Ep.130/ FLAUNT LOYALTY
Gamification in loyalty programs for ecommerce brands with Flaunt Co-Founder & CRO Chris Miller
Chris Miller, Co-Founder & CRO of Flaunt Loyalty, and Mariah Parsons, Host of Retention Chronicles & Head of Marketing at Malomo, discuss the importance of dynamic loyalty programs for Shopify merchants. Chris highlights Flaunt Loyalty's unique service & software model, which includes designing, implementing, and managing loyalty programs to grow LTV and profits. They emphasize the need for ongoing optimization and strategic alignment with marketing campaigns. Chris shares examples like Barefaced's Mother's Day campaign, which integrated loyalty rewards into existing promotions. They also explore the balance between subscription perks and loyalty programs, stressing the importance of personalized rewards and gamification elements like badges and leaderboards to enhance customer engagement and retention.
Episode Timestamps:
2:49 Introduction of Chris Miller and Flaunt Loyalty
4:30 Bandwidth and Expertise in Loyalty Programs
10:49 Benefits of Dynamic Loyalty Programs
13:39 Case Study: Barefaced Loyalty Program
23:11 Subscriber vs. Non-Subscriber Loyalty Programs
26:24 Gamification in Loyalty Programs
43:52 Examples of Effective Loyalty Programs
44:07 Resources and Further Learning
Ep.130
CHRIS MILLER
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
loyalty program, loyalty, customer loyalty for ecommerce, give, program, gamification, brand, thinking, campaign, rewards, business, shopify, working, badges, buying, flaunt, e commerce, talk, experience, tier
SPEAKERS
Chris Miller, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host. Mariah Parsons, if you're here, you're either on a quest for E commerce enlightenment or you accidentally click the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet, and I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multi million dollar business or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guests, let's give a shout out to our podcast sponsor, malomo. Malomo is so much more than just another Shopify app, their post purchase wizards, making beautiful and branded order tracking smoother than a jazz solo. So our amazing founders, like our guests, can keep their customers happy and up to date while they track their orders. So hit that subscribe button like it'll increase your LTV overnight and go listen to our other episodes at gomolomo.com that's G O M, a, l, o m, o.com Get ready for insights, chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or Two with this newest episode of retention Chronicles. Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. Super excited for today's episode today, Chris, thank you so much for joining us. I know I'm so excited to talk about all things loyalty with you. Our software's mesh so well together. So I know our audience is going to hear all about that, but it's also been a blast getting to meet you personally. I just moved to Chicago, which our listeners, this will probably be the first time they heard this. Yes, and you're in Chicago, so I know you're getting the release.
Chris Miller 01:52
Love it. And we're just talking about how you and I both are still New York pizza all the way.
Mariah Parsons 01:58
Yes, yeah. Deep Dish will it? Can take a run at my heart, but I don't think it'll ever fully get it. So we'll see, we'll see, maybe, like, in a year or so, we'll have you back on just to review pizzas, you'll have to give me, like, a recommendation. I know Luminati is, is like the one of the go to place places in Chicago, right?
Chris Miller 02:16
Yeah, yeah. I'll give, I'll give you the full rundown after this. Okay, don't make me look bad on this, on this, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 02:22
I promise that's, that's my main job here, hopefully after like three years of doing so I hope nobody would say, but we'll, we'll leave it up to you after this, this, this week's episode. So give our listeners you've already said hi, they've already heard your voice, but give our listeners a quick introduction of yourself. Tell us you know where you're at right now. Tell us about flaunt and just all that fun stuff to give them a little bit of context before we dive in.
Chris Miller 02:49
Yeah, of course. Hi everybody. I'm Chris Miller. I'm one of the co founders at flaunt loyalty. We are a managed service loyalty partner for Shopify merchants and offer kind of a unique service plus software model where we actually design your full loyalty program for you. We have a team of certified loyalty marketing professionals. We build it out and implement it with our Shopify app, and then we manage it for you on an ongoing basis as your fractional head of loyalty. And we do that with the mandate to grow your LTV and profits.
