Zinrelo: Multidimensional, Data-driven, Personalized Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs date back to the 18th century when a U.S. merchant issued copper tokens to his customers that could be exchanged for items in the store itself. Since then, businesses have been issuing generalized tokens, such as reward points, to encourage repeat purchasing behavior and ensure customer loyalty. It is a well-known fact that it is cheaper to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one. This is why loyalty programs have survived the test of time. However, with the entry of COVID-19 last year, organizations saw a big changein customer loyalty, especially in the e-commerce sector. The pandemic brought in tremendous growth (according to a McKinsey report, a change that would have otherwise taken ten years was achieved in 3 months!) but created more challenges for customer retention. Retailers are now making strides to sustain the growth momentum and stimulate customers for repeat purchases. And while customer loyalty programs seem to be the apparent road, the cost accrued is usually high. In this regard, Palo Alto-based Zinrelo has a unique offering.

Zinrelo platform follows a multidimensional, data-driven, and personalized approach to loyalty programs that aims to increase revenue. Zinrelo was the first to introduce the concept of a multidimensional loyalty program.Itgoes beyond the traditional transactional based programs and rewardscustomers for all forms of engagements. Retailers can track and reward customers for all forms of loyalty such as transactional, advocacy, behavioral, social, emotional to name a few.

Over time, the company enhanced the platform and added machine learning and data-driven personalization that significantly improved the performance of the loyalty programs. “Retailers can reward their customers for referring other customers, social sharing, reviews, photo uploads and other types of endorsement,” says Jai Rawat, Founder, Zinrelo. “It is four times cheaper to acquire customers via word of mouth recommendations, and these customers have three times higher lifetime value on average.”

Detailed analysis of retailers’ data helps Zinrelo create precise models of a customized loyalty program instead of providing a generic template. Zinrelo’s program keeps track of a client’s profit margins, the cost of rewards, breakage rate, and costs of managing the program to help maintain a high ROI.