Loyalty Blogs

Customer retention is always the primary goal, no matter whichever business it may concern. Loyalty programs are an excellent option when a business is willing to extend its customer base. if a business can provide their customers with the required services, they are more likely to refer the brand to their friends and family, share the data or engage with the brand in various other ways!

A similar theory is applied even to the B2B companies. A stat says that 84 percent of B2B organizations are now embracing the customer experience model. With the high-end competition around the industry, organizations will be shifting their ways towards B2B loyalty programs with smart technology for both maintaining and improving their relationships with the buyers, partners, and suppliers. In this article we will study about B2B loyalty programs, the differences between B2C and B2B loyalty programs, and some leading B2B loyalty programs.

What is a B2B Loyalty Program?

B2B loyalty programs are the perfect solution when your business is willing to acquire more customers and strive to retain the existing ones. The program consists of specific features and loyalty logic designed to help businesses establish brand loyalty. Though it differs from B2C loyalty programs in terms of both incentives and progression. According to a stat, B2B eCommerce market alone is predicted to reach $1.8 trillion by 2023. A B2B loyalty program is more personalized in terms of customer engagement strategies and its great value propositions depending on every client’s requirements.

Difference between B2C and B2B Loyalty Programs

Both B2B and B2C loyalty programs can have a common aim but may have a set of factors to differentiate and make out the possible differences. Here are the considerable factors-

• Membership and Participation

B2B loyalty programs are generally more restricted regarding their terms of participation in the loyalty program. This includes the users who are not eligible to receive the rewards or do not match the criteria to join in the program, for instance, government-based organizations. Though B2C loyalty programs mostly do not have these sorts of restrictions and are open for all customers to join in.

• Primary Focus

B2C loyalty programs primarily focus on the requirements and challenges of the individuals to develop loyalty. These companies can also show individuals that they have in mind similar values. However, the B2B companies can simply direct their loyalty programs to address the challenges of the organizations and their decision-makers. This can make B2B loyalty programs much tougher to understand as it becomes tough to gather customer information.

• Customization & Personalization

B2C companies generally have a huge customer base, they’re not required to have that much amount of personalization tactics like the B2B companies. for instance, Starbucks is a leading brand having millions of customers, the B2B companies would not have such a huge customer base. they would rather have a lesser number of customers associated that would surely require much more personalization for delivering the best-in-class customer experience.

• Purchasing Decision

B2B customers are more likely to make rational purchasing decisions based on how their products can boost their business. While, B2C customers tend to make more emotional purchasing decisions that are based on desire, prestige, and of course trends.

• Data Collection

B2C companies make use of loyalty programs as a perk to keep on enrolling customers and collect all the necessary information, mostly their contact information. On the contrary, B2B companies already have client information handy, they can make use of the incentivization surveys to receive feedback from their existing customer base.

Defining the Characteristics and Challenges in the B2B Market

It’s wiser to switch to B2B companies for introducing a loyalty program, the reason being, selling to clients brings out more profit rather than selling to consumers. That’s why it’s proven and recommended that retaining your most valuable clients and making sure they’re being loyal to the brand is more important than anything else in a business. Though, recruiting new customers in the B2B space is, therefore, a much more time-consuming process.

There are many other challenges of B2B market, which includes the following-

• Less but larger deals
• The demand is mostly indirect and can heavily be dependent on consumer trends
• It’s a long and much more formal buying process
• It has a more contracted focus on long-carried relationships
• It involves a much complex buying decisions

Leading B2B Loyalty Programs

Amongst tons of retail loyalty campaign management software being offered, a few stands on the list of being suited! Companies across the globe are already running up in the race with the top-rated brand loyalty programs. Here are the 3 leading B2B loyalty programs-

• Lenovo

Lenovo is one of the world’s largest and most favorable electronics manufacturers, showing the world what an excellent B2B loyalty program looks like. The brand has more than 700 firms joined, having loyalty program participants selling 7 times more products than the previous years, and surprisingly, it overpassed its preset target of $170 million and reached 40 percent higher.

• Celebrity Cruises

Celebrity Cruisers designed and developed an impactful loyalty program. Wherein most of the companies sales starts from travel agents. They decided to incentivize their best agents for being loyal. It offered valuable incentives that users could access easily. Gamification was also used for making the loyalty program much more engaging.

• TRW Aftermarket

TRW is amongst the leading companies in the automotive aftermarket that have also designed one of the best-in-class loyalty programs. In the long run, they’ve created easy communication and evaluation amongst different workshops. It used the data stored in different workshops for customizing the loyalty program to their requirements.

Final Thoughts

B2B Loyalty Programs are much necessary as the industry is progressing towards a loyalty-obsessed world. Most of the brands are switching to omnichannel loyalty programs software, get started with your loyalty program super quick!