Mariah Parsons 03:22
Love it. Okay, so let's double tap on that for a second, because I know that's one of the differentiators when it comes to loyalty programs. And you all are kind of carving out the space for not having a set it and forget it. You know, like set it and forget it. System or program where you all are actively monitoring what's going on with the loyalty program to make sure that you know it isn't, quote, unquote sale, or that it's staying fresh with the times. So what was, as a co founder, what was kind of the inspiration between why you wanted to make sure that you weren't just a software but you were also servicing, and, you know, actively working with your customers, that you're that you're serving in the Shopify system, yeah,
Chris Miller 04:05
yeah, totally. Well, it's like, like many great founding stories, we sort of stumbled upon that by accident as being our differentiator. It's something as we were serving early clients and really digging deep with them to sort of understand, like, what are we doing here that is unique and valuable? And you know, why is this having such a big impact on your business? And there's obviously some unique things about our our platform, that are key enablers of that. But really for most of our clients, it was, you know, we look at you and look to you as a true like thought partner for our business and a consultant, and somebody who you know, beyond just your platform is is really helping us think strategically about our business and grow. And then, you know, if you just, you think about the loyalty ecosystem for shop. By merchants, for those who have a loyalty program, you know, oftentimes, the things that we're hearing, you know, merchants aren't convinced it's really driving any incremental impact. It's kind of like this, set it and forget it. You know, I build a loyalty page and I've checked that box. And even if you're not paying a bunch for the tech, like you're still ultimately, you know, racking up the the liability of the points and the rewards that you're you're giving away. So it's, you know, a challenge there, oftentimes, for folks who do have, who programs, and then the ones that don't, but are kind of considering it, it's, it's really comes down to bandwidth and expertise internally. And so that is really why we have leaned into the kind of service as software model, again, with the platform, but also the expertise to design your program for you, implement it and then manage it for you on an ongoing basis. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 05:59
yeah. I love it. So do you find that when you're looking at like the question of bandwidth, of a company wants to have a really great loyalty program, wants to not have a set it and forget it, or just check it off the list? Is that, is that bandwidth question? Do you see it trend along different sizes of merchants, like a enterprise system, you know, maybe they have more red tape. They want to fully control something in house, versus a like SMB startup. They're more looking for that managed services route to, like, help with getting something up and running and have experts in there that maybe they can't, you know, hire out for in house,
Chris Miller 06:42
yeah, for sure. Well, look, I even beyond loyalty. I've worked in managed service businesses my entire life, and I can tell you that if you have a strong managed service partner, regardless of the size of your business, it's typically a value add to have somebody who's like thinking 100% about about you and your business and how you can sort of optimize things. So just having that other kind of, like thought and idea partner to to bounce things off of has always been something that I've, you know, prided myself on, and I know my my fellow team members would say the same. But yeah, of course, look, the size of the size of the business usually has a direct correlation with just like the number of folks that are on the team internally to build out a program. And so we talked to a lot of you know, heads of E commerce, who are also the de facto like E commerce and CRM marketers and the growth market are all kind of combined, yeah. And so they're getting pulled in a million different directions. And so again, it's it can be really easy to just say, hey, I want to install a loyalty app and check that box, but then you have to think about the ramifications of, okay, I'm now on the hook to because I have a program that I'm communicating to customers that is giving discounts away, that's giving store credit away, and so forth and and that adds up and so not having the expertise internally to design that program, let alone to kind of manage and optimize it, to launch loyalty campaigns that are woven into, you know, the entire customer journey on an ongoing basis. It's just something that most brands, and I would call it like 2 million to 50 million GMV, don't have the luxury of and so, you know, we've kind of seized the opportunity to be a partner that they can lean on. That is, you know, sort of situated between some of the like SMB providers and the more enterprise oriented providers,
Mariah Parsons 08:58
yeah, yeah, that's great. So can you walk us through real quick, just like the overall benefits of approaching a loyalty program that is, you know, ever changing and that you're constantly optimizing? Because I think one of the things that as both a consumer and working as a operator in the space, speaking from a merchant perspective, is that you you see the benefits of a loyalty program, right? Like you see how it influences your LTV, your attention, customers will come back, but it's all about how, how much can you make people come back? Like, I think there's always going to be a baseline if someone's obsessed with your you know, obsessed with your product, and you really could only have them turn as a customer. If you really, really mess something up, you're always going to have that, like baseline customer, as long as you have a good enough product, right? So I want to hone in on how you all are thinking about not just offering okay, like, I. VIP points for top 10% or something that's more generic when you're and how you all are looking at, okay, these are the, I'll call them added benefits of looking at a ever changing, optimized loyalty program. Because I think that would be really interesting to kind of set up our conversation here today, and then we can dive into, you know, gamification and subscriber subscribers versus non subscribers and all the more like, I guess, case use cases one by one. Yeah,
