Reward Offers are used to:

• Define a financial amount to be awarded to Rewards Participants, based on their actions.
• Define the conditions for an Award to be given.
• Define the conditions that should be met for the awarded amount to be spent.

The customers who have signed up for Rewards or have been automatically selected to participate.

Award Transactions are used to award a Rewards Participant, by crediting their Wallet with a specific amount of cash value provided by the Reward Offer.

Refer to Managing Award Transactions for more information.

Spend Transactions are used to consume a specific amount of money, that was awarded by Reward Offers, by debiting the Rewards Participants Wallet.

Refer to Managing Spend Transactions for more information.

Award Expiration Transactions are used to expire an amount awarded to a Rewards Participant by debiting the Rewards Participant's Wallet. Award Expiration Transactions are generated as awarded amounts expire, when past their Reward Award Offer Validity period.

Refer to Managing Award Expiration Transactions & Using Award Expiration Run Definitions for more information.

Customer Events are financial, and marketing events performed by customers and are registered within CRM.COM to be rewarded or additionally processed by other CRM.COM functions.

A participant can start participating in a Rewards Scheme to start receiving awards by its participating Reward Offers. Once the participant signs off from the Rewards Scheme, then he can no longer enjoy awards from its Reward Offers.

Addition and removal of a participant to a Rewards Scheme can take place by adding and removing the Scheme from the Rewards Participant Data Entry page.

The CRM.COM Rewards Platform makes it possible to award loyal customers for other actions as well as for money spent, to assist in promotion and marketing.

• Customers are awarded based on the value of their purchased Products, by using: Increase Revenue, Product Based
• Customers are awarded based on the value of their Transactions, by using: Increase Revenue, Transaction Based
• AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R10.0.0Customers are awarded based on specific Financial Achievements( user defined) who they have accomplished in general or within a period for a specific amount or any amount, by using: Reward Financial Achievement
• Customers are awarded based on specific Achievements (user defined) who they have accomplished in general or within a period for a specific amount or any amount, by using: Reward Achievement
• Customers are awarded based on the value of the purchase transactions they have performed within a specific period, by using: Reward Loyalty, Transaction Amount Based (The offer is accumulative)
• Customers are awarded based on the amount of the purchase transactions they have performed within a specific period, by using: Reward Loyalty, Transaction Number Based(The offer is accumulative)
• Customers are awarded based on purchases made on specific dates / hours associated with any or specific Products by using: Utilise Free Capacity
• AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R11.0.0 Customers are awarded for reaching specific key business objectives as measured through Financial Statement Customer Events, by using: Reward Financial Statement
• Customers are awarded based on common business characteristics which can be determined by one or multiple Segments by using: Just Money
• Customers are awarded for liking a Facebook business page or for visiting the business website by using: Reward Behaviour
• Customers are awarded on their birthday by using: Reward Birthdays
• Customers are awarded on their name-day by using: Reward On Name-day
• Customers are awarded for providing their personal details, such as email addresses, telephone, addresses, etc. by using: Reward Personal Data Completeness
• Customers are awarded for referring friends: Reward Referrals
• Customers are awarded on signing up to the Rewards Platform by using: Reward Sign Ups
  
• Customers are awarded for being loyal subscribers, with no deactivation periods throughout their Subscription by using: Reward Subscription Maturity

While some Reward Offers to be awarded can be derived from data registered in the System such as name-days, birthdays and subscription maturity, most of the Reward Offers require the creation and evaluation of Customer Events to be awarded. Customer Events of the following types are used and evaluated by the Rewards Engine:

• Purchase

• Referral

• Web

• Social Media

• Achievement

• Financial Achievement AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R10.0.0

• Financial Statement AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R11.0.0

For more information on Customer Events, visit Understanding Customer Events.

• Spend Request

Customer Events can be awarded in two ways:

• Interactively: At the time that the Event occurs
  This happens if the Customer Event-related with the Reward Offer has the "Process Immediately" flag checked.
• Batch: At a later stage when the Reward process is executed to evaluate and award all Events. This will happen when a Rewards Run is executed, and there exist unprocessed Customer Events related with the Reward Offers included in the run. 
  These are Customer Events that have the "Process Immediately" flag unchecked.

AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R10.0.0 When creating a Reward Offer, there is the option to define whether Customer Events (with the "Process Immediately" flag checked) are processed immediately, evaluating related the Reward Offer and providing the Reward Award Transaction directly, or whether they can only be processed and evaluated during the Rewards Run.

The option to allow both Batch and Interactive processing is only available for the following Reward Offer Types:

• Utilise Free Capacity
• Increase Revenue, Transaction based
• Increase Revenue, Product based
• Reward Behaviour

Once a Reward Offer is created and set as effective, Reward Participants are eligible to get awarded by the Offer as long as it belongs to a Scheme they participate.
However, you have the option to define specific periods during which the Reward Offers will be used for awarding Reward Participants, even if they are effective. The following options are available:

• Always Valid from Effective Date onward
• Specific Period: Make a Reward Offer available for a specific period
  AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R11.1.0
• During Birthday Period: Make a Reward Offer available on a Participant's birthday
• During Name-day Period: Make a Reward Offer available on a Participant's name-day
• During a recurring Period: Make a Reward Offer available during a specific period of the year, every year, such as Christmas Season Offers.

