In this guide, we’ll go over everything you need to know about setting up a refer a friend program with the help of Alpine IQ’s marketing platform.

How You Can Reward Your Loyal Customers with Alpine IQ

It’s important to partner with a marketing platform that’s created for retailers and brands, like Alpine IQ.

Alpine IQ’s marketing platform includes a refer a friend program feature that allows you to reward your customers for referring new business your way. How it works is simple:

• Customers are given their own unique and trackable referral link
• Whenever they refer a friend who makes a purchase, they receive rewards points that can be redeemed in exchange for a reward of your choosing

Alpine IQ’s refer a friend program platform gives you an all-in-one solution for managing your customer database, tracking referrals, and issuing rewards.

You can also determine how you wish to reward your customers: whether it’s a percentage off their next purchase, or a free product, you have the flexibility to create a program that works best for your business. You can also reward them for simply signing up for your loyalty program.

Types of Rewards for Your Customers

The rewards you offer your customers can be as simple or as creative as you’d like. The essential thing is that you give them something that’s valuable to them. As we mentioned, with Alpine IQ, you have the flexibility to determine what your incentives are. Some of these include:

• Discounts:  A percentage off their next purchase, or a set dollar amount
• Loyalty points: Earn points for every purchase that can be redeemed for discounts on products

And it doesn’t have to be a one-sided incentive! With a two-sided refer a friend program, you give a reward to both the customer and the person they refer. This is a great way to encourage customers to continue referring friends and helps to create a sense of community.

Get Started with Alpine IQ’s Recipes for Your Referral Programs!

Creating a refer a friend program with Alpine IQ is easy and only takes a few minutes to set up. And with Alpine IQ’s templates, you can create highly personalized marketing campaigns, including referral programs, that will help you attract and retain more customers.

To learn more, visit https://alpineiq.com/ or contact us at support@alpineiq.com. We’d be happy to answer any of your questions!

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Here, we’ll outline some of the best practices for implementing a web push notification strategy:

Optimizing Web Browser Push Notifications

Content 

Title/headline

This is equivalent to an email subject line, so ensure that it’s catchy, impactful, yet simple: 

• Your title should briefly describe what your message is about.
• Add an element of intrigue to stoke the receiver’s curiosity.
• Include relevant emojis if it makes sense to your branding and the message of your content. Emojis have been found to increase open rates by 4.51%.
• Keep it short and sweet. The character limit is 38 characters maximum (with spaces).

Description/message

Your message should be relevant to your target audience, emphasizing the value and benefits if they take action. 

• Make sure your message is in sync with your title. 
• Keep your tone friendly and personable.
• Ensure the content is personalized to the recipient; segment your messages based on their past actions, preferences, where they are in the sales funnel, etc.
• Localize and send your message in their browser language.
• Be concise. The character limit is 46 characters maximum (with spaces)

Logo/website icon

It’s best practice to include your company logo in your web push notifications to cultivate brand recognition. 

Be sure to optimize the size of your logo. Different browsers and operating systems each have their own ideal sizes, but a 360px by 240px image with an aspect ratio of 1.5:1 works well for both desktop and mobile. The image file type is ideally JPG or PNG.

Images

Adding images and rich media to your notification can help grab readers’ attention. However, only Chrome on Windows Desktop and Android (version 56 or above) have image support for push notifications. 

• If you use images, use a unique one for each notification.
• Ensure that the imagery you use aligns with your message.
• Optimize the size: Landscape images with 2:1 aspect ratio. The recommended maximum width is 2000px and the minimum width is 300 px. The file type should be JPG or PNG.

Call to action button

A call to action (CTA) button is critical to the success of your web push notification. You need to clearly guide your audience on what to do next.

• Design the button in a way that it stands out. Use contrasting colors and make sure that the color you pick makes sense to your branding.
• Use strong, action-oriented words. For example, “Get your free trial,” “Buy now,” and “Order today.”
• The link should take the audience to a dedicated landing page—directly to where you want them and be able to easily complete the desired action.
• Be mindful of the length. A maximum of 5 to 7 words is ideal; the shorter and more concise, the better.

