Strategies to overcome drawbacks of digital prototyping for loyalty programs
The creation of Digital Prototypes of a Loyalty program is a very effective strategy for brands to learn quickly how they can implement a successful loyalty program if they do not have the opportunity to do so with real-world validation and hyper-adaptivity (which is Brand2Consumers’ recommended method). For these brands, the benefits of digital prototyping can be huge. Because of that, digital prototyping starts to be a fast growing service Brand2Consumers delivers to brands planning a loyalty program to acquire more first-party data, more tactics to influence customer behavior and to develop a strategically important direct channel to their buyers.
However, there are drawbacks to the Digital Prototyping approach. Brand2Consumers has develop successful mitigation strategies to overcome these:
Enhancing Real-world Validation
To overcome the limitation of limited real-world validation, it's essential to include sufficient research and testing in the digital prototyping project. We will (possibly in partnership with your market research supplier) help you conduct user surveys, focus groups or do beta testing to gather feedback from a broader audience in real-world conditions. Brand2Consumers has a database with years of interactions by real consumers which will be used to simulate program impact. By combining the insights from digital prototyping with real-world feedback and real-world data, we can refine and fine-tune your loyalty program design to optimally align with customer expectations, market dynamics and your specific (internal and external) challenges. The closest thing to ‘tried and tested’ you can find before you commit to a real deployment.
Efficient Resource and Time Management
To address the resource and time intensity of digital prototyping, proper planning and resource allocation are crucial. We at Brand2Consumers will ensure that you have a dedicated team available that - together with your key players and marketers - will focus on the prototyping process. We will set clear milestones and deadlines to keep the project on track and allocate resources accordingly. Additionally, we use agile project management methodologies to enable iterative development and minimize delays; all to get to tangible results quickly. Imagine a few weeks, rather than months.
Managing Scope Creep
You know them: the stakeholders who turn growing insight into a continuous list of new requirements, and thus killing many beautiful projects from (usually) well-intended motivation. That’s why you work with us. We’ll prevent scope creep during the prototyping phase, establish a well-defined scope and goals for the loyalty program from the outset. We help you clearly communicate the boundaries and limitations to stakeholders and we’ll insist in managing expectations carefully, but effectively. We’ll help you maintain a prioritized list of features and functionalities, but we’ll operate without any rigidity and will carefully evaluate new ideas or suggestions against the defined scope and paint the picture of impact when that happens (it usually does happen). We’ll periodically review and reassess the scope to ensure that it aligns with the original vision or support decision making on a new scope with full commitment of all stakeholders on what’s required for that to be successful.
Optimizing Cost Considerations
To evaluate cost considerations, we’ll ask you to consider the long-term benefits of digital prototyping as an essential benefit of this approach. While there are initial costs, you can weigh them against the potential savings and improved outcomes that are achieved through Digital Prototyping. During the Digital Prototyping, we can consider exploring partnerships with your other service providers, which can deliver very cost-effective solutions and expertise that normally might not have been considered.
Effective Feedback Analysis and Implementation
To address the challenge of feedback interpretation, we’ll establish a structured feedback analysis process. We’ll involve you in categorizing and prioritizing the acquired feedback based on its relevance to and its impact on the loyalty program. We’ll use analytical tools and sentiment analysis to identify trends and patterns within the feedback data. We’ll support you to engage in thorough discussions with your stakeholders to align on the interpretation of feedback and make informed decisions on the loyalty program implementation. We’ll be your partner in maintaining transparency throughout the process, ensuring that all stakeholders understand how their feedback influenced the final loyalty program design.
By implementing these Brand2Consumer-developed strategies, we’ll help you overcome the potential drawbacks of digital prototyping for loyalty programs. These approaches will enhance the validity of the prototyping process, optimize resource utilization, manage scope effectively, optimize costs, and ensure a streamlined feedback analysis and implementation process.