With easy access to information and multiple brand alternatives at their fingertips, the new generation of customers can easily shift their purchases from one brand to another. 

 are more likely to be loyal to a brand if they offer a personalized experience with additional rewards and benefits. 

 is expected to surpass US$24 billion USD by the end of 2029, and there will be even more competition in the market than ever before. Unless your approach to customer engagement and loyalty is unique, survival will be tough. 

There is a pressing need to break through the clutter and connect with your customers in a way that gives value to them. This is why using 

Data helps you understand your customers better. But knowing which insights to use is a foundational step to successful customer engagement. 

Here are the three types of insights modern marketers need, to understand their customers holistically:

Deriving the Value of Discounts, Referrals, and Loyalty Through Insights-led Engagement

To understand your customers’ attributes, behaviors, and preferences. 

To understand what your customers’ journeys on your platform look like.

To understand how your customers respond to your campaigns and communication.

Once you know the insights you want to pull from, you must segment your customers based on the data you have about them.

Leveraging Insights to Create Deeper Segments 

Customer segmentation is critical for establishing which customers you need to engage with and how.

But since traditional segmentation methods are limited by incorrectly weighted factors and pre-existing biases, using more deeper ways to segment is a better approach. These include segmentation based on affinity, behavior, purchase path, and 

RFM in particular accounts for the “Recency (R), Frequency (F), and Monetary (M) value” of each customer to generate valuable insights. Hence it is one of the best ways to understand where customers are in their purchase journey, their willingness to purchase, and eventually their CLV.

RFM modelling, recency, frequency, monetary

Customers who show similar behavior on R, F, and M scores and RFM aggregate scores, are grouped into the same RFM segments. 

customer segments from RFM modelling

Based on the customer segments, you can tailor your engagement strategies such as the following:

These customers have visited your website/app most recently, visit most often, and spend the highest. They promote your products and can be early adopters of your new launches. 

These customers have visited recently, visit often, and spend a large amount. They are highly responsive to your promotions. 

These customers have spent a significant amount on your website/app and have visited you many times.

These are recent customers who spent a good amount with your brand and have the chance of becoming your loyal customers. 

These customers have visited most recently, but do not visit often, and have not spent much.

These customers have average recency, frequency, and monetary scores but the potential to buy more, and more often. You need to convert them into loyal customers.

These customers have visited you the most recently, and also visit you often, but have not spent much. This indicates purchase hesitancy based on price and that they are looking for the best deals. 

These customers have spent a good amount with your brand but a long time ago and haven’t visited recently. You need to bring back these customers. 

These customers have below-average recency, frequency, and monetary scores, and are about to disappear. You need to reactivate them as soon as possible. 

These are customers whose last visit was a long time back and who have not spent much on your website/app.

These customers have the lowest recency, frequency, and monetary scores.

We’re in the digital age of engagement, and customers can navigate their own buyer journey like never before. To stay ahead of your competitors and ensure customer retention you need to slice and dice your data into insights and craft bespoke customer engagement strategies. 

Fortunately for you, an AI-based customer engagement platform like 

 can enable you to segment your data, derive insights, and truly personalise your approach to customer engagement. 

To know more about the current landscape of insights-led engagement, check out 

The State of Insights-led Engagement Report 2022 | Europe Edition

Falguni is the Partner Content Manager for EU and NA at MoEngage. She is passionate about writing various types of content, from epigrams and micropoetry to long-form B2B thought leadership articles. Having spent her life living in different parts of the world, she is always fascinated with travelling, meeting new people, and learning about their cultures.

Referrals at Talon.One

Learn how to turn customer insights into actionable steps to improve discounts, referrals and loyalty.

Deriving the value of promotions through insights-led engagement

Employee Spotlight: Customer Success Manager Lucas Rezende on what he's learned during his time at Talon.One

It's now even easier to integrate Talon.One with Amplitude CDP, allowing users to build unique, targeted Talon.One promotions with behavioral data from Amplitude. 

