Referral and club programs in retail: partner accounting, status confirmation and customer activity analysis

In retail trade, simply handing out discount cards is gradually losing its effectiveness. To retain the existing audience and attract a new one, businesses need elements of gamification and the development of B2B2C partner networks. 

When implementing a loyalty system, entrepreneurs often ask specialists the following questions: how can customers be motivated to make regular purchases so they do not lose their discount? How can inactive customers be automatically excluded from VIP status? How can you keep records of customers who came through recommendations from trainers, doctors, or other partners, and how can you evaluate the profit from such cooperation? 

These tasks can be solved by implementing Club and Referral programs combined with powerful customer activity analysis.

Club discount system: motivation and status confirmation

The club system is designed to manage fixed discounts according to clear rules that encourage customers to make regular purchases. It is ideal for retail sales.

How does it work in practice? 

First, the customer is issued a card with a zero discount. To become a full member of the discount club and receive the promised discount, the customer must accumulate a certain purchase amount within a clearly defined period, for example, buy goods worth UAH 5,000 within 30 days. If they manage to do this, they receive a fixed discount; if not, the accumulated amount is canceled, and the process starts again.

To address entrepreneurs’ questions about retaining status, the program provides a period for confirming club membership. During this time, the customer must make purchases for the specified amount. If they do not, their discount is canceled, they are excluded from the club, become a regular customer, and the accumulation process starts from zero.

Club management

The settings are configured in the «Settings - Options - Club discount system» menu. The owner specifies:

• the club discount percentage;

• the period and amount for initial accumulation;

• the period and amount for confirming membership.

The program independently checks customer status once a day during the first launch. In the «Club discount management» window, lists are generated of candidates for joining the club, candidates for membership extension, as well as lists of those who have not fulfilled the conditions and are subject to exclusion. The decision to grant or cancel a discount is made and controlled directly in this mode.

Referral program: accounting for partners and recommendations

For businesses that work through a recommendation network, it is vital to understand who exactly brought the customer. This practice is very common in healthcare, where a doctor refers a patient to a specific pharmacy, as well as in beauty, sports, where a trainer refers a trainee for sports nutrition, or construction.

Previously, this functionality was called «Accounting of customers by clubs and trainers», but to more accurately reflect its essence, it was renamed «Referral program: accounting for partners and recommendations».

The system allows you to record a two-level partnership structure:

1. Referring partner, for example, the name of a sports club, clinic, or design bureau.

2. Referrer’s employee, such as a specific trainer, doctor, or foreman.

After creating directories of organizations and their employees, in the customer card on the «Other» tab, the seller simply selects from the list who exactly this new customer came from. This gives the store the ability to offer partners mutually beneficial terms, provide special discounts, or pay rewards for attracting new customers.

Customer activity analysis: evaluating partnership effectiveness

To answer the question of how profitable cooperation with a specific referrer is, the business owner uses the «Customer activity analysis» tool.

This mode allows you to view sales revenue for any customer over a selected period. Thanks to integration with the referral system, special filters are available in the analysis: Referring partner and Referrer’s employee.

What does this give the owner?

• The report by referring partners and their employees shows the exact number of customers attracted by each organization and each specific specialist.

• You can sort customers by the number of purchases, for example, show those who made at least a certain number of purchases, to identify the most active customers who came from partners.

• For deeper analytics, this mode has been supplemented with the ability to view the «customer discount %» and sort customers by it, from highest to lowest, which allows you to evaluate how much discount the partner network receives.

In addition, identifying the most active or, conversely, «dormant» customers from a specific referrer makes it possible to use remarketing tools. Directly from the activity analysis window, you can select the required customer list and add them to a Mass mailing (Viber, SMS, e-mail) to inform them about new promotions or remind them to confirm their club membership.

Thus, combining Club and Referral systems with analytics creates a closed cycle: you attract customers through partners, track their profitability, encourage customers to maintain their purchase level to keep their status, and stimulate repeat visits through targeted mailings.