Chris Miller 10:28
there's a lot in there. So I'm going to try my best to remember everything and but the way that, the way that I encourage people to think about loyalty programs, more generally, is, if I am going to introduce a loyalty program, I need to have evidence that this is driving incremental behavior that wouldn't have otherwise happened. And to be clear, you do not need a loyalty program to have customer loyalty like that is not a box that you need to check in order to say, I am building customer loyalty. Because if you're providing, if you have an amazing product, if you are providing great customer service, like these are all the things if you offer a lot of like value, intrinsically and extrinsically in your brand, if it's like, something that people want to be associated with, like those are all ways that you can build brand loyalty just organically. Programs are useful if they are designed to drive incremental behavior change. And where programs fail is when they are, you know, simply just reporting on things like, well, members spend more than non members. Yeah, because members are more likely, the people who signed up for your program are more likely to purchase with you anyway. Like, duh, you know, like,
Mariah Parsons 11:52
chicken or the egg situation, exactly. So,
Chris Miller 11:55
so that. And then, like, purely measuring your program based on something like, you know, the revenue on redeemed purchases. Yes, like, there, there's no doubt that like, discounts and incentives can offer, you know, compelling reasons for somebody to buy more. But if you're not, but if you're not really looking beyond, like, those two metrics, just like the the revenue that you're getting from members, and then kind of comparing that against your non members. You're not really thinking about your program in a way that is like, how, how I, how can I get people to do more than than they otherwise would have?
Mariah Parsons 12:35
I think that what you're honing in on is the like, I love what you said, and it made me think about, like, classic pitfalls that someone falls into of when you're trying to optimize, because you're when you're walking through, like the benefits of not just even having a the baseline customer loyalty, but because, like we said, chicken or egg situation where those people are going to be probably opted in anyways. But I like what you said about, you know, you're trying to drive incremental um behavior changes. And I think a lot of the times with these things in E commerce, that you can just have, like a blanket, you know, okay, you have, you have this done, check it off the box, you can get into some trouble, or even it'll just not be best optimized. Like, we see this with order tracking all the time, right where you have Shopify out of the box notifications or and they're sending someone to a carrier page. It's like, oh yeah, you have them, but you also are leaving a lot on the table. So I love to walk through, like now that you kind of, you know, showed the benefits of ever changing loyalty programs. What are what common? I don't want to call them mistakes, but what common, you know, mishaps. Do you see when someone comes to you and is like, we need to optimize our loyalty program?
Chris Miller 13:51
Yeah, if somebody says we need to optimize our loyalty program, my first question back to them is, you know, what are the behaviors that you are, that you're trying to drive that, you know, you wouldn't otherwise be able to get if you didn't have your loyalty program in place. But to just quickly go back to the notion of, like, why is it important to continue optimizing your program? Now I'm not necessarily advocating for you know, every month you're changing your tiers and rules and all those sorts of things that would just become confusing to customers. What I am suggesting in terms of how you think about a program being dynamic over time is, how does your program become a true brand engagement platform that has and sort of follows the same calendar that your other marketing campaigns do. So you think about at the beginning of the year. I'm planning out this is my marketing calendar for the year. These are the big, seminal moments too often. Shopify loyalty programs are a page that exists on your website that. It really doesn't get a lot of engagement itself. I might be checking out and I see, oh, I have this, this reward available that I can redeem. But again, I'm already at the point of checking out. How are you bringing the loyalty program into your marketing calendar to drive those incremental behaviors? And so that's that's really what we focus on helping brands do, is, how can loyalty become a part of your campaigns, and how can your loyalty program and dash towards where people can engage with more facets of your business in ways that are kind of mapped to and tied to some of those bigger campaigns. And I can talk more specifics in terms of like gamified challenges and personalized offers and those sorts of things, but that's that's sort of what I mean when I suggest that this is a living, breathing thing and an opportunity for you to weave incentives for people to engage and purchase and advocate all throughout the customer journey, all throughout your calendar year, based on the different behavior or the different campaigns and initiatives that you're running as part of your regular marketing calendar.