Awards are added to a Rewards Participant's Wallet and can either be spent conditionally (on specific products, at specific times and days of the week, or at specific places) or unconditionally.
The business can also set an expiration to the Awards, encouraging the customer to spend them within a specific period. On the expiration date, the participant's Wallet is debited, and the awarded money ceases to be available.

To set a Validity Date on the Awards, the Reward Award Validity attribute must be set on the Reward Offer at the time of setup, and the Expiration Process must be executed to identify expired Awards.

Rewards Participants have the option to define whether they wish to enable Instant Spent; this means that awards can be exchanged and spent instantly, i.e. when making a purchase related to an award, the award/money can be automatically deducted from the invoice, like an instant discount.

The Instant Spent Authorisation, is done regardless of the Instant Spent setting on the Reward Offer and it is only applicable for the following offer types:

• Utilise Free Capacity
• Increase Revenue, Product Based
• Increase Revenue, Transaction Based

If many Reward Offers are set up in the System, then an event may be awarded multiple times, that is, whenever the Reward process is executed. 
The option is available to only award an event once, with the Award from the Reward Offer that gives the highest awarded amount, every time the Reward Process is executed.

The "Best Award" decision process can take place either when the user works with an Interactive Rewards Model or a Batch Rewards Model.

The amount or percentage to be Awarded is set on the Reward Offer. In general, when a transaction is completed, if the Award Conditions are met then the Award is provided on the whole amount.

Another option is to provide the Award per item sold within a transaction. If there are five different or identical products in a transaction, then the Award will be provided once for every product.

Many CRM.COM Reward Offers are directly related to Purchase Customer Event. These Awards will be granted based on a Purchase Customer Event, provided that the offer conditions are met.

An option is available (via WEB API) to preview awarded amount information before the Purchase Customer Event is submitted. Using the Preview function the following information is available:

• Amount to be awarded
• Amount to be spent instantly
• Additional amount that can be spent on a Purchase Customer Event (depending on what is available in the customer's loyalty account).

Merchants that have a partnership with the Rewards Platform business can participate in the Reward Schemes. Through the Rewards Participating Merchants module, Awards can be granted for events occurring via the particular Merchants. Merchants can, for example, set up a Reward Offer that will be applicable only when Rewards Participants buy a good from their store.

Additionally, the Merchants can also be required to pay the Rewards Platform business for the Awards that were provided via its own Reward Offers. This is referred to as Contribution and is calculated in the System on a percentage basis (%). 
Amount owed to the business = Contribution % * Awarded Amount.

Refer to Managing Rewards Participating Merchants and Managing Rewards Participating Merchant Groups for more information on setting up business rules related to Contribution.

There is the option to debit or credit Merchants' accounts, based on the Awards provided through their Reward Offers, and the spending of Awards done via their Units.  For example:

• When an Award is handed via a Customer Event that was created by Unit A, then Unit's A account will be debited with the Award amount.
• When a Spend Request Customer Event is created by Unit A, then Unit's A account will be credited with the spent amount.

Refer to Using Reward Settlement Run Definitions for more information.

AVAILABLE FROM CRM.COM R10.0.0
For the calculation of the amount with which, the Merchant's account will be debited or credited, the System will take into account the Contribution Rules set up at the Rewards Participating Merchants.
Refer to Applying Rewards Participating Merchant Rules for more information. 

In the case, that the POS of your Reward's Platform Participating Merchant cannot be changed so that it fully integrates with CRM.COM, in order for redemption of awards to be done through Participant's Wallet, the System allows you to credit the Accounts Receivable of the Participant with the amount of money that should be paid to the merchant through the redemption of the participant's awards.

When Rewards Participants, wish to redeem their awards (i.e. Create Spend Request Customer Events) the System apart from debiting the Wallet of the Participant, so that a correct balance is maintained, it also automatically credits the Accounts Receivable of the Rewards Participant, with the amount it should be redeemed.

For example, if the customer wants to buy something worth €115.00 of which €15.00 is the redemption of awards, the customer will pay the full amount to the merchant, and the System will credit the Account Receivable with €15.00.

The option to credit the Accounts Receivable is optional, and it can be set up on the Rewards Participating Merchants. To help you identify the Accounts that should be handled a Report is available in the System: Rewards Participating Merchant Credits Report

• Controlled Selection Access Entities

• Explicit Viewing Entity

• Controlled Selection Access Entities 

• Implicit Viewing Entity

• Implicit Viewing Entity

• Implicit Viewing Entity

Wallets serve as the customer's loyalty accounts. Awards and Spend Transactions trigger the creation of Wallet Transactions that will either debit or credit the Wallet.