The Strategic Guide To Starting A B2B Loyalty Program

Loyalty programs have long been a staple in the B2C world, driving repeat purchases and fostering brand affinity. But in the B2B space, loyalty programs are an underutilized yet powerful tool for strengthening customer relationships, increasing retention, and driving long-term revenue. In addition to providing discounts and rewards (a staple in consumer loyalty programs), B2B loyalty and incentive programs must also be strategically designed to provide real business value, fostering deeper partnerships and sustained engagement.

If you're considering starting a B2B loyalty or incentive program, we've put together this guide to help you navigate the complexities of creating and launching a successful program. Whether you're a manufacturer, distributor, or service provider, this guide will walk you through the key considerations, from setting clear program goals and selecting the right incentives to leveraging technology for seamless execution.

Benefits Of A B2B Loyalty Incentive Program

If you've ever considered starting a B2B loyalty or channel incentive program for your business, you're on the right track. There are some valuable reasons to start a B2B loyalty program.

How To Start Putting Together Your Ideal Program

So you're ready to start putting together your future loyalty or channel incentive program. But loyalty programs have several moving parts: points, rewards, tiers, technology, analytics, etc. Where exactly should you start?  How should you determine what your priorities are for your future program? 

To help, we’ve put together six strategic questions that will help form the foundation of your future program.

1. How will the program be staffed/run?

2. What kind of point structure will you have?

3. What kind of actions or behaviors do you want to reward?

4. What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to track?

5. What are your program goals?

6. How will you market your program?

1. Who Will Manage & Support Your Program? 

During the design and build phase your loyalty program needs to have support and buy-in from different parts of your organization, from the Executive Suite all the way to Finance, Operations, IT, Sales, Legal, and Marketing. For most loyalty programs, the ongoing management is best handled by marketing departments.

It’s important to have the right personnel leading your loyalty program and marketing teams are already customer-facing and customer-focused; they conduct research, design and execute strategic campaigns, analyze data, collect feedback, distribute communications, and more. Loyalty programs managers operate more efficiently and productively working in close contact with these types of departments.

Additionally, you need the right B2B loyalty platform software and vendor working alongside you to run the program effectively. Your loyalty platform should include tools, features, and integrations that automate key processes and make day-to-day task management of your loyalty program easy.

Some ideal capabilities include:

• Automating data flow via APIs for ERPs and other technologies
• Creating customizable Terms & Conditions and FAQs to reduce customer support requirements
• Sending triggered emails, notifications, and announcements to members and customers
• Utilizing SSO to make the customer experience seamless
• Automating reward redemptions and fulfillment

You'll benefit from working with a knowledgeable and experienced loyalty vendor right from the start because they can ensure your program will have the exact capabilities to fit your business. At Brandmovers we guide you through the entire build and implementation process and can tailor your program to take as much day-to-day management off your hands as you need.

2. What’s the Best Points Structure for Your Program? 

Points structure is an important part of loyalty program design, especially for B2B channel incentive programs or loyalty programs. The basic idea of a points structure is the framework for how your participants will earn or redeem points within your program.

But there’s more to it than just deciding how many points a purchase will be worth. Your points structure needs to be carefully and strategically planned out because it will become the driving incentive for your members.

It’s important to consider the different ways a program points structure can motivate members and help drive goal progress:

	Base Rewards that provide ongoing program value and help keep members active.
	One-Off Point Bonuses for special events or instances, such as flash sales or limited-time promotions.
	Growth Bonus Opportunities that are paid when members hit certain goals or targets.
	Order Type Point Bonuses that reward more for certain product, brand, or category purchases.
	Incremental Tier or Level Bonuses that reward members for reaching a milestone or status.

To utilize these different types of earning rules, your loyalty program technology needs to be capable of both implementing and executing the right points structure that fits with your strategic plan.

3. Which Customer Actions or Behaviors Do You Want To Reward?

The basic foundation of any loyalty or incentive program is to reward members for their actions -  typically purchases. However, these could also include actions such as consuming content, completing surveys/questionnaires, and more. 

A core aspect of successful loyalty or incentive programs is that they help motivate the right types of customer actions and behaviors: ones that are valuable to the brand and contribute towards business goals.

Part of your planning process should be to identify which valuable actions or behaviors you want to see from your customers. Do you want more customers to sign up for SMS alerts? Increase cross-category spending? Get more customer referrals? 

Once you have your list, you can then ideate ways to incentivize those customer actions through your loyalty program. 

To determine which actions or behaviors you want to drive, start with identifying what consumer actions positively impact your business. Some examples include:

Purchases In addition to motivating customers to buy more, you can drive specific purchase behaviors or patterns such as the number of purchases made in a defined time frame.		Education You can incentivize development and training opportunities to build channel and customer knowledge on new products, services, or how the program works.

 

E-Commerce Orders If you’re launching a new e-commerce platform or want to increase the usage of an existing one, you can offer incentives for customers to order through specific channels.		Cross-Category Buying If some categories are worth more than others, you can use the program to encourage and reward customers for purchasing across multiple high-value categories or brands.

4. What Are The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) You Want To Track?

To properly track and evaluate how well your program is performing, you need to establish what key performance indicators (KPIs) you intend to track. This helps give you real-time data points to monitor as your program grows and matures. Establishing KPIs also enables you to stay alert for signs of trouble - if your KPI numbers aren’t on track you can take action to find and fix any potential issues before they become full-fledged problems.

Determining KPIs during your program design phase ensures you can set up specific analytics reports or dashboards to track these KPIs from day one of the program launch.

Types of KPIS For Channel Incentive Programs and B2B Loyalty Programs Include: 

• Number of New Customers
• Growth Within Existing Customers
• Customer Retention
• Number of Completed Bonus Promotions
• Number of Bonus Codes Used
• Spend by Brand
• Category Spend
• Top-Performing Products and/or Categories
• Top Performing Partners, Associates, or Teams

5. What Are Your Program Goals?

Goals define a loyalty or incentive program. Strategic program design starts with “Why?”.

Why are you starting a loyalty program? What do you want the program to achieve for your business? What do you want your customers to receive from the program?

Taking the time to determine the answers to these questions early on in the planning process is essentially for building a program that is 100% focused on helping your business and customers succeed. 

Your Program Goals Might Include:

• Grow Existing Customer Spend 
• Attracting New Customers
• Promoting Specific Products
• Improve Retention
• Drive Incremental Revenue
• Data Acquisition
• Increase Customer Personalization
• Communicate With End Customers
• Build Brand Advocacy