Timing 

Web push notifications are consumed in real-time, so timing is crucial. While there is no perfect time to send notifications, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

• Be mindful of timezones. This is especially important if you’re targeting an international clientele.
• Respect their routine. Knowing your target audience’s profile is the right way to start. Typically, the hours after dinner are when internet users are most available and more likely to see your notification.
• Use trial and error. Evaluate your performance and do A/B testing where possible. That way, you’ll find which hours of the day and days of the week that your target audience is most active.

Whom to send to 

We mentioned before about segmenting and personalizing the content of your web push notification. Doing so helps in increasing your click-through rates (CTR) and conversions.

At Alpine IQ, you can add metadata to your web push notifications and set certain criteria to segment and personalize your content:

• Demography (age, gender, nationality, etc.)
• Location (country, city, etc.)
• Browser language
• Browser type and platform
• Behavior and events (past purchases, frequency of purchases, liked products, etc.)

Segmentation also helps in creating more targeted and effective notifications for every step of your customer’s journey. Triggered notifications allow you to send your messages to the right person at the right moment.

Types and examples of web browser push notifications:

• Event-Triggered Notifications

These are push notifications that are automatically triggered based on key events of a customer’s sales funnel journey. Examples include abandoned cart notifications, reactivating dormant customers, and achievements/milestones (e.g., welcome notifications). 

• Behavior-Based Notifications

These are notifications based on a customer’s past actions in your website, such as previous purchases, products they recently viewed, etc. A good example is relevant product recommendations.

• Alerts and Reminders Notifications

These are usually prompted by transactional triggers. For example, order confirmations, payment reminders, and shipping updates.

• Location Notifications

These are notifications that are geographically significant. A classic example is automatically adjusting the language of the push notification based on a customer’s location. Other examples include tailored promotional notifications based on the nearest e-commerce store.

Boost Your Businesses Push Notification and Messaging Strategy with Alpine IQ

The main challenge for retailers when it comes to marketing is getting around most platforms’ restrictions in selling and advertising a highly regulated product. 

This is why web browser notifications provide the perfect solution for businesses—a way to reach potential customers where they are spending the majority of their time online: on social media, news sites, and blogs.

It’s also crucial to work with a platform that’s designed especially for businesses, and AIQ offers a cutting-edge browser push notification solution to ensure that all your campaigns are effective and well-performing.

Some of our top features include:

• A template tool to help you define your messages more clearly and ensure they’re on-brand.
• Advanced analytics tools, including split analytics that you can customize for each of your campaign channels.
• Smart technology that triggers notifications regardless of what website customers are browsing.
• Optin prompts within the mobile wallet or via the AIQ pixel on your business website.
• Message delivery system that ensures all your messages are delivered, without having to worry about carrier filtering concerns.

Maximizing Your Web Browser Push Notifications

Sometimes, web push notifications delivery can be blocked by various reasons despite customers providing their consent to optin. Ensure message delivery and maximize your reach by using Alpine IQ’s Waterfall Delivery.

With Waterfall, you can designate backup channels for your campaigns—whether it’s web push notifications, email, or SMS—and protect your messages from being lost in spam folders or being blocked by cell carriers.

The technology also helps you capture new browser push notification subscribers with a seamless one-click in-app push request.

Click below to learn more about Alpine IQ’s messaging features!

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Here’s all you need to know about AIQ Brands:

What is Alpine IQ Brands?

The Alpine IQ Brands Platform is a product suite that aims to address the huge challenge that the industry faces: being able to seamlessly share and manage vital information between brands and retailers, all while streamlining the customer journey.

Brands provides a single solution for retailers and brands to seamlessly share information and analytics throughout the lifecycle of their partnership, and at the same time providing a platform to reach customers directly and effectively.

What are the key features of Brands?

Alpine IQ enables one-to-one communication with clients across all networks, via in-network and out-of-network retail partners. AIQ also provides comprehensive real-time data analysis, as well as artificial intelligence-powered tools to segment and target audiences more efficiently.

Some of its key features include:

• Performance analytics: With AIQ’s AI-powered technology, Brands can produce real-time data and produce one-on-one detailed transaction reporting. You will also be able to automate reports and seamlessly distribute these to key members in your company. 