Mariah Parsons 16:17
Yeah, yeah. I love that distinction. We can definitely dive in, because I think that will be something that will set us up really nice. And I think that the what you said about, you know, following the marketing calendar, I know as a marketer, that could be a little bit chaotic at times, especially a small, small team marketer. So I'd love to hear how you all are approaching that. And like, you know, some examples of this is okay, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I know we're approaching, it's the Super Bowl of E commerce. And so, yeah, I would love to hear how people are thinking about the, you know, the marketing calendar, just generally. I'm sure seasonality plays into it a bit.
Chris Miller 16:57
Yeah, well, our, our job is not to put rocks in your pocket and make you come up with campaigns that you otherwise wouldn't have run our our job is to understand the campaigns and the messages that you're already going to be promoting in the market and making proactive suggestions on how might the loyalty program and driving some of the specific like KPIs and behaviors that we want to drive in the loyalty program. How might that show up in this campaign? And so a really good example of that is with our client barefaced. So their skincare brand on Shopify, founder led very like big social presence and around Mother's Day, they were running kind of their own, like Mother's Day campaign, which we, you know, talked about over the course of some of our monthly review sessions. And so we came back to them with an idea to launch a campaign where, if somebody purchased $100 more gift card around Mother's Day that they would be able to, like, unlock a special limited time only reward, right? And so it's tying, like loyalty points and incentives to a campaign that was already happening anyway, and that campaign drove like 10s of 1000s of dollars of incremental impact that, again, was something that came to life in the loyalty program that was then pushed out through like programmatic nudge, emails and texts via Klaviyo, that was able to, you know, map to what was going on with their program or their business more broadly, and brought to life in in the loyalty program.
Mariah Parsons 18:45
I love that example. I feel like a lot of the times in E commerce. And I'm curious if you feel like this, it's it kind of feels all or none with Black Friday Cyber Monday, which is so not the case, right? Like you have a bunch of different holidays that sometimes make sense to have a campaign around for specific brands over other ones. And I would be curious to hear what you would say about loyalty and gifting, because I, I we had, we had an agency on and they were talking about the software that they were in the process of developing shout out gift note and elephant room, and they had said that a lot of the times. Obviously, when you're buying for a gift, the customer is the person who's buying it, right? But then the consumer is the person who they're giving the gift to. And so I'd love to hear how, if you know, you have any thoughts around this, of that example of, okay, if you're, if you're buying a gift card for your mother on bare face, is there any like, any distinguished distinguishment between, okay, this is the customer who's buying from you. But maybe this, you can grab their email or some. Thing to try and get them into a loyalty program. Is there anything you've seen there with what customers have been able to do?
Chris Miller 20:06
Yeah, I think that really is, is much more, or I will respond much more simply than maybe you were intending. I think that really just comes down to understanding your your customers and the different cohorts of your customers, and that not every customer is one in the same, and that somebody who is coming to you through using a gift card for the very first time is now somebody that I can treat and have a differentiated relationship with and a more personalized relationship with because of of what I know about them. And so yes, we want to. We want to tap into our loyal customers to do more than they otherwise would have, and part of that is advocating and sharing the brand with others, and that may be, you know, as part of a gifting campaign. And so how do we, how do we think about them differently with a campaign like we ran for Mother's Day, that's who that was targeted to, right? But we also might launch different challenges and campaigns that are more geared to somebody who has just come in the door for the first time, and so it's about prompting them to take that right next action. And if you know, if you if your business is a sort of gift oriented type of business, I don't know. I'm thinking of like Harry and David and stuff like that, there's probably the bulk of your customer base may be buying for that purpose. But yeah, I really just think Mariah that that comes down to understanding the different cohorts of your of your customers. The beauty of a loyalty program is that you can have this, this, you know, program in place that works for everybody and is designed profitably, you know, across the entire, you know, sort of base of customers that you have, but then you can use things like campaigns and challenges that are tied and or are more tailored rather, to a specific cohort of customers and the next right behavior that you're trying to get them to do. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 22:15
yeah. Totally makes sense. I love a sample answer too. Just you know, it doesn't have to be anything too advanced. I think it fits in with the conversation that we're having right now to dive a little bit into subscriber versus non subscriber and new customer just because we're kind of dancing around, you know, what you're able to do and make a smart loyalty program that can satisfy a bunch of different buckets of your customers. So I know you wanted to give a shout out for a resource that we're going to link in our bio. But can you give us, like a high, high level of how you all are looking at okay, if someone is either a highly, high percentage of subscribers as part of their business, or just even if it's a 5050, split, or anything of the sort, if anyone has any subscribers as a merchant, how you all are thinking about an active, loyal loyalty program for those
