THE ESSENTIALS

Before getting into details about Reward Offers, it's a good idea to familiarise yourself with some basic terms when referring to Reward Offers. 

Business Events 

Business events are specific actions captured by CRM.COM to award a contact. Each event is processed differently by the software.

• Customer Events - Specific Contact actions submitted to CRM.COM via an external platform. 

  • Purchase Event - Records the purchase of goods or services by a Contact from an external POS system or through the CRM.COM back-end system to award the purchase and/or spending wallet funds to pay for the purchase

  • Referral Event - The event where a Contact introduces another person to sign up to the Business and become a new Contact

  • Achievement Event - Represents a Contact's accomplishment of a set target, e.g. a Facebook like, a visit to a shop, a wallet top-up etc. 

• Time Events - Marks the point in time when a Contact will be considered eligible for an award, either due to being part of a specific market group or being loyal (e.g. having a large number of purchases, uninterrupted subscriptions etc.)

• Contact Events - Contact events are specific actions performed by a Contact indicating the engagement between the Contact and a business, i.e. sign-up or profile completion actions.

States 

A Reward Offer can have either one of two states at any given time: 

• Active - The reward offer is in use, and Contacts can be awarded by it if the offer conditions are satisfied 

• Inactive - The reward offer is not in use, and Contacts will not be awarded by it 

Reward Tiers 

Reward tiers rank Contacts based on their purchases across all Reward Schemes of a business. The more a Contact purchases, the more value units (equivalent to an amount of money) they earn. When a Contact's accumulated value units are equal to the next reward tier's minimum value units, they will be upgraded to the next tier, where they can potentially benefit from more reward offers. 

Offer Goals 

Offers are grouped into offer goals (e.g. increase spend), thus reflecting a common expected outcome as a result of the Reward Offers. Each offer goal has a number of Offer types. 

Offer Types

Each Offer belongs to an offer type (e.g. product discount), with a set of predefined rules which can be configured to dictate when an award will be granted and spent. 

Award

An award is an amount of money returned to a Contact for achieving a set target defined by a Reward Offer in the form of a cashback. The Contact's commerce wallet balance is credited with the awarded amount, and commerce pool conditions may apply. 

Refer to the Wallet manual for further information about wallet open & commerce balances. 

Commerce Pool

A set of conditions based on which awarded cashback can be redeemed and spent on a purchase (e.g. the awarded cashback of €1.75 can be spent on any food item purchased during weekdays, between 3 pm and 6 pm). Each awarded cashback amount is accompanied by its own respective commerce pool conditions. Therefore, funds in the commerce wallet can be subject to different redeeming conditions. 

Commerce Pool Rules can be created on-the-fly or defined via Settings. 

Redeem

Redeem is the process whereby the contents of a purchase in hand are compared against all of the Contact's commerce wallet pool conditions. If the purchase satisfies any commerce pool conditions (purchased items, location and date/time are examined), then those funds are debited from the Commerce wallet balance and credited to the Contact's Open wallet balance. Funds in the Open wallet balance can be spent on a purchase or paid out (payout) to the Contact (subject to system settings).

Awards provided from instantly redeemable offers will be automatically redeemed and can be spent on the purchase at hand.

Refer to the Wallets manual for further information about wallet open & commerce balances. 

Spend

Spend is the action of using money from the Contact's wallet open balance to partially or fully pay for a purchase. Spending of wallet funds is only permitted if the Contact is not blocked from spending. 

Refer to the Wallets manual for further information about wallet open & commerce balances.

Payout

Payout applies only to automatically redeemable reward offers. This is the process whereby any wallet commerce funds redeemed to the wallet open balance are paid out to the Contact using the Contact's preferred payment method or to a specific payment gateway (provided that it supports payouts).

Reward Commercial Terms

In CRM.COM, Merchants can define their own Reward Offers and subsequently submit purchase events. Reward commercial terms for a merchant are created by the Business (in agreement with the merchant) and define their collaboration rules which include:

• The reward schemes that the merchant can participate in 

• The method by which B2B settlements between the two will be applied (settle on the award, redeem or spend)

• The contribution fee that the merchant will be debited for upon an award being provided (calculated based on a percentage of the awarded amount, defaults to 100%)

Blocking a merchant's rewards commercial terms stops the merchant from awarding Contacts, and Contacts cannot spend awards at the merchant.

