What's the difference between "World of Warcraft" and a loyalty program? Surprisingly little. Blizzard (now Activision Blizzard) has made an empire out of games that don't end. From
"Diablo" to "World of Warcraft," these are bestselling hits predicated on a simple formula: Make your customer an addict.
There's a ton of things to learn from this company,
including novel tactics of CRM - but for the purposes of this post, we'll limit ourselves to a look at how a store loyalty program would look if designed by Blizzard.
Diminishing
returns: All Blizzard games start off with tremendous quantity of rewards per investment at the outset, but taper off into hours of work for a marginal but significant qualitative
gain. So our loyalty program will be layered with bronze, silver, and gold points. At the outset, bronze points accrue quickly and can be redeemed often for small perks. Eventually
members can purchase a silver membership using their bronze points, at which point they accrue silver points instead, albeit at a slower rate. These can buy more rewarding perks. Gold
membership follows in the same manner as silver.
Social Component: Blizzard games have both cooperative and competitive social frameworks. To follow suit,
our loyalty program will allow multiple customers to create an alliance with up to five friends, each member of which gets fractions of a point for every point another member accrues. For each
store location, the top three alliances in points earned for the previous month get access to an exclusive perk for each level of membership (bronze/silver/gold).
Quests: In most Blizzard games, "grinding" (killing monsters over and over again for points) is the primary way to level up. But they add quests as a way to spice
things up. As such, our loyalty program will use the weekly newsletter to issue optional "quests" for points. Clearing out last season's stock? "Come into the season clearance sale
this week and pick up five items or more for an extra 20 points!" Having a vendor in-store for a demonstration or taste test? That's now a "quest."
Random
loot: The key to the most addictive Blizzard games is the randomness of "epic loot." Any behavioral psychologist can confirm that random rewards are more effective at
driving behavior than constant rewards. Accommodating this, our loyalty program will select certain SKUs each week to have a marginal chance of tripling the shopping cart's point value at
checkout. If a customer gets this bonus, he or she will be notified and congratulated by the sales clerk and told which item triggered it. For avid participants, this will allow for
"strategy" around the weekly SKU bonuses (and allow us to push excess inventory).
Did I miss anything? Think of something else that could improve this imaginary loyalty
program? Post your idea in the comments.