Chris Miller 23:08
totally and we've been getting this this question more and more lately, obviously, for a long time, people have had subscription businesses and people have had loyalty programs, and those Two have kind of operated as two separate things, but some of the amazing subscription partners out there, like the recharges of the world, are coming out with new features that incentivize perks for staying subscribed. And so Mariah, because you mentioned it, my co founder, Connor, did put out a really, really nice thought leadership piece on this topic that I encourage you to go check out in our blog, and we'll link to it in the in the show notes. But here's kind of help. How we help brands? Think about this question, I am a predominantly subscription business, or I have subscriptions as part of my business, it's really important to me to get people to subscribe, but I also am thinking about whether or not a loyalty program is right for me. So the role of the subscription perks program, or incentivized subscriptions, is to get people to subscribe more right period. The role of a loyalty program is to get people from one stage of the customer journey to the next. And there are so many other things that you likely want your customers to be doing beyond subscribing, even if that is the most important thing that are that are best suited to, you know, kind of come to life in a loyalty program. And so we view loyalty programs and subscription programs as working really well in tandem. We don't offer a subscription service. And so our clients, like barefaced who do have subscription models in place, are. Weaving their their subscription model, or their subscription business into the loyalty program in the form of of challenges. But loyalty programs can really function. I think I was mentioning this before as a sort of brand engagement platform for you to kind of create this storyline for customers. This is what you should be engaging with next. Here's what you have to look forward to as you progress and level up to different tiers and create compelling reasons for somebody to like I said, go beyond just subscribing and respond to quizzes and surveys so that you have more data and insight on them to write reviews, to try out a new product that you know. Maybe they've been buying one product from you over and over and over. Maybe they're even a subscriber of that product. You'd like to get them to subscribe to something else so trying that out for the first time, you can incentivize that in a loyalty program, getting you, getting you to refer the brand to your friends and family, or share the brand on Facebook and an Instagram story or post like those are all the sorts of things that a loyalty program is really well suited to, to foster and have customers Do and subscribing and staying subscribed, even if you are using a recharge or something like that, is can live under that broader umbrella really nicely of this sort of loyalty program or brand engagement platform. So we don't, we don't encourage people to pick between the two and say it's, it's one or the other. You may not, by the way, you may not need a loyalty program. If you're, like, I'm 100% of subscription business, that's, that's the only thing I care about. I have one product, like, I'm not really trying to drive a whole lot of other like brand engagement. Like, you may not need a loyalty program, but we see them working really symbiotically together? Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 27:02
yeah. It's a very timely conversation actually, for us to be having, because I just had Jen from recharge their SVP of marketing on the podcast, and she also brought up bare faith. So they're getting a lot of shout out,
Chris Miller 27:14
shout outs, which I love, awesome brand.
Mariah Parsons 27:17
Yeah, I'm getting that impression, and that looks like they have their their stuff together, you know, internally, with their tech, tech and everything. But on a more serious note, I love what the distinction of, and you've said it a couple of times, but now I'm really just picturing the brand engagement like a timeline along what a customer can do to, you know, level up and get into this tier, or, you know, call them a VIP customer, or whatever, X percent of your top tier of customers. And I think it's really smart to use the symbiotic relationship between subscriptions and loyalty. And you brought up the, I guess, use case of having new subscriber try a new product, or, you know, go to those, go to those really high loyalty, or those subscribers for a new, you know, for some customer feedback of, okay, we you tried this new product. What do you think about it, and then get XYZ points. So before we move on to a discussion around gamification. I want to ask you, are you seeing with, I guess, like, what? What are some, some types of loyalty perks that are like, I guess different are really working well. And I think this will lead into the gamification question. Like, I know, I think a lot of people, especially when you're a new time, like a new customer, you're almost, as a consumer, expecting a discount, like just a pop up to be on a page. Yeah, and so you had mentioned, you know, getting someone to share on social or, you know, referring friends and family. Do you internally? I guess this is a better question. Do you internally? See, like, Okay, pretty across the board, like, this should be tier one of, okay, you buy a new product and share rate it, and that's like tier one of loyalty of the loyalty program. Tier Two is, you know, write a review. Tier three is share with your your friends and family. Tier four is refer someone's email directly. Are you thinking about it that way internally, or am I wrong in that it's, it's whatever the brand wants to choose.
