Active consumer engagement leads to more sales and greater interest in the brand. As a result, businesses often offer loyalty reward programs to regular customers, in return for their continued interest. But despite their evident effectiveness, loyalty reward programs affect the company’s bottom line and don’t necessarily drive positive consumer behaviors. POLN8 offers loyalty programs that engage customers, by encouraging them to do something new and refreshing. POLN8 helps their clients ensure greater consumer engagement, by rewarding them for a new approach—like referring friends or family members—and using the experience to turn that behavior into a habit, without impacting the profitability of the business. In essence, an active and automated approach enables continuous communication between companies and customers, without the collateral damage of loss.

POLN8 offers loyalty programs to both small and large businesses (especially franchises), which allow organizations to reward customers for trying new products, increasing their visits, or for a recommendation. The company tracks the new customers that come in through referrals and rewards the current consumers for referring them. By analyzing the reports and metrics from customer loyalty performance, POLN8 helps businesses develop a deep understanding of consumer behavior, which assists firms in deciding appropriate rewards to empower customers. Additionally, the company emphasizes on getting the customer to spend more by adding on a service or item and increase the frequency of customers’ visits. “Our overall portfolio shows a 17% increase in average ticket size and a 50% increase in the frequency of visit by consumers who are registered in our customer’s loyalty programs,” says Tom Epstein, CEO of POLN8.

The company works to change the old reward paradigm that only measured results by the increase in consumer spending. “Our loyalty program easily integrates with any point of sales (POS) platform and marketing campaign,” says Epstein.

POLN8 tracks the results to get ROI on marketing budget spent through each transaction at POS and marketing campaigns such as email, text, or social media campaign. As a result, businesses can measure how much, say the expenditure of $100 on an email campaign, helped drive sales. Additionally, the program also allows companies and franchisors to identify who their customers are, based on location, age, and gender. This helps in making adjustments in marketing campaigns and messages that businesses want to convey to their consumers. For instance, a company is marketing a particular product, but consumers are purchasing different ones. Then, there might be a problem with the product, execution of the product, or the marketing message. POLN8’s loyalty program enables businesses to figure out the reason and allow them to make adjustments in their operations accordingly. The company runs automated campaigns, which ensure that a regular customer is retained. For instance, if a customer visits salon twice in a month but didn’t turn up for a few weeks, POLN8’s loyalty program automatically triggers an email or message and initiates the communication with the consumer. It attracts back the customers by providing new offers such as giving extra off on the next two or three visits.

The company also offers gift cards that help franchises and merchants drive their sales and ensure cash flow. The gift card has proven to be very useful, especially for the franchise chain, because when a consumer purchases or redeems a gift card, the money will flow back to the central pooling account of the franchise. Epstein describes the success of the POLN8 gift card program in the current COVID-19 situation. For one of their clients involved in the window treatment service, they adopted POLN8’s gift card program because the client’s customers preferred to utilize window treatment services while they are at home. Therefore, most of the customers buy these gift cards on discount for their family and friends and redeem them when they are staying at home. The client has observed that through the gift card program, they can lock in the sales for the next three to four months, even during the lockdown. Customers will remain with them and not look for any other service provider post lockdown. In essence, POLN8 is helping franchises stay in business even during this lockdown period. “We are continuously enhancing our loyalty and gift card programs for getting loyal consumers for franchises that can promote our client’s business more in the future,” says Epstein.