Creating and Managing Customer Loyalty Program in Empress

Guides & Tutorials
1

Introduction

Welcome to our guide on how to implement and manage a Customer Loyalty Program in Empress. This feature is designed to help you retain your customers by rewarding them for their repeat business. It’s an effective way to incentivize customer loyalty and choose your business over your competitors.

Accessing Your Loyalty Program List

To view your list of Loyalty Programs, follow this path:

Home > Retail > Retail Operations > Loyalty Program

Creating Your Loyalty Program

Creating a new Loyalty Program is a simple process:

  1. Navigate to the Loyalty Program list and click on New.
  2. Enter a name for your Loyalty Program.
  3. Decide if your program is Single Tiered or Multi Tiered (e.g., gold, silver).
  4. Set a start and end date for your program.
  5. Select the Customer Group and Territory to which your program applies (default is all).
  6. If you want all customers to be included in the program by default, enable ‘Auto Opt In (For all customers)’. Otherwise, you will need to assign the program from the Customer master.
  7. Fill out the table with the necessary information:
  • Tier name: This will be assigned to a customer based on their eligibility.
  • Collection Factor: This is the amount a customer needs to spend to earn 1 Loyalty Point.
  • Minimum Amount: This is the least amount a customer needs to spend to qualify for a tier.
  1. Set the Conversion Factor (for example, 10 USD = 1 point).
  2. Don’t forget to save your changes.

Understanding Redemption

  • Conversion Factor: This determines how much 1 Loyalty Point is worth when a customer redeems their points. For example, if a customer has 100 Loyalty Points and 1 Loyalty Point equals 1 USD, they can use items worth up to 100 USD with their loyalty points for future purchases.
  • Expense Account: This is the account from which you’ll offer the rewards. It helps you separately track the benefits offered.
  • Expiry Duration (in days): This sets the number of days after which the collected loyalty points will expire.

Assigning a Loyalty Program to a Customer

You can assign a Loyalty Program to a customer in the Customer master. The Loyalty points earned by a customer can be viewed in the Customer’s dashboard.

Overview of Loyalty Point Entry

Navigate to the Loyalty Point Entry section via: Accounts > Retail Operations > Loyalty Point Entry. This acts as a log, providing an overview of how many points each customer has earned against which Sales Invoice.

How the Loyalty Program Works

Earning Points

  1. Create a Loyalty Program as explained in the previous section.
  2. Assign this Loyalty Program to a Customer.
  3. Create a new Sales Invoice for the Customer who has been assigned the Loyalty Program.
  4. For instance, if an invoice is created with a grand total of 3,000 INR, the Silver Tier collection factor will apply according to the Loyalty Program for a minimum spend of 2,000 INR. For each 300 INR spent, the Customer will receive 1 point (this transaction would yield 10 points total).
  5. When you submit the invoice, a Loyalty Point Entry will be created for this invoice.

Redeeming Points

  1. Let’s say we’ve created 1 invoice and earned 15 points from it. When creating another invoice for the same Customer, go to the Loyalty Points section and enable the checkbox to ‘Redeem Loyalty Points’.
  2. The ‘Loyalty Point’, ‘Redemption Account’ and ‘Redemption Cost Center’ fields will become visible. The account and Cost Center will be fetched from the Loyalty Program assigned to the Customer.
  3. Since the Customer has 15 points, we can use all of them until they expire. Using more points than are available will result in an error.
  4. When you submit, two Loyalty Point Entries will be created. One for the redeemed points (a negative value) and one for the current invoice.

Please note: If a return invoice is created for an invoice that earned points, the original Loyalty Point Entry will be deleted and a new one created after subtracting the returned amount from the original amount. When an invoice is canceled, its subsequent Loyalty Point Entry will be deleted.

Conclusion

Implementing a Customer Loyalty Program is a powerful strategy for improving customer retention and driving repeat business. By using Empress’s Loyalty Program features, you can easily create, manage, and track your customer loyalty initiatives. With the ability to set tiers, assign points, and track redemptions, you can customize your programs to best suit your customers’ needs and your business goals. For additional assistance or resources, please refer to our comprehensive Empress user guides or contact our support team.