• DTC loyalty and marketing: Create more effective direct-to-customer (DTC) loyalty and marketing programs for your brand with AIQ’s QR generator that rewards returning customers with collectible products. With Alpine IQ, Brands can turn every product into an interactive collectible through AIQs QR generator. When the QR codes are redeemed, you can reward your customers with loyalty points based on product rarity. Then, you can drive your customers back to retailers by converting points into retailer gift cards.

• Co-marketing: Generate higher conversions by creating in-app ads that are targeted to each of your customer’s needs. You can also create effective push notifications, email, SMS, and MMS campaigns, all of which you can preconfigure with Brands Recipes which allows you to create go-to-market messaging campaign drips for your retail partners to easily launch.

• Sales enablement: Empower your sales team with actionable tools, such as prospecting search through AIQ’s partner discovery portal, gaining competitive insights, and predicting market viability with our suite of machine learning technology for analytics.

How will the Brands platform benefit Retailers?  

The Alpine IQ platform is where brands and their retail partners work together to achieve shared objectives:

• Easily control and share real-time sales insights and data between Retailer and Brand partners.
• Create and coordinate custom and recurring reports for sales, marketing, and promotional efforts, sent directly to key team members across multiple organizations.
• Seamlessly and securely manage data for multiple brands, markets, POSs, platforms, teams and departments.
• Collaborate and cost-split with your partners on multi-channel marketing and communication campaigns via waterfall, drip, recipes, shared promotional campaigns, and in-app ads.
• Empower brands to drive and evolve effective strategies without the headache of manually managing communications.
• Work together to create compelling content that facilitates robust brand-presence and customer loyalty.
• Continue to grow, segment, and target customer audiences with the added power of your Brand partners’ reach and impact.

If you’re a vertically integrated operator or brand looking for a platform that not only provides comprehensive analysis, but also the tools to segment, target, and drive impactful strategy in real time, AIQ Brands is the right solution for you. Contact us today to book a free demo!

To get the latest updates on our suite of services, make sure to subscribe to our blog today!

In the context of business and marketing, a discount is essentially a deduction from the usual price of a product or service. Offering discounts is among the quickest ways to attract customers, boost sales, and cultivate customer loyalty — among its many advantages, which we will discuss in more detail later.

The paradox of running a business, however, is that you want to gain profit but also help customers “save” money. Discounts provide the right balance, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, as long as you implement the right strategy. 

Why should you offer discounts wisely?

While offering discounts provide a lot of benefits both for the customer and the brand, it also has potential cons that you need to be aware of:

• Lowered perceived value: Research has shown that customers who paid for a certain product at full price have a tendency to have higher expectations on the product’s “performance” compared to products that were bought at a discounted price. This means that discounted products can be perceived to have lower value.
• Risk of profit loss: When the price of a product or service is slashed down too low, you run the risk of not gaining profit at all due to lower margins. Offering discounts without knowing the real value of your product/service defeats the purpose of discount promotions.

This is why it’s crucial to offer discounts wisely. Establish your objectives before setting up your discount offers, and evaluate exactly how much a product or service costs to produce and develop. This way, it’s easier to set the right metrics and ensure that you’re not lowering your price too much.

The key here is to give your customers incentives, but at the same time, you have to make sure that your business is growing and that you’re making a profit.

What are the advantages of utilizing discounts?

As we mentioned, offering discounts provides myriads of advantages both to consumers and your business. Here are 4 of the main ones:

1. Draws both new and existing customers

Since customers are naturally drawn to products that provide value for their money, offering quality products at a lower price attracts not only new customers but also existing ones.

Remember that the main goal is to increase customers and profits, all while encouraging your returning customers to keep coming back for more. This is why discount promotions and loyalty programs often go hand in hand: you incentivize your customers while also building and growing your client base. 

Bonus Tip: Sweeten the deal even more by offering time-limited discounts. This plays into a customer’s natural FOMO (fear of missing out), and it also adds anticipation as to when the next promo will be.

2. Frees up room for new products

Among the practical benefits of discounts, there is an effective way to sell out your current products to make room for the new batch. This is especially useful for seasonal products, those that have been in your inventory for a while, or those that you don’t plan on selling anymore. 

You have to make sure that your inventory moves fast to make sure that every batch is fresh, and discounts greatly help in this.

Move discounted products to the front of the store to easily catch the attention of customers. For e-commerce businesses, create an advertising campaign and ensure that the discounted products have their own separate section in your store and are placed above the fold.