Chris Miller 29:28
Yeah, it's a really good question, and it is, it is completely brand contingent. And I think that's one of, again, the values of, you know, working with a managed service loyalty partner is like, we are going to get in the trenches and learn about your business. We're going to learn about your customers, and we're going to learn about the things that motivate them, and also the things that you have in your arsenal that you may not be thinking about, you know right now, in your in a current loyalty program that May. May actually be really compelling to customers, and obviously they're like everybody wants to like everybody loves discounts, but to your point when you're just getting your inbox flooded with discounts like sometimes those don't cut through so so often and so how might you turn what feels like a generic discount into something that I'm getting on a product that you are recommending for me, where it feels like this is a personal relationship between us and you understand you know me and my preferences, because you've I've given you permission to have some of that information because you've incentivized that in previous instances. So making rewards more personalized is always like, you're going to have your kind of like fixed program structure, and you're going to have like, certain rewards that you offer to everybody when they reach certain milestones. Yes, but how can you weave more personalization in with with some of the rewards? And then, how can you lean into other things that may be more experiential, right? And so specifically, thinking about some of your top tier customers, how, how impactful might it be for them to feel like they're part of this cohort that is able to provide, like, customer feedback on, you know, a product that you're about to launch, or, you know, even that, like they have the chance to participate in some sort of contest that other people don't, and you have, you know, one winner of that contest, but you've already made people feel special and elevated because you've created a more like experiential reward for them. So I think, as it relates to what sorts of rewards and incentives cut through, it is things that feel experiential. It is, you know, more personalized rewards that feel like I'm getting this because you're actually like, trying to help me out on my customer journey, or on my journey as a customer. But then look like, everybody loves discounts, every everybody's like. So if you, if you survey your customers, they're probably going to tell you that they want more discounts. So you just have to be smart about how you kind of build that into your program. It likely needs to be some part of your program. It would be, you know, pretty rare to have a loyalty program that didn't offer any sort of like monetary incentive. They do exist, but, but it's pretty rare, and the other rewards would need to be pretty compelling to get people to actually, like do anything and engage otherwise, like you're you're probably wasting your time having a loyalty program in the first place.
Mariah Parsons 32:52
Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like a lot of the you'd have to have some really good experiences lined up for those, for those top one percenters, and then probably generate some FOMO from anyone who wasn't in that to to really get people coming back. Um, okay, that's a great walk through. So let's, let's dive into gamification, because I feel like that's one of the things that we haven't touched upon. And dive, dived into deep. Doven into deep. What is the correct word? Whatever. We haven't had a deep dive. Yeah, exactly right. We haven't had a second to really double tap on that. So, and I think what you all are doing and how you're thinking about is really interesting. So tell us, yeah, tell us about just gamification in loyalty,
Chris Miller 33:34
yeah, well, it's a word that seems to be coming up more and more and more. I don't, I don't exactly know why. I do know that there are a lot of different definitions that people seem to have. So I'm happy to share. I'm happy to just start by kind of sharing, like my definition for it, yeah, which is basically applying elements from gaming and games more broadly into other contexts, right? And typically, when you start talking about gamification and loyalty, like the first thing that people go to, the first thing you start to hear is badges and leaderboards. Like throw throw in some badges at a leaderboard and call it a day. We've done gamification right, and they're not wrong. Like, those are elements of games that can be effective in creating a more like gamified and engaging experience. Like, they're not necessarily right for every business you know, like, not every business needs to have this sort of, like, creative component in the form of badges that you like stack. And then, by the way, if you're adding in something like badges, like, you really need to think about, all right, like, what is the strategy here? How am I going to like, instead of just, Hey, do this and. Get a badge. It's like, Well, okay, if I'm accumulating badges, like, what happens then, right? Like, that's how they get woven into into games, and what makes them effective in that context. And if you think about it too, like, loyalty programs are games like, period. Yeah, true. It's a game that you're playing with your customers. So the same things that are true of the best games that people are spending hours at a time playing must be true of your loyalty program in order for it to be a game that your customers are gonna give a shit about. I don't know if you're allowed to cuss on