Using Talon.One with Amplitude’s CDP gives marketers the ability to create cohorts of customers based on customer behavior — and use those cohorts as triggers for rewards and incentives. 

The criteria for cohorts can be as general as “first time customer” or as specific as “Android users who abandoned their carts on an e-commerce site in the last month.” 

Like every feature of Amplitude, cohorts are designed to give businesses a better understanding of their customers. With the new Talon.One/Amplitude integration, cohorts can be used in Talon.One campaigns, allowing users to 

create unique promotions for any customer behavior

Basing promotions on actual customer interactions means creating the incentives that are most likely to capture customer interest. 

 cite ads that feel redundant to them as the single most annoying thing about marketing content from a brand. 

. The same study also revealed personalization can reduce marketing and sales costs by 10 to 20 percent, with targeted promotions allowing businesses to incentivize the right customers.

Targeted promotions are the difference between acknowledging the customer and 

The new Talon.One integration with Amplitude is designed to make creating targeted promotions as smooth as possible. Follow the steps below and you’ll be able to link both platforms and start building compelling promotions based on user behavior in no time. 

More detailed integration instructions are available 

 when a shopping experience is highly personalized, customers are 110% more likely to add additional items to their baskets and 40% more likely to spend more than they had planned. That’s why it’s more important than ever to make customers feel 

Targeted promotions allow businesses to deliver the right incentives to the right customers at just the right time. By integrating Talon.One and Amplitude, businesses have an intuitive way to engage and motivate customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

We are delighted to see the innovative promotions created by integration Talon.One with Amplitude. If you’d like to start using targeted promotions to delight your customers, learn more about our partnership 

Amplitude Integration Header

By integrating Talon.One with Amplitude CDP,  users can build dynamic, targeted promotions driven by behavioral data

Talon.One and Amplitude: next-level targeted promotions

Talon.One and Amplitude: give every customer their ideal experience with targeted promotions

How does your business acquire new customers? If you didn’t say 

 then there is something wrong with your marketing strategy.

Don’t know where to start? Read our top picks for referral programs and implement what works best for your business.

Customer referrals are a key element of any business. If you deliver a truly memorable customer experience, people will want to share your great company with friends.

But don’t rely on your customers to do all the talking! Set up a referral program to make it easy for them to share their great experience.

Implement referrals to grow your promotion marketing, and you will reduce customer acquisition costs, increase ROI, drive product sales and customer engagement.

If you still aren’t convinced, check out this infographic that proves why you need a 

 found that 64% of their survey respondents mostly or completely agree that 

word-of-mouth marketing is more effective than traditional marketing

For a referral program to be successful, you need to have the 

 to effectively verify the actions of the advocate and friend, but once you have the right tools and strategy, you just need to get started.

 If a customer makes a referral, give them a free accessory for their first successful referral. Give the referred “friend” a 5% welcome discount.

 Both the advocate and the friend benefit in this campaign setup. The advocate is rewarded for their behaviour with a compelling incentive and the new customer gets a discount from day one, which will also influence the first purchase.

 Choose the “free” product wisely - you don’t want to give away high-value items but the reward must be compelling for customers to participate (and feel rewarded). Consider giving away a branded item to increase brand awareness (e.g. headphones, t-shirt, beach bag, etc.).

 If a customer refers 5 friends via social media (with a unique URL), give them 50€ credit to spend on a hotel, restaurant or transportation valid only in the destination of their next flight booking.

 The customer shares your service with their friends and increases campaign reach via social media channels. Cross-promote your other travel offerings and personalize the incentive with recommendations for their next travel destination.

 Be sure to have the right promotion in place in place to carefully validate the successful referrals AND the promotion criteria so you can deliver the right incentive in real-time (e.g. location, partner location).

 If a customer makes a successful referral, give both advocate and friend 10GB of free data or credit. Continue to give 5GB every time a successful referral is made.

 If your business struggles to attract new customers, this is a great way to reduce customer acquisition costs and increase revenue. Rewarding advocates with recurring incentives will encourage customers to continue promoting your service.