Bonus Tip: If there are defects in the product due to being stocked for too long, be upfront about it to your customers. Customers appreciate it when brands are transparent and honest.

3. Helps customers choose your brand over competitors

Price is one of the factors that customers consider when they are choosing products/services to buy. Discounts can give you a leg up on the competition, especially if you’re offering something that others don’t. Customers will be more eager to shop with you if they know they can get something valuable out of the deal.

Bonus Tip: The crucial thing here is to not sell yourself short. Ensure that the products you put up at discounted prices provide great value to your customers. Remember that price isn’t the only thing that customers consider in their purchasing decision. 

4. Improves the image of your brand

Showing that you care for your customers is essential for a successful business. Among the many ways you can show how much you value your customers is to make every customer’s shopping experience unique to them. 

Be intentional in providing discounts. Consider the timing, the right audience, and the right kind of product or service. When you provide specific discounts that are catered to your customer’s unique needs, they will view you as a brand who truly cares about their individuality instead of just being another transaction.

Additionally, building customer trust is essential when you sell specialized and regulated products, so it’s crucial to cultivate a positive image for your brand. 

Bonus Tip: Segmenting your audiences is valuable when strategizing your discount promotions. For example, potential customers would appreciate it more if an introductory price is offered to them. Long-time customers would be happier if you offer discounts to products they’ve been buying again and again, or products that are good compliments to their favorites. 

Offering discounts can be a counterintuitive approach if you’re not careful — you may run the risk of not gaining enough profits, your discounted products may be perceived as subpar, or that you may be selling your brand short. 

Despite these risks, however, it cannot be denied that the advantages discounts provide outweighs its disadvantages if you have the proper strategy in place. It’s important to have a well-thought-out plan prior to offering your discount promotions, establish clear objectives, and know your product’s worth. This will ensure that you don’t go off track or lose sight of what your ultimate goal is.
If you need further guidance on how to implement a discount promotion strategy for your business, Alpine IQ is here to help. Visit us at https://alpineiq.com/ to learn more!

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In this article you will find Best Practices for Financial Loyalty Reporting and FAQs.

Best Practices: Monthly Financial Report Vault and Schedulable Financial Reports

Below are tips for financial reporting for  loyalty programs with ASC 606 and IFRS 15. *Alpine IQ is not a financial advisor, please seek your own counsel to assure that you are in compliance.

Loyalty Financial Reports can be found under Settings : Loyalty Settings : Points Reports. The AIQ – Recommended Best Practices for Loyalty Financial Reporting is to utilize these reports exclusively to designate the financial liability from outstanding point balances.

USE CASE: These reports will show you the actual, usable loyalty point balances during the timeframe in which the reports are run. These are the ONLY reports in Alpine IQ that will display the true financial liability from outstanding points for the timeframe provided.

MONTHLY FINANCIAL REPORT VAULT: These are automatically created and report on the previous months data . Please compile these reports month over month to understand the financial liability of outstanding loyalty points across a larger time frame (than one month).

• Per Persona: You can report points based on each customer based on what they specifically redeemed, earned, etc. These records are not attached to a store and provide global liability.
• Per Store: You can also report points based on where the actions taken by the custom occurred (accrued points, redeemed points, etc.) as our system will attempt to assign a Persona’s points accrued / redeemed / expired to a store location to provide store level liability.
  • When a customer accrues points due to them doing something not tied to a specific store, those points are assigned to an “Unknown” row in the reports downloaded on a per store basis. These can be considered global liabilities.
  • Depending on your POS, some redemptions are “Groupon style” and rely on proper in-store SOP’s to align with Alpine IQ’s reports. Depending on your organization’s settings, it’s possible to have users redeem points without being at a store location. The opposite is also true with “Groupon style” redemption where if SOP’s aren’t followed properly, a clerk could simply give a customer a discount manually but they don’t actually collect the “coupon” by redeeming it with the customer. Most Alpine IQ clients leverage modern point-of-sale infrastructure which has Alpine IQ built in to redeem natively (AKA a Tier 3+ integration). Being natively integrated solves these discrepancies but it’s important for us to mention it in this article. 

