Offset Coupon Costs with TIKI: Re-Sell Zero-Party Data for Ecommerce Success!
Offset Coupon Costs with TIKI: Re-Sell Zero-Party Data for Ecommerce Success!
Boost Revenue Streams: Monetize Customer Data Effectively with TIKI's Loyalty Programs
TL;DR: TIKI is a cool company™ that allows a business to create loyalty programs customers love in exchange for users directly sharing their data with your business. That’s zero-party data! If you’re an ecommerce shop on WooCommerce, Shopify, Etsy, or host your own shop, you can offer up coupons, discounts and more to your customers in exchange for their data, then turn around and re-sell that data (with consent) on secondary marketplaces like Snowflake to offset the cost of the coupons. If that sounds cool to you already, feel free to skip the content below and check out our quickstart guide, or go ahead and jump into a call with our CEO Mike.
If you require more information, do partake in the festivities below.
You’ve got loyalty, or at least you’ve got a loyalty program. Or maybe you don’t have a loyalty program yet and want to create one. Fortunately for you, we’ve got some cutting-edge, revolutionary information (read as: I did some research, combined it with the knowledge of my own product, and turned it into a blog) to get you on the road to loyalty glory, all while creating a brand new, shiny revenue stream using TIKI’s patented (not actually patented, actually open-source) technology. Ready? Nice! Let’s g-…erm, hold up, I can’t find my keys. Hmm…okay, yup, in the fridge again. Alright, let’s go!
The Basics, or, Stuff You Probably Already Know (But Might Not)
You’re an ecommerce company! Or a commerce one. You sell stuff either on Al Gore’s digisphere or in one of those brick-and-mortar store things people used to go into a lot more. Perfect. A golden opportunity to deploy a lovable loyalty program! Nowadays, it’s as important as ever to have a solid relationship with your customers. Whether you’re a cute lil’ Shopify, WooCommerce, or Etsy store that’s just getting the ball rolling, or an established brand looking to grow, there’s never a shortage of desire for loyalty. From the consumer perspective, loyalty programs are hot. They’re often a determining factor for whether someone chooses to shop at your store.
In fact, 69% of consumers say their choice of patronage is influenced by the ability to earn loyalty or reward program points (Invesp).
But as the late Billy Mays said all the time, that’s not all! US consumers participate in about 7.5 loyalty programs (sucks for the half!), while technically being a part of about 17 (Statista). For those lucky 7.5, at least one of them is a brand a consumer has stuck with through thick and thin for over a decade. 77% of consumers say they’ve been loyal to a specific brand for over 10 years (InMoment).
When it comes to delving out dollars, consumers are much more likely to tango with your business if they’re already a customer of yours, so achieving that coveted loyalty is key. Just don’t leave your keys in the fridge like I do. There’s a 60-70% chance of selling to existing customers versus a nebulous 5-20% for new customers. Loyalty program inclusion helps get that percentage closer to that 20% than dwelling down at that 5%. Nobody wants to be associated with that 5%. Yuck.
Consumers will spend more money with brands with loyalty programs, spend on partners and affiliates of businesses with loyalty programs, and feel a closer emotional attachment.
Loyalty program members contribute to more revenue growth over time, and the best programs boost revenue from participants by a whopping 15-25% (McKinsey).
I could inundate you with more statistics, but these folks have already done a pretty good job of that, and I’m looking to get into the good stuff.
In summary, people like loyalty programs. You’ve now graduated from Loyalty Cornell. Congrats. Nice boat shoes, poser. Kidding. Sorry Cornell folks. Cornell is fine. Anywho…
Loyalty Program Economics
As a qualifier, we’re not like, Bain and Company, so if you’re looking for an in-depth breakdown of the economics, maybe ring those folks. Let’s just cover the high-level stuff. How do loyalty and reward programs become profitable models when you’re dealing out all these coupons and discounts? Well, see here, you drive sales volume, retain more customers, your sales and marketing and advertising departments are more efficient, and as its namesake suggests, your customers are more loyal. Factor in some profit margin stuff, drop in the increases in LTV, run a campaign to track your brand's positive word of mouth, toss in some NPS surveys, ponder Euclid, carry the zero, and boom. Results! Easy as pie!
