CUSTOMIZED LOYALTY PROGRAMS
The M-zawadi Loyalty Program is a strategic rewards platform that is anchored on the Blue Ocean Strategy. It is a powerful mobile based incentive platform, that is customizable to suit specific needs of any brand. With presence in all industries from Manufacturing, FMCGs, Insurance, Banks, Microfinances & Saccos, Petroleum & Energy and Hospitality, this loyalty platform has been tried, tested and proven.
Brands have been struggling with cut-throat competition within a shrinking profit pool, which has become an all too familiar scenario for the 21st-century organizations. Markets have become saturated, growth rates diminished, and profit margins continue to shrink. With many brands focusing on discounts, offers or price undercutting to differentiate themselves, there is need for brands to move away from this relentless, vicious circle.
Guided by the principles of high impact, low cost and rapid execution, M-zawadi loyalty program seeks to different local and multinational companies in Kenya and East Africa, with an aim of helping them maximize on incentives to encourage brand loyalty and increase the brand recall rate.
" M-zawadi Loyalty Program is cardless and can be integrated to virtually any CRM, ERP or POS. With an ecosystem of over 700,000 redemption outlets across the country, brands can now create personalized experiences for their customers. "
Loyalty Program for Manufacturers & FMGCs
For a long time, Manufacturers and FMCG companies have relied on rebates and discounts to reward their value chain, beat competition and retain their market share through issuing incentives like buy one get on free to their consumers. They have also been incurring huge costs on marketing and advertising in a bid to increase customer base.
The Manufacturers and FMCGs loyalty program focuses on rewarding Distributors, Wholesalers and Retailers based on performance. Performance can be clustered into;
- Hitting or surpassing set targets on purchases or sales.
- Hitting or surpassing set milestones on volumes.
- Product matrix targets or volumes.
Besides rewarding Distributors, Wholesalers and Retailers, a brand can use the incentive platform to push slow moving products, new products that a brand would want to introduce to the market etc. With reports on product performance that can be customized to show performance per SKU, per region, per territory etc., Manufacturers and FMCGs can track product performance and use the data to make strategic decisions.
The cost of acquisition is now more than 5X the cost of retention, especially in a depressed economic situation as is being faced currently. Through a customized referral program, Manufacturers and FMCGs can organically increase their customer base at reduced costs. Leveraging on referrals ensures you reduce your cost of marketing by more than 75% while at the same time increasing your customer base. Consumer incentives are a key tool in retention. However, many brands lack ideas on how to create incentives that speak to the consumer needs. Thus many of them will copy what a different brand has done and run with it. It is important to realize that the consumer of today is well exposed and knows exactly what they need. Thus if they can’t get it from a brand, they’ll quickly move to the competitor that offers what they’re looking for. Our Manufacturers and FMCGs loyalty program leverages on building relationships between the brand and its customers, by having customized reward criteria and an ecosystem of over 700,000 outlets across the country where they have the option to choose how and where to redeem their incentives.
With this loyalty program targeting Distributors, Wholesalers, Stockists and Consumers, Manufacturers and FMCGS no longer need to keep fighting in the Red Oceans but can create their own Blue Oceans.
Loyalty Program for Insurance Providers
The Insurance industry has become very competitive, with little or no differentiation. The lack of differentiation means customer churn is high and consumers have different policies with different insurance companies. Agents and brokers are also not focused on one company and will more often than not push where they get better commissions. This has made the insurance industry extremely competitive. The situation is further complicated by the entrance of banks in the insurance space. So for a long time, the question has been, how do insurance firms differentiate themselves?
Introducing a customer loyalty program for insurance firms then changes the discussion. Insurance firms now have an opportunity to not only reward their customers for the different policies they sign up or, but also reward them for changing their lifestyles. For instance, an insurer can reward their health policy holders for other activities such as participating in marathons, attending health and wellness forums, purchasing healthy foods from healthy foods groceries, having regular check-ups, keeping fit through physical activity at the gyms etc. Motor policy holders could be rewarded for good driving habits, having no claims at the end if their subscription etc.
The insurance providers could also reward their customers for signing up for more than one product and thus use the loyalty program to increase product uptake through cross-selling. To spur subscriptions and a higher customer life time value, renewal rewards could also be introduced to ensure that customers will have the insurer in mind at the time of renewal.
To increase brand recall rate by customers, engagement is key. An insurer will most likely get in touch with their customers at the time of renewal. This means that from the time of sign-up to renewal, there has been little or no engagement with the customers. This is a major contributor to customer churn. Having a loyalty program means the insurance provider can keep the engagement going by having different incentive structures that can run throughout the subscription period. This will ensure a higher brand recall rate and less churn.
