This article provides a summary of the implementation steps for setting up a Loyalty account so you can have a general idea of the procedure. This summary allows you to prepare for any requirements of the setup procedure. The Implementation Consultant is ready to help you throughout the process.
Phase 1 - Pre-Implementation Requirements Review Solutions Handover
Our Implementation Consultant will send you a questionnaire to collect essential information for your Loyalty account.
This will include questions on the following:
-
Branding, plan settings
- Number of tiers
- Starting tier number and tier expansion
- Join settings
- Plan visibility
- Available reward types and actions
- Objectives to be achieved, KPIs expected to be improved
- Migration requirements
- Migrating the existing program or creating a new program
- Point handling for current and new customers
- Numbers of contacts to be migrated
- Migration timeplan
-
Technical background
- ContactID format in your data uploads
- Sales data upload method (SFTP or Predict based)
- Main store domain
- Current platform
- Your server location
- Number and location of current customer base
- Use of the Loyalty Wallet and the API
- Existing voucher mechanisms and use
- Available mobile version
-
Multiplan requirements and objectives
- How are contacts grouped in the existing plan
Your answers will be compared and discussed with the Implementation Consultant to guide you. Any migration plan needs to be discussed with special attention.
Migration CSV requirements
The Loyalty team is able to migrate existing tier information, points, and voucher codes.
Further migration requirements need custom implementation. To estimate the time required for the migration, send the Loyalty team the exact number of contacts to be migrated. For details regarding how migration works and what is needed, see Migrating contacts to Loyalty.
Loyalty Wallet settings
If you opt to use the Loyalty Wallet, you will be provided with the available design options.
These options include:
- Color choice for the Wallet
- Placement of the Wallet in your sites
- Font and text to be used
- Logos
Additionally, you will need to provide Emarsys the links to the following pages of your shop:
- Login page
- Registration page
- Checkout
- Location for the Terms and Conditions of your Loyalty program
In multiplan setups, different Wallet designs are possible for each plan.
Phase 2 - Integrating Smart Insight sales data and the product catalog
Sale data
Complete the Smart Insight onboarding before implementing Loyalty.
The following fields need to be included in the uploaded sales data to enable multiple languages and currencies. For more information, see Preparing your sales data file.
s_marketf_original_prices_original_currency
Alternatively, the f_original_price field can be used in conjunction with the Price field to enable two different price fields. f_original_price can be used for Loyalty point allocation while Price can be used for SI analytics. f_original_price can cover the gross price while Price contains the net price for calculation purposes.
Price should contain the sum in the account's main currency equal to the sum in the f_original_price in the purchase currency of the customer.
The following field is also highly recommended:
Timestamp
It is highly recommended to include an exact timestamp in a field for the purchase instead of just a date. For example use 2020-03-25 13:05:00 instead of 2020-03-25 00:00:00. When using the second option, the purchase will be logged as if it have been made at midnight of the previous day, at the beginning of the current day.
The timestamp field solves the following cases:
- Contacts making a purchase on the day of their joining do not get points for their purchase without a timestamp. The purchase will be logged for the midnight of the previous day, which is before the actual join time. Therefore, no points are attributed to the new member without a timestamp.
- Loyalty actions distributed on the same day as a purchase are not considered fulfilled without a timestamp. The purchase will be logged for the midnight of the previous day, before the distribution of the action.
- Loyalty promotions are defined with start and end timestamps. Purchases may fall outside the designated period, if no timestamp is attached to them.
Refund and cancellations are not supported when sales data is only uploaded through Predict.
Do not forget to flag the additional columns as Available for filtering under Management > Smart Insight Settings > Purchase Fields to ensure proper uploading.
In case it is not possible to upload sales data retroactively, contact the Loyalty team to discuss correct uploading from the moment Loyalty is implemented.
Product Catalog
The following fields are required to fully support catalog promotion:
MarketBrandCategory
The Loyalty add-on is functional without the Brand and the Category fields, but selecting brands, categories or products will not be available by promotion actions.