Now, of course, there’s a more formal and accurate way to measure the economics of loyalty programs. Maybe you’ve already done that. Maybe it seems like a daunting task and you’re just counting on short-term benefits and planning on figuring out the rest later. Maybe you’re giving out coupons and discounts, acquiring customers, and creating and retaining loyal ones, but haven’t yet turned that into a loyalty program. Either way, doing all that math-ing is a lot of effort. What if I told you there’s a way to turn that loyalty program into a revenue stream that requires much less effort? Let’s take a peep at the TIKI loyalty and reward programs.
Profitable Loyalty for the Privacy Era
If you’ve been reading along with us for a while, you know the whole privacy rundown. But I gotta write these things as if nobody has ever read TIKI content before, so bear with me.
In the wake of rampant privacy changes from major tech players and governments worldwide, the reliability of utilizing cookies to measure ad attribution for marketing campaigns has been greatly impacted, with 44% of marketing leaders anticipating increasing spend by between 5-25% to meet pre-2021 metrics.
GDPR in the EU, a multitude of state laws in the USA, Google’s 2023 phase-out of third-party cookies, Apple’s iOS 14.5 introduction of App Tracking Transparency (ATT)…mix ‘em all up in a pot, and you’ve created the recipe for a world where it’s much harder to acquire relevant consumer data because consumers got pissed that businesses were f’ing around with their data, governments took notice, and the Big Tech companies saw it as an opportunity to make more money so they rolled out some revenue boosters masquerading as consumer-oriented privacy changes. Kidding maybe about the last part. Maybe they’re just nice folks. Jury’s still out.
So what in the heck does this have to do with loyalty programs? Well, enter TIKI and zero-party data (hold for applause).
We started this endeavor because, to us, data is the most valuable and important resource in the world. We believe there should be a better way of collecting and using data that benefits both businesses and consumers. You can’t turn off all data, and you can’t turn it into an outright free-for-all. You’ve gotta build a system to allow for transacting data.
So we built TIKI. TIKI allows businesses to create loyalty and reward programs that customers love (or expand upon pre-existing programs) while acquiring valuable data directly from consenting consumers (zero-party data). 85% of consumers would trade data for coupons and discounts. Sounds crazy given all of the privacy initiatives of recent years, I know. Consumers are willing to give up their data, they just want something of value in return, and they want to understand how their data is going to be used. They don’t want to be screwed over.
TIKI’s tech allows businesses to create custom offers to customers in exchange for sharing data. A nifty lil’ pop-up shows up in your application or website, hashing out the details of the offer and allowing your customers to say yes, or no. If they say yes, an immutable data license is generated that outlines the conditions of the deal.
Every time the customer changes their mind, a new license is created to address the changes. Included in a license are things like what data the customer is sharing, how long they’re sharing it and for which purposes, and what the user is entitled to in return. It addresses customer concerns and provides a mutually beneficial data transaction that makes sense in this new era of privacy.
Loyalty programs are the vehicle for these transactions. Discounts, coupons, access to exclusive features, and even cash back are all possible with TIKI’s SDK. TIKI’s API allows businesses to easily search, index, and enforce contracts of all different parameters, especially convenient if you’ve got a large volume of customer data with varied permissions. Or it can be really simple—one offer for each customer, for example, exchange permission for re-selling receipt data for a monthly coupon. It’s truly to your heart’s desire. And since I have conveniently and strategically dropped re-selling receipt data as an example, let’s jump into the deets!
You’re Already Giving Out Coupons (Maybe, Probably). Why Not Turn That Into a Way to Make More Revenue?