For the first time, insurance firms have the opportunity to use an incentive program not just to push their products, but also understand their customers on a more personal level, change customer behaviour and create more personalized customer experiences.
Loyalty Program for Banks, Microfinances & Saccos
This is another sector that is extremely competitive and continues to pose a challenge to the players as more financial institutions especially Saccos come up. These pose a major challenge to well established financial institutions as banks, due to their knack of naturally acquiring customers especially amorphous groups. That leaves the banks and microfinance institutions struggling to maintain their customer base or tap into more customer segments. With most of the population being unbanked, they resort to the Saccos and this had made the Sacco industry to blossom in all corners of the country.
Banks therefore need to evolve and innovate around solutions that can allow them to tap into other customer bases as well as retain those they already have. A bank will most likely know their customer through their transactions. But is this enough really? The answer is no. As with the case with insurance products, bank products remain largely similar, whether they are savings, credit or insurance products. There is therefore a need for banks to stand out not through customer service but through customer experience.
Referral is also key for the financial institutions in terms of customer acquisition. Though some institutions have some form of referral where a customer is credited certain amounts to their account when they refer, most are not structured and this method hasn’t been successful due to the dormancy levels of referrals. The M-zawadi loyalty program ensures that such referral programs are successful by rewarding on conversions and activity, not just plain referrals.
With the M-zawadi loyalty program, a financial institution is able to build a relationship with their customers beyond their transactions. By incentivizing customers to either adopt certain channels of banking e.g. digital channels, mobile banking, ATM banking etc., use certain products e.g. fixed deposit accounts or sign up for certain products like investments, a bank is able to create a better relationship with the customers, and with our redemption ecosystem of over 700,000 outlets across the country, it means a bank can create experiences for their customers regardless of where they are. Allowing the customers to redeem their rewards across these outlets will give the bank a better picture of who their customer is beyond their bank account, and this is information that the bank can use to create personalized experiences for their customers.
Loyalty Program for Petroleum & Energy Players
The petroleum industry has had a focus on customer reward solutions, but most have not been successful due to their rigidity. Majority are brick and motor and lack the agility that is expected by the more exposed, on the move digital customer with higher expectations in a reward program. A lot of focus has also been rewards on fuel only, which has seen customers missing out on other purchases within the station. Customers have also become time conscious and want to spend as little time at the station as possible. They also do not want to wait for a day or two for them to be rewarded. They want instant rewards which they can easily track or utilize at will.
The agility of the M-zawadi loyalty program means that as a petroleum company, you appeal to all your customers by providing them with a solution that does not just reward them but creates experiences for them. By use of NFC technology which is faster, more efficient and more agile, a station can reward their customers for any purchase within the station. The M-zawadi loyalty program focuses on the whole station ecosystem, with the ability of having different reward metrics at every customer touch point.
With presence in all leading fuel brands and with other 45 individual stations operating under all the leading brands, we have transformed how loyalty programs were viewed in the oil and energy space, and edging out the brick and mortar reward programs.
The robust nature of our solution in this space has seen it gain a lot of traction in the industry. Customers are rewarded with instant rewards and have the convenience of utilizing those rewards as they so wish. Ecosystems around the stations are blossoming due to the fact that most customers are free to for instance be rewarded at the pump and redeem their reward at the convenience store.
Loyalty Program for Hospitality Service Providers
Hotels, tours and travel operators, spas and other hospitality service providers can now reward their customers using our cardless customer loyalty solution. Though the nature of the industry especially the hotel industry is more disposed to loyalty cards due to brand identity and the prestige that comes with it, technology is slowly edging out loyalty cards. More and more customers are now more willing to use a cardless option as opposed to having a loyalty card.
M-zawadi Loyalty Program, being a cardless platform, saves you the cost of acquiring loyalty cards and the infrastructure that comes with it. Moreover, the cardless loyalty program offers more avenues of scalability and innovation as compared to the more rigid card based loyalty program. This means as a hospitality player you can create different rewards which can be tiered e.g. into Silver, Bronze, Gold etc., and create different redemption experiences in the tiers. Our experience in the sector gives us an edge to help you craft an exceptional reward program for your customers.
Customer experience is key in this field and as such, our redemption ecosystem comes in handy to give your customers the personalized experiences they so much would like. Customer acquisition is also key in this industry and the referral program becomes an important customer acquisition tool. With the M-zawadi loyalty program, you can give your customers much more than a great customer service. You can give them a memorable experience.