Future-proofing promotions to guarantee business success

Future-proofing is “the process of anticipating the future and developing methods of minimizing the effects of shocks and stresses of future events.” Within the context of profitable promotion, future-proofing is mainly concerned with building an integrated ecosystem that gives a business its desired capacity to:

Promotions have a direct relationship with consumer behavior because their major purpose is to serve the needs of customers in the most efficient way. Consumer beliefs and behaviors are evolving rapidly and promotions should too. 

A recent McKinsey study highlights 'Great Expectations' from customers, emphasizing the need for brands to consider millennials and Gen Z consumer behavior. The study revealed that 76% of these consumers expect brands to take action on societal issues.

Companies have recognized the change in consumer expectations, vying to create outstanding customer experiences because they know customers today show little hesitation to sever their relationship with a brand if their expectations fall short. They know they’ll lose out if their promotions aren’t cutting edge. 

Quality promotions are able to move the needle by attracting your ideal customers and holding their attention long term. They serve your present needs and, more importantly, offer solutions for your future requirements. Your in-house solution might serve your most pressing needs but will fail to respond to continuous updates and constant fine-tuning that quality promotions require. That’s why companies are increasingly trying to create a reliable ecosystem of microservices to get access to their required promotion solutions. 

How can you determine if you need to future-proof your promotions by buying an agile and scalable solution? The following questions help you make an informed decision:

Opportunity cost is the profit lost when one alternative is selected over another. It’s particularly important when internal resources are limited and you have to make a decision which brings value to your organization and its stakeholders. 

The first step toward future-proofing your promotions is to measure the opportunity cost of software development by relying on your own developers. It would be best if you thought about the time that your development team can spend on your core products shouldn’t they have to work hard to meet deadlines for a promotion solution.

Your promotions strategy will bring a host of benefits only if you have a vivid picture of your top priorities. Based on these priorities, you can build/buy a solution that leads to your optimal outcome. The following features can be among your top priorities:

An overlooked aspect when discussing profitable promotions is the redemption rate of offers. These loyalty points can be a tool to measure your ROI only if they’re redeemed online and/or at the physical stores. Ideally, you want your customers to redeem their points for more experiences with your brand rather than direct cashbacks. If your promotions have a low redemption rate or result in high cash withdrawal, you need to reconsider your promotions solution.

As your business grows, you need a scalable promotions solution that is capable of supporting your customer base across the globe. You also begin to form many partnerships and run a lot of joint campaigns with your partners, which means your promotions solution should integrate not only with your tech stack, but with theirs too. 

It’s quite acceptable that your R&D team wants to spend their time primarily on providing insights into the market and developing new products. As a result, they may have less time to specifically think about future-proofing your promotions. When considering the pros and cons of buy vs. build approaches, you should bear in mind that your reliable vendor can 

Share Now is a joint venture of BMW and Daimler offering point-to-point car rentals in cities across Europe. They needed a promotions solution that not only supported their multiple tiers with behavior-based point allocation, but gave them the reassurance that they can run promotional campaigns without any restrictions in the future. That’s why they chose Talon.One as their reliable promotion engine. 

According to Share Now’s CMSO, Raphael Stange, “when we searched for a loyalty partner, we looked for a company that was able to continuously develop itself because we wanted to be assured that they will be there for us tomorrow as well.” Talon.One enabled Share Now to save up months of development work. As Raphael says, “Talon.One is our loyalty brain. Working with Talon.One allowed our software developers to save up months of work because we could completely rely on Talon.One’s product.”