WELCOME TO SECTION TITLES THAT ARE AS LONG AS A MID-2000s PANIC! AT THE DISCO SONG! And if you don’t get that reference, you’re old(er) than I am or were 2 kool 4 emo music.
Either way, COUPONS! DISCOUNTS! You’ve got ‘em! Well, you give ‘em out! If you’re already doing something, and you can do something in addition to what you’re already doing to make more money, that sounds like a pretty good deal. I mean, offsetting the cost of coupons by re-selling data on secondary markets? All with the consent of your customersWe hope it sounds like a good deal, we’re kinda banking on it.
Using TIKI, you can offer custom discounts and coupons and at the same time request a user trade rights to re-sell data, for example, receipt data, in exchange for said discounts. These could be more enticing than the coupons you’re already giving out, or they can stay true to your current model—whatever works for you.
Here’s how it works:
How It Works!
You’re an ecommerce shop. You sell a multitude of different products and you’re pretty good at it, too! Let’s say I just Googled the top performing Shopify shops, and let’s say you’re called ColourPop. You’ve got a multitude of cosmetic products, from lipsticks, to concealers, to rouge, to lip gloss, all of which are, in fact, poppin’.
Other businesses and market researchers are surely interested in getting their hands on this data, and if you can get a user to agree to allow re-sale of their data, then naturally, you can create a new revenue stream from said data. The SKU-level data is incredibly valuable, with the average individual receipt going for $0.08 on the open market. If you’ve got a lot of receipts, well, that’s a lot of cents.
These other businesses can use this data for numerous things, such as identifying buying patterns and trends, discovering market trends in the cosmetic industry, opening the door for more personalization to enhance satisfaction and loyalty, implementing more accurate targeted marketing to run more successful user acquisition programs, and much more.
On top of this, ColourPop (and you!) can request other data permissions in exchange for the same coupon, helping you build and add to your very own data lake. Nice!
Here's a play-by-play:
Create a Data Reward Program
(or improve an existing program)
First, you’re going to want to be able to collect data directly from your users. So go ahead and initialize the TIKI SDK create a flow for creating a data program and licensing that coveted zero-party data. For the techy folks, here’s a diagram of a common flow:
The data license offer is recorded, signed, and indexed, resulting in a license record available to ColourPop via callbacks and servers through TIKI’s API. Here’s how simple the code can look on the front-end, specifically utilizing the Snowflake integration:
The ingredients for creating a data reward program can be seen here, which include:
a. a short informative description (“Did you know you can partially pay for your subscription with your data?”)
b. Basic conditions for the agreement of what happens to the data (“Aggregated and anonymized,” and “Sold to AI [companies] to pay your bill.”
c. Basic conditions for the agreement of what doesn’t happen to the data (“Used to target and follow you”)
Additionally, the full legal terms of the agreement are embedded in to appear on the front-end when a user accepts. The resulting data offer may look something like this:
On our end, we provide the guidelines and a boilerplate customizable template for the license agreement. Check’ em out here.
Nice!
Connect, Collect, Configure, Deploy & Publish!
The next steps don’t include as many pretty graphics. It may seem like a lot, but we can assure you it is very simple. In fact, we’ve created an entire blog walking you through the process of creating a data reward system with data monetization on Snowflake’s marketplace. We estimate the entire process will clock in at under one hour.
We’re working on other methods of re-sale as we speak, and as for the TIKI SDK, we’ve already whipped up a slick integration for WooCommerce shops with a Shopify version coming to a theater near you very soon.
So there you have it! That’s how you can implement a loyalty program (or improve a pre-existing one) that dishes out coupons to increase a boatload of metrics on your end, and then allows you to turn the beat around and re-sell that data on a secondary marketplace like Snowflake to offset coupon costs.
That’s just one way of using TIKI tech to delight customers and optimize your business operations. For more of our case studies, take a gander here.
And if you’ve read this and are on board to onboard, don’t worry about scrolling up to the top. Just click here.
Or if you want to learn more, here’s a link to our quickstart guide.
‘Til next time, peace out!