 Ensure you collect and use the right customer data in your promotional campaigns. Your solution should allow you to trigger the correct rewards in real-time to adjust your customers' phone plans dynamically.

 If a customer invites friends to play with gift of 50 "starter" credits, reward the advocate with 150 game credits for every successful referral. Credits will expire in 24 hours.

 This structure asks more from the advocate up front, the time-sensitive incentive to start and continue playing is compelling for both parties. Additionally, you lower the barrier to start playing for new/referred customers.

 Set up your referral campaign logic so you can deliver credits in real-time to incentivize playing time for both parties and increase in-game spending.

Now you have some campaign ideas to kick-start your referral marketing program.

First, you'll need the right solution to power your referral program. We recommend a customizable 

 to ensure your campaigns run efficiently, are validated securely and incentives are distributed precisely where you want them.

These are just a few ideas to inspire you - design your referral campaigns to match your unique business requirements for optimal results. You can find 

even more promotion ideas in the Talon.One Help Center.

Want to learn more about how you can run a successful referral program? 

 and see for yourself how we can simplify and improve your promotions or 

Referral Marketing

Use your referral campaigns to drive your customer base. Learn from 4 Best Practices all the great techniques to improve your referral program.

4 Referral Marketing Ways to Get More Customers | Talon.One

Referral marketing: 4 easy ways to get more customers

Talon.One now integrates with mParticle to allow businesses to create tailored, highly targeted promotions in Talon.one using data that has been consolidated and cleaned by mParticle.

offers practically endless promotion options.

You can increase customer loyalty, attract new customers, or increase upselling opportunities.

, you’ll now be able to use unified, cleaned data from multiple sources to further increase the effectiveness of your promotions.

Maximum customizability for your promotions

Talon.One's Promotion Engine can be adjusted to your exact needs, and maximize the impact of your data insights.

It's already being used worldwide by businesses to tailor promotions specifically to individual customers, customer audiences, locations, events - practically any variable you can think of.

For example, you could set up a promotion to target under 25s from a particular city by offering them a discount on a popular product among that age group. You could then offer a referral bonus if they refer their friends and also set up a 

 with incentivized goals to encourage them to come back and spend with you in the future.

How does the Talon.One and mParticle integration work? 

 allows for seamless transfer of data between mParticle and Talon.One’s purpose-built API in a secure, robust and enterprise-grade system.

mParticle allows you to collect, unify, and clean customer data from multiple different sources, such as CRM and BI tools, or directly from apps and websites.

This data, which can be taken from across your entire tech stack, can be used to build audiences and automatically feed them to the Talon.One Promotion Engine.

mParticle's customer data platform gives you access to all data from your integrations and lets you use it effectively across multiple channels, partners and systems.

With greater control over multiple data sources, you’ll also get better insights and a more secure all-round process for handling your customers’ data. This can be used to make even more detailed customer profiles and even more powerful promotions.

After setting up with Talon.One, you’ll see promotions in a whole new light.

 about the many ways the Promotion Engine helps our customers.

Talon.One partners with mParticle

Our integration with mParticle gives customers greater control over their data and more options to create effective promotions.

Talon.One Now Integrates with mParticle | Talon.One

Talon.One partners with mParticle to create targeted promotions

Many of the world’s most successful businesses have risen to the top because they understand the importance of consumer habits and consumer behavior.

Perhaps the most well-known example is Facebook, with its revolutionary algorithms and numerous habit-building features.

Then you have businesses in other fields that foster particular consumer habits to their advantage. Take the wave of ‘free-to-play’ mobile games that make enormous sums of money from in-game purchases, for example.

Cases like these have given the topic of ‘consumer habit building’ somewhat negative connotations. After all, creating negative buying habits among your customers will severely harm your brand image and customer loyalty in the long run.

But ultimately, if implemented ethically and responsibly, consumer habit building can help consumers and businesses alike.

A habit is defined as a behavior or routine that is repeated regularly. The reason habits can be hard to break is because they're carried out subconsciously and reflexively.