SCHEDULABLE FINANCIAL REPORTS: These reports are identical to the Monthly Financial Report Vault Reports, however, they can be scheduled at different intervals beyond monthly (like the MONTHLY FINANCIAL REPORT VAULT)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do members earn points?
   1. Transactions: [Total spent on transactions] * [Point Accrual ratio]
   2. Visits: [number of visits (max applicable)] * [point per visit]
   3. Gifts / Boosts: When a customer falls into an audience or is sent a specific campaign there are options to boost additional points to the members’ loyalty accounts.
      1. Example: “When a customer abandons an online shopping cart, send them a message to come back and complete the order and gift them 100 points to incentivize it.”
   4. Points Multiplier: When a customer falls into an audience, they can receive a points multiplier on points accrued due to money spent on transactions or visits made while they are actively in the audience.
      1. Example “Purchase X brand name, get 2x points”, “Shop during 3-6pm and get 3x happy hour points”)
   5. Manual Adjustments: When staff member manually adds or subtracts points from an account.
   6. API-driven Integration Partners: Various integration partners you may have connected to your accounts.
      1. EX- Virtual clerk tools gifting points in exchange for customer reviews, flat csv files imported into your database with new points values, etc.
   7. Block Adjustments: When a customer’s points have a negative value, Alpine IQ deploys a ‘block adjustment’ to automatically adjust that user’s points back to 0. This is to protect you and your end consumers from a negative customer experience. You may turn off Block Adjustments by asking your account rep.
      1. Reasons Block Adjustments may occur:
         1. Bad merges resulting in a redemption made on an account that does not have the requisite number of points after the bad merge was corrected.
         2. Negative points adjustment by staff member or audience multiplier
         3. Changes to point accrual / point expiration settings which recalculates all historically accrued points for members. This causes some users to show that they accrued fewer points despite already having redeemed the requisite points before the point accrual logic was changed (example below)
      2. Example:  A clerk enters dummy information which causes two different members to incorrectly merge into one account. Persona 1 had 100 points, Persona 2 had no points, so the merged Persona resulted in 100 points. While this ‘merged Persona’ existed, Persona 2 redeemed the 100 points. Later, when the ‘merged persona’ is unmerged, Persona 2 now has “-100” as they redeemed a “100 point discount” without having the requisite number of points. A block adjustment would be applied here to get the member back to 0.
      3. Example: The original point accrual ratio is 100 points for every $1 spent and was live for 6 months. After 6 months of implementation, the point accrual ratio is changed to 1 point for every $1 spent. Upon changing the point accrual start date, all historically accrued points are re-accrued under the new point accrual ratio. This means members no longer had the requisite number of points to make the redemptions that already occurred. This would push them into the negatives. A block adjustment would be applied here to get the member back to 0.
2. How do I verify the report?
   1. If you are on a supported point of sale that sends Alpine IQ transaction ID’s, you may also access the discounts and the transactions they were applied to via API (). Additional documentation.
   2. If you are on a supported point of sale that DOES NOT send Alpine IQ transaction ID’s, or you leverage “Groupon style” redemption methodologies (i.e: Customer shows clerk discount and redeems via phone and not directly on the POS from a > Tier 3 POS) then you will not be able to tie redemption’s to exact sales within AIQ.
      1. Rather you would need to pull discount usage from your POS reporting directly and match it to UTC timestamps from redemption’s that occurred with your Alpine IQ ledger. This can be done by pulling redemption’s in our dashboard or via a downloadable CSV on the “Data analytics -> Member club (Tab in the report)”.
3. Why do some Personas have negative point balances?
   1. This is a bug that is being corrected and should not occur in future reporting
4. How are the columns in the report calculated?
   1. starting_points: any event prior to the start date of the report is put here
   2. legacy_points: legacy point values (raw file import, pos import)
   3. points_earned: from sales/collectibles/visits
   4. points_boosted: from boosts/multipliers/referral sales
   5. points_adjusted: manual adjustments
   6. points_redeemed: redemptions
   7. points_expired: any points that have expired.
   8. points_net: legacy+accrued+boosted+adjusted-redeemed-expired
   9. points_start: points_net+starting_points
   10. starting_points: any event prior to the start date of the report is put here
   11. legacy_points: legacy point values (raw file import, pos import)