Managing Reward Offers

Navigate to Reward Offers using Rewards > Offers from the main menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

Open

Upon registration of a business, a Reward Scheme is automatically created along with four Reward Offers with an Inactive state for the same scheme:

• €5 Registration Offer - Awarded upon successful registration of a contact, this is a cashback offer

• 20% Birthday Offer - Valid only on the day of the Contact's birthday; this is an instant discount offer and applies only to the Contact's first purchase on their birthday

• 5% Cashback on all Purchases - Awarded when purchasing any product at any location; this is a cashback offer

• €1 Referral Cashback - cashback is awarded to the Contact if the referred person registers using the Contact's referral code and makes an initial purchase

Reward Offer Goals

When creating a new Reward Offer, you will be prompted to choose a reward offer goal describing the type of Offer you want to create. Reward Offers are categorized into four different goals (groups).

Open

Select a Reward Offer goal and then select one of the Reward Offers to configure.

Offer Details

Define the Offer's details; remember that this information will be visible on contact-facing apps (i.e. online portal, mobile app.), so ensure that good quality, attractive images and clear descriptions are used to entice your contacts.

Manage Images - Add images for your Offers to stand out, and select and use the Avatar image type. The image appears on the screen with the list of Offers and the information screen (if the Offer is selected from the list).

Offer Availability - Define the duration for the Offer to be awarded; an open-ended offer denotes a non-expiring offer.

Featured Offers

Set this toggle 'on' to feature selected Offers at the top of the eligible Offers list on contact-facing applications.

Targeting Conditions

Targeting Conditions allow the user to define a number of conditions which must be met for the Contact to be awarded; the type of conditions vary depending on the offer type.

Such conditions include:

Segments - Use Segments to identify the Contacts targeted by the Offer. Segments are a great way of grouping your Contacts based on specific characteristics and can be used throughout the software. Configure Segments via Contacts > Segmentation.

Location - Use Locations to make an Offer applicable only for purchases from a specific merchant/service provider, venue/service point, country etc.

Purchase Classification - Purchase classifications can be configured via Settings > Contacts & CRM > Customer Event Classifications. When communicated via a third-party system, they can be used for awarding purchases based on what a purchase is classified as. E.G. purchase classifications can be created to differentiate between delivery, take away and dine-in purchases. A Reward Offer can then target a specific purchase classification, e.g. a Reward Offer to award only delivery-type purchases.

Award Information

Commerce Pool Rules - The use of commerce pool rules enables a business to apply restrictions on how the awarded amount from the Offer can be redeemed. Restrictions can be applied on:

• Time - Can be redeemed on specific days and/or times

• Location - Can be redeemed when purchasing from selected venues/service points, merchants/service providers etc.

• Products - Can be redeemed when purchasing selected products based on family, type, brand, SKU

• Validity/Expiration Period - The award can be redeemed from and up to a specific date

To create a new commerce pool rule, select Create New Commerce Pool (from Award Information, Redeem tab).

Activating an Offer

When a reward offer has been successfully created, it will appear in the Reward Offers summary screen in an Inactive state. To Activate a Reward Offer, click on the options button (…) of the respective Offer and select Activate.

It's best practice to create and activate all Offers for a Reward Scheme before activating it.

Rewards Events

CRM.COM logs any events originating from or resulting in an award transaction for all Contacts.

To view such events navigate to Rewards > Reward Events from the main menu on the left-hand side of the screen. Use the filter to narrow down your search, and click on an event to get a drill down of associated actions.

Reward Offer Settings

Configuration of all Reward settings (subject to user permissions) is possible by selecting Settings from the sidebar menu options, then Rewards.

Reward Resolution

Reward resolution setup will determine when/how awards will be provided when a Contact who places an order is eligible for awarding.

How Contacts will be awarded

• All matched offers - Contact will be awarded from all valid reward offers from all eligible reward schemes

• The Best Offer - Contact will be awarded the single highest Offer across all eligible reward schemes

• The Best Offer from each scheme - Contact will be awarded the highest Offer from every eligible reward scheme

The following is an example of how a contact who participates in two different reward schemes will be awarded in each case.

Awards for instantly redeemed offers

If the Provide only the best award from all instant discount reward offers is set to 'yes' and the Contact is eligible for more than one instant discount, then only the discount with the highest value will be awarded.

Reward Redeem & Payout on Redeem

Set how contacts can redeem their awards and whether an automatic payout will occur upon redeeming. Enabling automatic payouts implies that the Contact pays for the full purchase amount and is refunded with the redeemed amount in retrospect, typically by a payment gateway system. Additional payout restrictions may be applied, where a payout will be posted only if the stated conditions are met.