Habits can range from the healthy, to the mundane, and even the downright detrimental - but everyone has them. All habits are formed and perpetuated by the same simple feedback mechanism in our brains. This is referred to as the habit loop:

One of the key characteristics of a habit is the fact that it is learned. This is what the concept of ‘habit building’ latches on to. It creates the necessary environment for a habit loop to develop.

Some people develop habits more easily than others. But, on average, it takes about 2 months.

With regards to the habit loop, the routine comes into play once the habit has fully settled in.

Certain product categories are much more suitable for rewards and consumer-behavior-targeting promotions. It would be unethical to foster a consumer habit around excessive alcohol consumption, for example.

But there are plenty of product groups, like organic food, health and fitness supplies, books, etc., that would be perfect for consumer habit-building promotions.

The primary motivator for the customer is the reward. Luckily, that’s the easiest part of the loop for businesses to drive.

One of the most common reward mechanisms businesses use is loyalty points. Loyalty points are usually given to 

 members when they buy products. But, theoretically, they can be given for any customer action.

There are many different ways to reward customers with loyalty points, and 

picking the right one does require some consideration

The first example is simple. It offers a set number of loyalty points when customers spend over a certain amount. In comparison, the second example is more complex:

These may seem like irrelevant details, but they can make a big difference. The second example is much more specific, and has a better chance of appealing to customers who regularly buy homeware items.

Research suggests that random rewards are actually the most effective at getting customers to spend.

Random rewards aren’t applicable to all businesses or promotions. But the elements of surprise and gamification can still be replicated using more complex loyalty reward mechanisms, as seen in example 2 above.

 to find out more about gamification techniques.

Once you’ve decided how you want to reward your customers, it’s time to start thinking about cues. Cues are the third element of the habit loop, alongside rewards and routine.

Rewards can work well as a motivator on their own. But if you want to promote consumer 

 formation, you’ll need to try to establish some form of cue to keep the habit loop in motion.

A cue is an event, situation, emotion, etc. that triggers the automatic routine in the customer.

Other brands make use of notifications and other time-based cues to help establish consumer habits. In the UK, Dominos has a long-running promotional campaign called ‘Two for Tuesday’ where customers can get buy one, get one free deals on all pizzas.

This simple promotion has been highly effective at creating an association between Tuesdays and Dominos in the UK.

Here you can see the cue (Tuesdays) and the reward (buy one, get one free) working in tandem. Once you have a reward and a cue in place, all that’s left to do is wait for the routine to settle in. When it has, you’ve created a habit that will drive regular sales.

build or buy common mistakes in implementing an omnichannel retail strategy

Consumer habits are a bit of a tricky topic. But they can be beneficial for brands and customers if encouraged correctly.

Influencing Consumer Habits with Promotions | Talon.One

Influencing consumer habits with the help of promotions

Referral programs are known for being one of the most effective ways to source new customers.

 than most other lead generation mechanisms, they bring in significantly higher quality leads on average too.

In the long run, it’s these new customers that brands are interested in. A new customer with high brand affinity can be a hugely valuable asset.

, it’s the efforts of existing customers, or advocates, which make all the difference. They’re the ones actively searching for friends and acquaintances who will hopefully become long term paying customers.

Why referral programs give high quality leads

 give high quality leads for many reasons. Firstly, existing customers are more likely to refer friends with similar shopping habits and personalities.

Research also shows that the prospect of a reward plays a key role in encouraging customers to find suitable people to refer.

If advocates know there’s a sizeable reward waiting for them once their friend makes it through the onboarding, they’ll try harder to find new customers that are a good fit for your brand. 

Bearing this in mind, it’s essential that your referral program gives advocates a worthwhile incentive.

Typical referral program incentives for advocates are things like 

, or gift items. They're simple to set up, easy to publicize/promote, and they offer customers a clear end reward.

However, they usually aren’t reactive, meaning advocates will always get the same reward, regardless of the quality of the person they refer.

In our experience, the best way to encourage your advocates to find high value customers is to reward them when their referred friend performs high-value actions.