Creating Smart Insight views
In this step, the Loyalty team ensures that there is a proper connection between the Loyalty database and the sale data.
No client side actions are needed for this.
Assuring data quality
Please check your sales data for any duplication. Check that the same order and item are not sent more than one time (exceptions are refunds or order updates).
Furthermore, make sure that all fields are filled in and do not include empty strings or nulls for every order.
These checks will speed up the process, otherwise if corrupt data is found we might need to delete all data in Smart Insight and ask for a reupload.
The Loyalty team will do the final check for the product catalog and sales data. When the checks are finished, the Implementation Consultant requests the file import.
Phase 3 - Enabling the Loyalty add-on in the Suite
At the request of the Implementation Consultant, create a user in your platform account with BI-Administrator role for the Loyalty team to help you with finishing the setup.
Additionally, the Implementation Consultant will prepare predefined External Events and Automation Center programs that are required for the normal functioning of the Loyalty add-on.
The Implementation Consultant will also present you the Loyalty content block in the Visual Content Editor. The design of this block can be modified after discussion.
After all these preparation steps are completed, the Loyalty team finishes the account setup on their side.
Phase 4 - Implementing Loyalty on the customer side
The Loyalty team will send the AppID and the Secretkey (and the API key when needed) to the Implementation Consultant to be shared with the you. These are needed for installing the Loyalty Wallet on your website using JavaScript.
The Wallet and the API will only work after the first plan launch.
Implementing multiple Loyalty plans
By multiplan setups, each plan must have a separate AppID and Secretkey. Also, the additional PlanID parameter defined during Loyalty onboarding needs to be added to the API calls and the Wallet JavaScript.
Phase 5 - Setting up the Loyalty plan
Clients will start the plan onboarding process together with the Implementation Consultant to help getting familiar with Loyalty.
The first step is to specify the plan name and the PlanID needed by multiplan setups for the Wallet JavaScript and API calls.
At this stage, it is still possible to add further plans.
This is followed by setting up the required languages, currencies and countries when needed.
When these are set, the Implementation Consultant helps you to define further plan and launch settings based on your answers to the questionnaire.
For a successful plan launch, you need to create your tiers, default join action and your default purchase action.
To prepare your plan for Loyalty activity from the launch, your Implementation Consultant will show you the available Loyalty Tactics.
Once, you launched your plan, you can start testing your Loyalty Wallet and the API calls.
Phase 6 - Testing
It is recommended to test your Loyalty account in a dedicated testing environment. Alternatively, start tests by enabling Loyalty for specific contacts in your website. This can be done by providing the external_id of these contacts to the Implementation Consultant. To successfully limit the Loyalty add-on to the relevant users, these users must visit the website with the integrated Wallet.
Check the following:
- Wallet design and wording
- Wallet placement and visibility
- Do the correct customers see the Wallet?
- Links in the Wallet are correctly working
- Fixed benefits and rewards are correctly shown for members
- Join rewards are correctly attributed
- Purchase action is working
To test the purchase action, sales data importing must be enabled.
By migrated Loyalty plans, sales data cannot be imported before the migration is finished. In such cases, a temporary import can be requested from the Loyalty team for successful purchase actions tests.
Phase 7 - Going live
Before activating the plan in the live environment, the Implementation Consultant will conduct the following final checks for you:
- Plan configuration
- Fixed benefits and tier settings
- Default actions and the join action settings
- Are there at least one reward and one purchase action set up?
- Are there at least the three recommended tactics configured and activated?
- Is there an ad hoc Loyalty campaign or a promotion in active or ready to use status?
After these checks, the sales data import is started by the Loyalty team and the plan can be considered live.
By plans with migration, after the Loyalty team finishes the migration based on the CSV contact list sent to them, check the status and points of the members.
After a successful migration, the Loyalty team can start the sales data import by migrated accounts as well.
