First they were a novelty, then they became trendy, next they evolved into a vital marketing tool, and now, loyalty programs are (or should be) integral to every aspect of a business’ interaction with its customers. Modern loyalty programs have the potential to be the engines that power both your marketing program and your efforts to create an outstanding, meaningful experience for every customer. Are you using insights from your rewards program to effectively inform the total customer experience?

Commissioned by Deluxe, Forrester Research’s recent report, “Be a Loyalty Company, Not a Company with a Loyalty Program,” explores the value of data that you can glean through a loyalty program, and suggests ways you can parlay that data into meaningful knowledge to positively influence every aspect and stage of the brand-customer relationship. If your organization is clinging to an old-model loyalty program – one that’s point driven, rather than relationship driven – you’re likely missing significant opportunities to enrich the customer experience across every stage of its life cycle.

In addition to simply driving customer purchasing and redemption behaviors, your loyalty program should help you:

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