Choose from two payout method options:

Credit Card used on purchase - The refunded amount will be credited to the credit card used for purchasing

Payment Gateway - The refunded amount will be returned via a payment gateway that supports payouts (e.g. Settle mobile app using Contact's registered mobile phone number)

Reward Tiers

Contacts can be classified into different tiers (e.g. Silver, Gold, Platinum) based on the revenue they have generated for the Business within a given time frame. Tiers are measured in value units with an exchange rate against the base currency.

If reward tiering is enabled, it can be set up to:

• Advance contacts (automatically) to the next tier based on the period value units earned at a configurable interval; monthly cycle based (e.g. every 12 months) or based on each Contact's sign-up date

  • Optionally, the Business can enable the advance of a contact to the next tier as soon as the Contact reaches the next tier's period value units

• Downgrade contacts to a lower tier based on the period value units earned during the set interval (monthly cycle based or sign up date based)

The achieved tier level for a Contact remains unchanged until the next interval evaluation. If the Contact advances to the next tier earlier than the next evaluation date (e.g. a Contact advances to Gold tier 1 month before the normal interval evaluation), then from that instance, the Contact will be eligible for any Gold benefits and will remain in the Gold tier until the next interval evaluation. 

At the end of each interval, the period value units will be reset to zero, but the Contact will retain the set tier for the duration of the next interval.

The set tier colours will be reflected in contact-facing apps depending on the signed-in Contact's current tier.

Customer Event Classifications

Group your customer events based on classifications relevant to your line of Business. E.G., Purchase classifications can be created to differentiate between delivery, take away and dine-in purchases. Reward Offers can then be configured to target a specific purchase classification, e.g. a Reward Offer is created to award only purchases of type delivery.

Purchased Products Matching Resolution

If this setting is enabled, when a purchase is received, the purchased products will first be verified as to whether they are owned by the merchant/service provider where the purchase was performed and then by the Business. If such a product does not exist, the merchant/service provider will automatically create and own it.

Example

A merchant/service provider has a product (name: "Tea", SKU: "001"), a business also has a product with the same SKU (name: "Sugar", SKU: "001"). A purchase is submitted against the merchant/service provider for a product with SKU "001". If the product resolution setting is not enabled, the product to be used (and awarded/redeemed) will be the one created by the business, alternatively, if the setting is enabled, the product to be used (and awarded/redeemed) will be the one created by the merchant.

Purchase Matching Resolution

This setting determines whether incoming purchase events should be instantly created or whether they should wait to be matched with a self-service claim or with other back-end purchases. Two modes are supported - Normal and Transaction Processor modes.

Normal mode

The normal mode applies if the toggle is disabled.

The core behaviour of Normal mode covers three possible scenarios:

Back-End Purchase: An external system submits a purchase (with a contact identification, e.g. contact code) - a purchase is instantly created.

Claim Purchase: An external system submits a purchase (without a contact identification, e.g. contact code) - a purchase won't be created until a contact claims it within 48 hours. A Contact can claim a purchase by scanning a QR code/Barcode on a receipt using a front-end application (e.g. consumer mobile application).

Self-Submit Purchase: In cases where there is no POS integration, a contact self-submits a purchase from a front-end application (e.g. a mobile application) directly to CRM.COM, where a purchase is instantly created.

Transaction Processor mode

Transaction Processor mode applies when the toggle is enabled. Even in such cases, there is an option to apply the Transaction Processor mode only for selected organizations, and the Normal mode will apply to the rest.

If this setting is enabled, CRM.COM tries to match two purchases, one received from a POS and one from a transaction processor, using the same unique reference number. When the match is achieved, the Contact is awarded.

Reward Offer Restrictions

Enable this setting to restrict the types of reward offers and redeem methods (i.e. instant discount, deferred awards) that can be created by merchants/service providers.

Commerce Pool Rules

The commerce pool rules can be defined by selecting Commerce from the sidebar menu, then Commerce Pools. A default commerce pool rule Spend anywhere is created by default upon business creation.

Reference Material

You may also find it useful to refer to the following manuals for further reading about Rewards.

Reward Schemes

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CRM/pages/1397656420

Segmentation

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CRM/pages/557842493

Communication Plans

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CRM/pages/542703818

Contacts

Accounts

Business Network

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