How Microservices Enable Top-Performing Loyalty Programs

Satisfying complex logic

Strong loyalty programs go beyond the basic point-and-promotion perks to build deeper relationships with customers. The more innovative the reward structure, the more complex the business rules that need to be developed into the system.

Headless loyalty modules offer unlimited flexibility around business logic, supporting unlimited use cases and enabling fast rollout and rollback when testing new capabilities. For example, non-standard perks like:

• Early access to sales and new product drops for certain loyalty tiers only
• “Point multiplier” events on specific products, brands or bundled configurations
• Point bonus or gift with purchase for spending more than $X on a specific brand or category
• Points for user-generated content such as product reviews, answering Q&A, participating in livestreams or submitting photos and videos
• Rewards for social media engagement across networks
• Points or promotions for members entering a geofenced area
• Refer-a-friend bonuses
• Donate points to charity or a friend
• Points for healthy lifestyle habits tracked through a mobile app
• Points or free gifts for returning/recycling product packaging

Integrating with critical systems

Naturally, omnichannel loyalty programs need to connect with the right enterprise systems and commerce capabilities, including CRM, customer accounts, customer data platforms and POS systems.

Advanced loyalty programs also need to hook into mobile apps, IoT experiences like voice assistants and chatbots, social platforms, receipt scanning technology (trending among CPG brands), metaverse experiences like virtual stores. Data must be captured, synced and shared across all customer touchpoints in real time.

Microservices make it faster and cleaner to integrate with these systems, rapidly test and iterate upon new loyalty features, and easily add or switch out technologies over time.

Scaling rewards across brands and channels

Many companies are consolidating programs across retail banners, enabling customers to earn rewards across digital and physical shops. For example, Foot Locker’s FLX program spans its Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, Lady Foot Locker and Champs Sports brands.

Headless architecture ensures a loyalty module can be integrated across all sites and experiences, capturing customer behavior for hyper-personalization and maximizing reward value.

Collaborative loyalty

Beyond a company’s own banners, loyalty partnerships are increasing in popularity. For example, Nike and Dick’s Sporting Goods have combined their loyalty programs so fans can stack points across both brands. Nike’s also partnered with the Headspace mindfulness app to offer its loyalty members free guided runs and exclusive rewards.

Gymshark’s partnership with Thrift+ recommerce marketplace encourages its customers to resell their pre-loved gear and redeem their selling credits for new Gymshark merch.

Foot Locker and Fanatics.com have teamed up, enabling Foot Locker members to browse and buy Fanatics inventory directly through FootLocker.com (and fulfilled by Fanatics), while earning FLX rewards. Like Dick’s, Foot Locker has also paired its program with Nike to offer more fulfillment options for online orders, more inventory visibility and more perks.

These innovative partnerships rely on capabilities and data that can be shared across each others’ back end systems and front end experiences in a secure and scalable way – a perfect job for microservice APIs.

Hyperchannel engagement

Foot Locker’s stitched together mobile, social and SMS to provide true hyper-channel personalization. For example, if a loyalty member likes a post from its Instagram page, a personalized push notification can be sent through its app with a click-to-shop link. Post-purchase, additional personalized messages related to the item or brand can be sent, tailored to the customer’s FLY loyalty status and ongoing engagement.

Foot Locker credits its move from legacy platforms with heavy customization to a “modern architecture that is scalable and future-proof for growth” for its ability to innovate and execute personalized customer journeys with a faster speed to market.

Supporting business users

Loyalty programs are dynamic, capture a large amount of data and require continuous review and refreshment from human business users. The more innovative the loyalty program, the more admin-friendly features you need to ensure programs are managed effectively.

Learn how our headless loyalty microservice can be configured and customized to fit your business's unique loyalty management requirements. Write to us at contactus@infosysequinox.com and we will get in touch with you.