Customer loyalty programs have become a key part of just about every business. In recent years, these programs have benefited significantly from the rise of AI. From retail to igaming, companies are making continuous efforts to integrate the latest technologies into their approach to gaining and keeping customers.
The Power of AI
When it comes to predicting behavior based on customer data, AI is far better than humans in most cases. That’s because its ability to notice and learn patterns is much more effective than ours.
When you want to understand your customers in a scalable way, data analysis is vital. But there’s no point in looking at countless sales and page logins yourself. A much faster method is to teach an AI what to do and let it learn from what it observes.
Another method is to hire data engineers to give you key insights into what your customers are doing in relation to your business. What do they buy the most? How much time do they spend looking at a new product? And so on.
Such insights can be valuable in planning your next steps. If you notice that a lot of your customers are interested in a particular type of product or service, you can focus your attention on that area and maximize its impact.
By analyzing client data, AI algorithms can tell you shopping patterns and behavioral trends. For example, in online casinos, the site manager always knows what the client prefers and can set up the system in a way that maximizes engagement.
If a player enjoys certain types of casino games, the website could be built in a way that suggests those games from the start or at the right time.
For an online bookstore owner, it’s easier to sell more books if the system understands book trends and the customers’ genre preferences. The right discount for books written by a person’s favorite author dramatically increases the odds that a purchase decision will be made on the spot.
But if a completely random set of books gets discounted, nothing good will happen because the customer doesn’t value a 30% discount for an item he doesn’t want or need. What is truly valuable is a discount for an item that already looked interesting even without it.
The Importance of Personalization
With powerful AI tools, businesses can customize their interaction with every potential customer without needing to hire actual employees to mediate that relationship. The system can be taught what to do in the vast majority of situations, based on historical data.
In loyalty programs, predictive analysis can determine what the optimal reward or proposal is and then generate or intensify interest in a product or service by making the correct suggestion or proposal, completely on its own.
Gamification
AI often enhances loyalty programs by making use of gamification. In other words, by making use of game-like elements.
It’s well-known at this point that a high percentage of people respond well to the language specific to video games. One of the reasons why such games are so successful is that they offer the player visual ways to monitor his progress. Another reason has to do with the pleasure of solving challenges that have the right difficulty.
Similarly, AI tools allow companies to devise clever ways to keep customers engaged. Whether it’s scoring points that later get turned into discounts or being one of the few customers who fulfill a given condition, gamification is an elegant way to get a client to take a desired action or continue to invest in the products or services you offer.
The purchase decision is no longer isolated and forgotten. It becomes part of something bigger that can be tracked and talked about.
Many people enjoy bragging to their friends about how many things they bought recently or what they’ve accomplished. If you give them that opportunity, they are more likely to buy than if the transaction takes place in a purely abstract way.
AI-based gamification doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does need to be based on data that you have about your customers, and designed in a way that’s logically and visually appealing. Buying a product or spending money on a service should feel like an accomplishment.
