Loyalty in Motion: Designing Rewards Systems for Public Transport

Like most other industries, the transport sector depends upon long-term retention and a dependable revenue stream to ensure growth and sustainability. Transport companies the world over are eager to boost customer loyalty and incentivise travellers to keep using them down the line.

One of the best ways of achieving this is through digital loyalty programs. These are designed to attract new customers to a brand and hold onto current ones by offering tantalising rewards for those who perform specific actions. Meanwhile, releasing these programs in the form of digital apps makes them more accessible to the general public and convenient to use. This, in turn, helps increase their adoption rate.

We’ve already discussed the benefits transport companies can access when they launch a digital loyalty program, as well as some of the more successful examples in the transport industry. But how do these systems of reward actually work, and what design principles lie behind them? We’ll explain all in the following article. Read on to learn more.

Types of Reward Programs

There are many different forms of loyalty programmes to choose from, and which one you opt for depends on the type of business you have and the lifestyles you are selling:

• Point-based: In this model, customers gain new points after each purchase. After accumulating enough points, customers can redeem them later and make new purchases for free.
• Subscription: In this model, customers will subscribe and pay a regular fee, which entitles them to select rewards like special offers, gifts, or experiences.
• Free perks: These programmes reward customers with free perks, gifts, or discounts when they perform certain actions.
• Referrals: This type of loyalty programme functions as free advertising for brands that choose to adopt it. Customers are incentivised to gain rewards when they recruit others in their network to become customers themselves.
• Tiers: This model sees customers go up in ranks or tiers to access more and more rewards and benefits the more they perform certain positive actions.

Picking the best reward system for your brand depends on a number of factors. First, it’s important to establish what behaviours you want to condition your target consumers to perform, and work out what rewards best suit those actions.

For transport companies, a point-based system might give customers discounts as they accumulate points on repeated journeys, while free perks could grant access to free food or other luxury experiences. For example, Eurostar’s loyalty program, Club Eurostar, offers its members reduced or free tickets and upgraded seats as they rack up more points and rank up in the various tiers — picking up better rewards as they go.

So, with all this in mind, what kind of thought process should go into the design of loyalty reward systems for public transport brands

Designing Effective Loyalty Programs

Understand Your Customers

When it comes to actually planning and designing a truly effective customer loyalty program, it pays to first establish clear objectives and understand the needs of your consumers. What kind of features do they like, and what kind of rewards are they seeking? Once you’ve conducted some research into these wants, you’ll be able to build a loyalty program that answers this value proposition.

Establish Your Goals

It’s also important to establish what your goals are with your loyalty program. What is it that your company wants to achieve other than customer retention? Do you want customers to travel with you more? Do you want them to take longer and more expensive trips? Do you want them to engage with the catering and hospitality services you might have partnered with? By answering these questions, you’ll be able to build a loyalty program that will reward customers for taking the actions you need from them.

Cultivate A Positive UX

You’ll also need to give some thought to your loyalty program’s user experience. If the app you use to deliver rewards is clunky, slow, or unintuitive, customers will be less likely to use it regularly, and therefore less likely to remain loyal to your company. Design the app with simplicity in mind, ensuring that it’s app is easy to navigate and use, while also guaranteeing fast load times and broad functionality.

Design With Scale In Mind

Your reward system must attempt to take scale into account. As your business inevitably grows, and as your most devoted customers continue to use your brand for travel, your program will invariably have to accommodate larger and better and more complex rewards. With this mind, it’s important to develop a loyalty app that is highly adaptable, and which can be updated to take advantage of new possibilities as and when they arise.

Integrate Analytics

Finally, it’s important to integrate data analytics into your loyalty program, in order to help your enterprise understand your members going forward. By analysing the data you can acquire through the app, you’ll be able to see what journeys and rewards your members favour, and which ones they aren’t as responsive to. Using this information as a springboard to further iteration and improvement, you’ll be able to modify your reward system to cater to their preferences.

Create Loyalty Programs With Future Platforms

Are you a public transport company that wants to design loyalty programs that can offer your customers the rewards they so desperately want? Future Platforms could be the ideal partner for you.

Our experienced team of devs and designers have a proven track record of crafting digital loyalty programs and reward schemes for First Bus and First Rail. Our team of experts will work with you to create a digital loyalty program that your customers will love to use again and again.

So, if you’d like to know more about our services, then reach out and contact our team today.