3 lessons learned from Amazon Prime program
Amazon celebrated 20 years of business this July with “Prime Day”. This one-day sales event has been touted to offer shopping discounts to rival those of Black Friday. The only criteria needed to participate in this event — you must be an Amazon Prime member. For a $99 annual fee, Prime members enjoy expedited shipping, unlimited streaming of movies, TV and music, free e books, cloud storage and early access to special shopping events. While loyalty/reward programs have been around a while, Amazon Prime is probably one of the best, and could be considered the template for creating the ultimate loyalty program for credit unions.
Here are 3 Amazon Prime program features to consider when creating a credit union member loyalty program.
- Data
Amazon is successful at building incredibly detailed profiles on its users. This data not only comes from static information, such as age and where they live, but their purchase behavior and preferred delivery channel. Currently, credit unions have this information and more. Credit unions typically collect enough information to predict members’ needs for a new car, home, college tuition or retirement. With additional strategic insight and data analytics they could likely predict lifestyle changes, such as marriages, divorces and births of children.
- To fee or not fee
Yes, Amazon has a payment threshold. While part of the annual fee probably covers hard costs like two day shipping, they probably make it up in increased volume. What would your credit union like to see its members do more, and would they pay for it? One recommendation is offering a hassle-free credit card that should it ever be breeched, the credit union will personally transfer over recurring payments to a new card.
- Continually modify the program
Amazon continues to test new ideas on its Prime members using the incredible amount of data they currently have on each member while also continuing to gather more. They also add new services based on consumer needs as well as purchases. What are members currently doing repetitively and what would your credit union offer them as a new service or offering? The most frequent payments members make monthly is to their cell phone provider. What could your credit union offer them that could reduce that cost? Is there a partnership that can be formed with cell phone providers that would give your members benefits for being a member of your credit union? The question here is, how to does your credit union carve out value like Amazon?
The obvious criteria to building an Amazon-like loyalty program is to have access to member’s data. Luckily, you work for a credit union, and not just a retailer, so this information is at your fingertips!
If you need any guidance on how to access, or leverage this data, feel free to reach me at anne.legg@fiserv.com
