For Bill Warshauer, the Chief Revenue Officer at Tillo, a reward can do much more than help a company complete a transaction. It can also produce measurable and meaningful value for companies by changing behavior, creating moments of connection, and strengthening relationships.
Tillo helps brands deliver on all these needs. The company, which is a global gift-card network purpose-built for both brands and buyers, represents more than 4,000 merchants globally.
These merchants form one corner of what Tillo refers to as the “power triangle,” which also includes the buyers/platform providers such as loyalty programs, fintechs, employee engagement companies, and more as the other corner. And at the top of the triangle sits the consumer and the consumer experience.
“What we really do is provide infrastructure, allowing the connectivity of all three of those to exist in a very harmonious way,” Warshauer explains. “And by doing so, we feel that we have a responsibility by delivering value into each of those different parties equally.”
Creating a Frictionless Experience
The infrastructure that Tillo provides ensures that the needs of the three corners of the power triangle are served equally. When it comes to consumers, Warshauer notes that their expectations continue to evolve with every shopping journey or engagement with a brand.
“They expect a frictionless experience, they expect value to be delivered and realized, and they expect it to be easy to do business with a brand,” he said.
Meanwhile, brands make a significant investment into the B2B ecosystem to allow their products to be taken through Tillo’s infrastructure and onto its buyers’ platforms so that they can reach consumers. Brands too want the experience to be frictionless, and Tillo makes sure they’re delivering value for them as well.
“They don’t want friction associated with their brand,” Warshauer said. “They want to make sure when their brand is offered that it is a great experience. A huge component of loyalty is that experience.”
The loyalty platforms are always trying to create engagement and repeat experiences. By allowing the power triangle to facilitate in such a seamless and frictionless way, Tillo’s infrastructure is enabling all that to occur.
The Evolution of the Gift Card
Tillo’s bread and butter are of course gift cards, which have undergone a significant evolution over the last several years. There was a time when the gift card was just sitting among all the other products and merchandise that a brand was selling, creating a static reward offering.
However, as gift cards have increasingly gone digital, they have become a programmable value layer that can be embedded directly in the customer journey or experience. And as customer expectations continue to evolve, digital has become much more important.
“The ability for us to deliver these rewards at the right time, into the right hands, into the right environments, we're really impacting a significant amount of change and how members of these programs interact day in and day out with these platforms,” Warshauer said.
He points to the Uber experience as something that is influencing how consumers think about the ways in which they interact with brands and gift cards. Riders never have to think about how they paid for an Uber trip because they don’t have to present a credit card at the end of the journey—the transaction is instead completed through the Uber app.
“I think that’s the evolution of consumer expectations and how digitization and no friction is now delivering on that,” Warshauer said.
Using Data to Fine-Tune Choices
While brands might be tempted to provide consumers with as much choice as possible to improve the shopping experience, Warshauer cautions that this approach has its flaws. What brands should be doing is more effectively identifying who their consumers are and curating choices that make the most sense for them.
To better curate a catalog for each individual consumer, brands should utilize data mining to learn more about the consumers. By leveraging digital gift cards, brands can glean insights through the data points offered by the cards to identify what someone bought the first time, and what they might want to buy on their second shopping trip. This data can also be pulled together by loyalty providers that allow them to also add more value.
Data is one part of the personalization equation, with artificial intelligence being the other part. Warshauer sees AI engines helping platforms increase the speed and efficiency by which they're going to be able to segment customers, identify potential laggards, or even find consumers who might soon be dropping out of the program.
Although it can be difficult for loyalty providers to pivot and change their legacy infrastructure and solutioning to a digitized platform, Warshauer said they need to think about how those investments can benefit them long-term.
“You have to challenge yourselves internally to say that the physical gift card is old,” he said. “We need to be 100 percent digital, or we shouldn't be doing this any longer. We're doing ourselves a disservice.”
Becoming Less Isolated
According to Warshauer, one of the biggest challenges facing brands in the loyalty space is their loyalty platforms themselves. He thinks too many of these platforms remain too isolated and transactional in nature.
Rather than having a program where members just buy a product, earn points, and then eventually burn points, loyalty programs can create more value through a connected ecosystem. Tillo’s network creates this connected ecosystem, which helps facilitate valuable partnerships among brands.
While discounts will reduce prices, Warshauer notes that a well-designed loyalty program will increase value. Loyalty platforms can give consumers increased purchasing power through partnerships, which is especially important today as people try to stretch every dollar.
“The key is just continually challenging themselves to find opportunities that can make their members more valued, more associated with their brand, their platform, and their loyalty program,” Warshauer said.