaviors. It requires knowing the audience, their preferences, motivators, and patterns. Step four discusses KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) which are ways and methods to measure the efficiency of the loyalty program. There are several ways to measure this, such as the amount of items a customer purchases or how many times they share a product. Step five consists of Creating a Mission Statement, which is extremely important for informing the audience of what the business stands for. The sixth step is Understanding the Playing field, which means understanding the audience and the constraints/boundaries that need to be adhered to. The second to last step is Calculating ROI. According to Paharia, “the ROI calculation involves figuring out how much you think you’re going to spend and how much you think you’re going to make” (Paharia 2013, p 201) Lastly, the eighth step is Selling to Internal Stakeholders. This consists of selling the business to those involved, in hopes for interaction and buying in.
Conclusion
As we discussed throughout this post, there are several steps even within the first step of building a loyalty program, which is planning. There are eight fundamental steps to follow in order to achieve success and ease in developing these programs. Similarly, within the Christian life there are set guidelines that the Christ-follower should be adhering to. The author of Deuteronomy (Moses) lists the ten commandments and then goes on to say in Deuteronomy 5:32-33, “So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess” (NIV).
References
New International Version. (2011). BibleGateway.com. https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-International-Version-NIV-Bible/#booklist.
Rajat Paharia. (2013). Loyalty 3.0 : how big data and gamification are revolutionizing customer and employee engagement. Mcgraw-Hill Education.
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