this podcast, yeah, yeah, you're good. And look like not all of these have to be true, but like the main ones, that are probably most prevalent in some of the most successful games and loyalty programs are creating that sense of accomplishment, right? And that's where, obviously, points and badges and and progress bars and tiers, like all of that comes from the concept of creating a sense of accomplishment. But what's important is, like that accomplishment needs to mean something to people, and in order for that to be true, like there needs to be some sort of storyline that is being reinforced and communicated throughout the experience. So it's not important for me to just continue to earn points and advance to the next tier. If it's not really clear to me that by doing so, I am going to be like, I'm going to have like, so much better of an experience with your brand. And so you know, if you just like, are offering free shipping or something like that at your highest tier, it's like, I'm not really buying into that storyline as the customer, and that incentive is not really getting me most likely, and maybe I'm just speaking for myself, that's not getting me to continue playing that game. So the sense of accomplishment and the pride in that accomplishment and and frankly, like the incentives to continue doing, spending, engaging, need to be, need to be there. The second one is, is just like creating excitement and reasons to keep coming back and increase customer retention with strategies that work for ecommerce. So you know, if you think about how that shows up in the gaming context unpredictability, right? So loot boxes and other forms of of gamification and surprise elements in games that that keep people on their toes, and you can think about that in the loyalty context with like various different methods that might be giving somebody a like, time bound personalized offer again, like, hey, just for you for the next three minutes. You have this offer that's amazing and and, like, make sure you take advantage of it. Or it could be, you know, things like loot boxes, right? That I've seen show up in other loyalty programs. But it can't, you know, it can't just be like, I've I gave you my birthday when I first signed up and and I'm, like, so excited when I see like, 35 birthday rewards in my in my inbox. Like that is that's not creating that sort of like excitement and a reason to keep coming back and then. And then the last thing that games do, and we've actually spent a decent amount of time as a business, working with brands like PepsiCo and Walmart and Lamborghini, and helping them connect their their Roblox experiences. So they've built out these like immersive gaming experiences and connecting that to their core business. But if you look at a platform like Roblox, where they have 7070, plus million daily active users, on average, people are spending two and a half hours a day on that platform per person. Like, that's
Mariah Parsons 38:56
insane, so crazy. Wow.
Chris Miller 38:58
The reason that, oh yeah, it's, it's, it's wild. But the reason that people are doing that, beyond some of the things I just talked about, accomplishment, you know, excitement is it's like a social experience. And that is their version of social media. And so creating some semblance of, like, social meaning and influence, and my status in this program is important to me personally, but it's also important in the context of my like peer set and the loyalty programs that I think do this the best are like airlines. You know when you're when you're sitting there at the airport and they call first class, like, how special Do you feel for those five minutes when everybody else is like, schlepping their bags and they're coming on the plane later, like that, even though you don't know those people there, that is a, like, a. Multiplayer game experience where my like loyalty, status and what it's afforded me, even if it's just boarding the plane five minutes earlier, matters and means something to me, because it means something more broadly about me in the context of
Mariah Parsons 40:18
an airport. Yeah, it's a hierarchy, like an established one that some someone, somewhere, that's right. You know what? We're going to start doing this.
Chris Miller 40:27
That's right. And the other way that I've seen that show show up in loyalty programs is, if you look at like sephora's Beauty Insider program, they have this really robust, almost like micro social media channel, where members have the opportunity to interact and engage with each other, where their loyalty status actually kind of like means something in the context of the people that they're engaging with, but they also use it to, you know, have customers kind of help solve each other's problems, like they want to get feedback, like, rather than just looking at the reviews on on sephora's website. You know, they can ask other customers who are just like them, but the loyalty status sort of means something within the context of their program, and they're bringing that light to life through a through, like a community experience. So yeah, that is like how I view gamification, and how it sort of shows up most commonly in loyalty. And again, it goes far beyond just like badges and leaderboards,
Mariah Parsons 41:38
right, right? That's a very comprehensive view. Honestly, I don't think I could have done it myself. And one question for you, just because I heard you mention it multiple times, and I'm not sure I've run into it before, but loop box, what? What is, what even is that like? Tell us. Tell us about that, because I'm not sure I've heard that before.