There are a few different ways to do this. Let’s take a look at two examples. 

Reactive discount tied to new customer’s spend

Arguably the most effective reactive discount you can offer an advocate is a discount or cashback equal to a percentage of the new customer’s spend:

This type of incentive is trickier to implement than a standard discount. But it gives the advocate a clear incentive to find a suitable friend to refer.

The advocate’s incentive is directly tied to the amount of money the new customer spends within a certain time period.

This kind of reactive discount will benefit a business in the following ways:

This isn’t the only type of reactive incentive brands can offer advocates as part of their referral program. Take a look at this blog about the 

10 most important learnings from referral programs

 to find out what influences advocates. 

Reactive reward tied to number of new customers referred

Another option is a discount, coupon, or cashback reward that increases depending on how many new customers the advocate refers.

In this case, the advocate gets a reward for the first three new customers they refer. This setup could give them $20 cashback for the first customer, $25 for the second, and $30 for the third.

Rather than linking the reward to the amount of money spent by the new customer, this referral example places more emphasis on the number of new customers the advocate manages to sign up.

Setting up a reactive discount tied to new customer purchase

To set up the first reactive discount example mentioned above using Talon.One’s Promotion Engine, you’ll need to create a campaign rule with the following conditions and effects:

This campaign gives you a working reactive discount to offer existing customers as part of your referral program.

The referral examples mentioned above place weight on rewards for advocates. But you can use similar reactive mechanisms to offer customized rewards to new customers too.

To learn more about how to set up various other promotional campaign types, or to learn more about promotions in general, check out our 

Advocates & referral programs Talon.One

It's advocates that drive all successful referral programs, which makes the rewards you offer them all the more important.

How to Bond Your Referral Program Advocates | Talon.One

How to ensure advocates get the most out of your referral program

Need to improve your marketing automation workflows? You can trigger 3rd party applications as an effect for any of your promotions by creating a webhook with Talon.One.

 Developer Tools, developers can create webhooks to other web applications and test the implementation within your account. A 

 is an HTTP callback which is triggered by an event; for instance, sending an SMS message when a new customer registers.

This article will show you how to use the webhook feature by implementing 

, a communications platform for building SMS, voice and messaging applications, into a Talon.One ruleset.

First, you'll need some information from your Twilio account before you implement the webhook in Talon.One.

 gives a sample API command to send an SMS. This will tell us the information needed to create the Twilio webhook in Talon.One.

curl -X POST 'https://api.twilio.com/Accounts/account_SID/Messages.json' \

You can execute this command to test that all your Twilio information is set up correctly.

In the Talon.One Developer Tools, there is a setting to manage your webhooks. Here you can create your Twilio webhook.

You will need to add a few key things for this webhook.

First, you need to add the parameters which are the recipient's phone number, the sender's phone number, and the text of the message. From the Twilio command, you can see that these three parameters are string types.

You can also see the parameters' Content-Type is data-urlencode so this information should be added as a Header like so: Content-Type: 

The request for this webhook will be the exact same as the Twilio request, a POST to the Twilio messaging in your account.

You will also need to add an HTTP authentication header, but first you need to encode your Twilio Authorization Token.

The last thing to add is the payload. A payload consists of the input parameters that the request contains and looks like this:

3. Add Twilio messaging to a rule and test it!

Now that the Twilio Webhook is created, you want to implement it into a Campaign and test the functionality. You can head to the Campaign where you'd like to use it and go to the Rule Builder. Here you can create your rule, for instance when a new customer registers then send an SMS message saying "Welcome new customer!"

Once you have enabled the Campaign, you can head to the API Tester in the Developer Tools to create a command to test your new rule. For our example rule, you can create a new customer profile to test it. In the webhook logs, you will see the response to the request. If an error occurred you can see the response for debugging.

If your test succeeded, congrats! Now you can use this methodology to create other webhooks in Talon.One.

Learn how to facilitate webhooks to integrate Twilio messaging, a communications platform, together with Talon.One's Promotion Engine.

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