Membership Reward Points Management: Driving More Impactful Loyalty Programs

Points work like digital currency for members. They are earned, stored, and spent, just like other currencies. They’re a core part of loyalty programs, and they motivate customers to participate in these programs to unlock multiple rewards.

By giving life to loyalty programs, reward points become the top retention tool for memberships. They not only keep the customers engaged, but also engaged with a purpose. And that’s what successfully drives lasting loyalty. However, like other currencies, digital points require effective management as well.

The better the reward point usage is managed by a business; the better loyalty program experience it can create. So let’s discover what membership reward points management entails.

Why Do Reward Points Matter for Loyalty Programs?

There are many creative ways in which a business can conduct its loyalty program. Offering digital points to customers is one of the most impactful. Point-based loyalty programs are especially suited to memberships as they thrive on member engagement. Customers join memberships to not only benefit from various services, but also to feel a sense of belonging within a special community.

Point-based loyalty programs further strengthen this connection by creating a more interactive, gamified experience for them. Members collect and spend points for accessing various benefits, making their membership more valuable and rewarding.

Businesses can credit points to members on various occasions. For example, when they first purchase their membership. There may be multiple membership tiers with multiple point numbers tied to each. Other than this initial point reward for new members, certain point numbers can also be earned when members make an add-on purchase, or when they renew membership, etc.

After earning points, customers may utilize them outright, or may save them up for getting a higher reward. Whichever way they use their points is up to them. Businesses benefit from boosted member engagement in any case.

Why Reward Point Management Can Be Tricky

Managing the usage of membership points is a lot of work. It demands an advanced usage tracking system that keeps businesses posted about the point activity of each of their customers. These are some tasks that reward point management entails, and it is impossible to accomplish them with manual efforts alone:

1. Tracking each user’s point balance

Overseeing the point balances of their members is a must for businesses. Without this insight, they have no way of monitoring their point activity. They can’t know how their members are interacting with their loyalty program, and what they are spending their points on.

All of these are important insights to evaluate customer behavior, and analyze what they prefer. This analysis contributes to the enhancement of loyalty programs. So memberships can create different personalized strategies according to each noted preference, and retain members by delivering them right what they need.

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2. Setting point redemption rules

These rules are important to set up as they largely shape how your members redeem their points. Memberships must set up the points’ expiration and roll over limits. Meaning, they should decide when a user’s accumulated points expire, and how many times they can roll over to the subsequent billing cycles.

Moreover, memberships can also place a point accumulation limit in place, such as 500 coins. So that when users reach this limit, they know they can’t collect any more points unless they redeem some from their accumulated.

This ensures that reward points don’t keep on piling up for inactive members. And that this doesn’t become a big liability for the business in the future.

3. Integration with billing cycles

To credit a bunch of points upon each membership renewal, businesses need to integrate their point management system with their billing system. Or, they can join a billing software that allows them to do both billing and point usage management.

In any case, they need to ensure that their point crediting stays in line with their billing cycles. Because members’ points have to be topped up as soon as they renew their plans. That’s why keeping both billing and top-up dates aligned is necessary.

4. Handling complex redemption scenarios

Reward points can have complex redemption cases, depending upon how a club’s loyalty events work. For instance, customers may have the option to apply both their points and other promotional coupons at checkout at the same time. This requires complex charge calculation, only possible with a powerful billing platform.

Furthermore, the membership’s checkout must expertly adapt to its point-based discount program. It must allow customers to choose how many points to apply, and pay half via points and half via card, among other things.

Advanced Billing Software Helps Manage Membership Points Proactively

Advanced billing platforms like SubscriptionFlow have built-in point management functionality. With this software, memberships don’t have to keep their point management and billing systems separate. Instead, they get to have a powerful 2-in-1 solution that’s automated and easy to use.

SubscriptionFlow unlocks all these features for proactive reward point management:

• Centralized usage tracking

Admins can track all their members’ point balances from a single dashboard that features all their member profiles. They can click on any profile to view their current and used balance. They can also select any customer to top up their points manually on special events, such as their birthday.

With the help of this dashboard, they can also instantly answer any member query regarding their point usage.

• Easy redemption rules setup and application

The software makes it easy for admins to create the redemption rules of their choice. For example, when they want their points to expire, and how much point accumulation they want to allow. Then, it applies these rules on the right occasion automatically. No need for repeated manual authorizations. 

• Point conversion to different currencies at checkout

A range of currencies is supported by SubscriptionFlow. This means that no matter which currency your members use, they can benefit from point-based discounts all the same. Points are converted into the customer’s currency at checkout for discount purposes. This way, customers get a better idea of the value their reward points provide.

• Automatic point application at checkout

SubscriptionFlow’s checkout offers automatic point application to the customer’s purchase amount. Customers can choose to go with this option, or refuse it for point saving purposes. The software’s checkout also addresses complex redemption scenarios efficiently; such as point redemption combined with coupon redemption.

• Analytics for overseeing point activity

Admins can easily access the points activity of their members. For example, they can see how many of their members are benefitting from the loyalty programs, what their interaction levels are, how they are spending their points, and so on. They can utilize these analytics to evaluate the success of their loyalty programs, and to make them even better.

• Wallet functionality for customers

Point usage is not only for the membership admin to manage. Members who are central to the loyalty programs also need to see their point usage. So that they don’t have to ask support teams about that frequently. For this purpose, SubscriptionFlow offers them their own wallets in their member portals.

These wallets show them their total point balance, used balance, and any additional balance they receive from the admin. This helps them utilize their reward points more strategically.

What Memberships Gain from This

Elite reward point management is a game changer for member retention. This is how it benefits memberships:

• Encourages renewals

Members don’t just get membership extension with each renewal. They also get new points that they can spend on exciting rewards. This makes them look forward to paying for each renewal. When customers themselves look forward to renewing, you know that you have mastered your retention strategy.

• Motivates upsells

Each membership tier is tied to a unique number of points. Members belonging to higher tiers are naturally credited more points. This motivates the lower tier members to upgrade their plans to access more points and hence more value. When this happens, it becomes easier for memberships to upsell.

• Supports referrals

It is a common strategy that businesses employ for attracting more customers. They ask their members to refer other users in their circle to their membership. Such as by sharing links to the membership’s landing page. For each referral, members receive additional points. So this strategy not only benefits members but also the business as it boosts its acquisition rate.

Need help managing your loyalty program? Try SubscriptionFlow today, and elevate your retention strategy with smart membership reward point management.