Chris Miller 41:57
Yeah, it's not something that we use at flaunt, but it's, it's, like, very common in the gaming world where you are, like, given a surprise that is, like, you know, totally random, and you don't know what it is, and so you're given the surprise and you have the chance to open it.
Mariah Parsons 42:17
So, like, a mystery, mystery, yeah,
Chris Miller 42:18
exactly, a mystery gift. And if you open it, you know, it reveals, like, one of a handful of things. And so it just kind of like leaves you on the edge of your seat for a little bit longer. It hooks you. It hooks you. It like, you know, monopolizes your your mind share for a few more moments, rather than just like, hey, you got this reward, you know? So it's just, like, another way to kind of, like, bring what I would call, like set, otherwise, surprise and delight
Mariah Parsons 42:49
into into loyalty. Okay, cool. I just wasn't unfamiliar with that term, but you gave such a comprehensive view. I was like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna stop you.
Chris Miller 42:59
Look, I can't take like, I am not the world's leading expert on gamification, if, if this is a topic that is, like, interesting to the folks that are out there listening, highly, highly recommend checking out you Kai Chow's book called actionable gamification. He has an entire framework, I think it's called the octalysis framework, that's all around understanding the different like behavior drivers of humans, and how gaming and gamification can play into those different behavior drivers. So highly recommend checking that out. It has kind of become like my Bible on the topic, and he is certainly leading expert on on gamification. So if it's interesting, go check out yukai Chow.
Mariah Parsons 43:52
Okay, I love all the resources we're giving our listeners. I'm going to add another one in there as we start to wrap up the webinar that you all did with bear face recently. Again, another shout out to them. But I'll also link that in in our show notes, because it was, it's a great webinar as well, just about all of everything that we're talking about today. So I want people to be able to continue to learn as they're, you know, looking at their loyalty programs, whether or not someone has them currently, or is looking at building it out, or looking at optimizing their current loyalty program. I think that's a that's a great shout out I want to give.
Chris Miller 44:29
Yeah, the bear face team is awesome. They do amazing work. They are wicked smart, and they agreed to be on a webinar that we had recently and talk a little bit about the program and what's made it special and impactful for them. So thank you to them if they're listening. But yeah, I hope so. We'd love for anybody to check that out. We have it on our on our YouTube page.
Mariah Parsons 44:54
Cool. All right. Chris, is there anything else you wanted to talk about as we're wrapping up? Say to our. Audience, anything of the sort.
Chris Miller 45:02
No, I just want to thank everybody for listening to me blabber for the last 30 minutes.
Mariah Parsons 45:08
Did you have fun with it? At least? That's, that's the number one I had.
Chris Miller 45:12
I had so much fun. I had so much fun. And thank you, Mariah, for for having me on. You know, you've been doing a lot of these. What number am I,
Mariah Parsons 45:21
uh, you'll by the time it's out probably be like 130 ish around there. So, yeah, yeah,
Chris Miller 45:28
you put out one a week, or something, one a week, yep.
Mariah Parsons 45:31
Mm hmm, every Monday.
Chris Miller 45:33
Love that. Love that dedication. Um, so yeah, look, thank you for having me on. Thank you to those who stayed on for the 30 minutes to listen. And if you're interested in getting in touch, feel free to shoot me an email at chris@flauntloyalty.com or find me on LinkedIn. Might just be easier to email me, because there's probably a lot of Chris Millers
Mariah Parsons 45:53
out there, probably, but we'll make sure you know our listeners end up in the right space. So it's been a joy to have you on. Thank you, Chris. I'm super excited to continue to learn about all things loyalty from you and the team at flaunt and just really dive into all the different nuances that I know our partnership means, and then also all the merchants out there can be doing in this fun world of E commerce, because there's always new stuff to be learning. It's always a fun time.
Chris Miller 46:23
Well, thank you again.