   12. points_earned: from sales/collectibles/visits
   13. points_boosted: from boosts/multipliers/referral sales
   14. points_adjusted: manual adjustments
   15. points_redeemed: redemptions
   16. points_expired: any points that have expired.
   17. points_net: legacy+accrued+boosted+adjusted-redeemed-expired
   18. points_start: points_net+starting_points
5. How do I understand my Report URL?
   1. Example URL:
      1. https://lab.alpineiq.com/public/emailReports/1005-1005-2022-07-31-2022-08-30-rd.cs
      2. https://lab.alpineiq.com/public/emailReports/[Account Id]-[Account ID]-[Date Range]-[Date Range]-[report type]
6. What are merges?
   1. How do they occur?
      1. The Default Alpine IQ Merge logic merges Alpine IQ Personas that have the same phone number OR the same email on both Alpine IQ Personas.
         – https://support.alpineiq.com/how-customer-duplicate-merges-work
   2. Why do they occur?
      1. Merges occur due to Alpine IQ receiving multiple records of the same customer profile. Multiple AIQ Personas can result from multiple profiles being derived from various integrations (POS vs E-Comm, etc.) in addition to duplicate customer profiles being created from the same integration (multiple POS profiles, etc.)
   3. Why are merges important?
      1. Alpine IQ’s original goal was to act as the source of truth by providing you with meaningful data acquired from multiple tech platforms. In order for this data to be meaningful, it must be de-duplicated. In other words, your data must be clean and not redundant. This is accomplished via Alpine IQ’s merges. This way, you know you are looking at meaningful and valuable data.
      2. Merges also play an important role in loyalty programs as merges will change a Persona’s loyalty status and allow that customer to become a loyalty member and accrue points. Merges also make sure every loyalty customer is receiving ALL of their points, even if some points were accrued on another POS customer profile.
   4. How do merges impact reporting?
      1. Negative Point Balances
      2. Changes in point balances
      3. Changes in data allocation (fav store associated with points activity)
         1. De-duplication of contact records can cause shifts in store by store liability. If a customer’s favorite store changes, the liability can be shifted to the new store. You can see edge case scenarios related to contact record CDP/ CRM operations via this article.
   5. What are bad merges?
      1. Bad merges are defined as ‘Alpine IQ merges that occurred for two unrelated or individual Personas’. In other words, a merge in customer profiles occurred that should not have occurred.
   6. How do bad merges occur?
      1. Under AIQ default merging Logic, bad merges occur due to a phone number or email being associated with more than one individual account.
      2. Situations to avoid and common reasons why a phone or email would be incorrectly associated on more than one:
         1. The clerk is entering in ‘Dummy Contact Information’: instead of the clerk entering the correct contact info, or maybe to satisfy a customer that does not want to provide the required contact info, the clerk enters in a filler ‘dummy email’ or ‘dummy phone number’ that they use across multiple customer profiles (in POS, AIQ, or otherwise). Even though these customers are unique and unrelated to each other, they will all be merged together as they share the same email or phone number.
            1. NOTE- this can negatively impact customer experience as well as point balances and loyalty access will change as a result of merges. Entering in ‘dummy information’ is STRONGLY discouraged
         2. A couple uses the same contact info for individual loyalty accounts: Couples should be discouraged from using the same (home) phone number or email for their loyalty accounts unless they would like to share one account between the two of them.
   7. Can I change my merging logic?
      1. Under the Advanced section of Loyalty Settings, you can change the logic so that merges only occur if the [first + last name] match and [date of birth] match. Therefore merges are independent of phone numbers or emails collected.
      2. Please reach out to your CSM to discuss important edge cases in doing so:
         1. Promotes inaccurate data collection: With less motivation to collect accurate phone and emails, it is likely that messy / inaccurate data will be collected at a higher prevalence. This means marketing opt-ins and communications will likely be impacted if we are consistently collecting invalid phones / emails that cannot be leveraged for marketing opportunities.
         2. It is possible, while unlikely, for someone to have the same [first + last name] and [birthdate] as another Persona and therefore could be merged incorrectly despite following the implemented merging logic. 
   8. What is Purchase Protection?
      1. Purchase protection is the act of resetting the number of days before points expire, as long as the customer remains an active by purchasing as a member during your expiration window. Alpine IQ enforces this methodology to avoid mass support and customer backlash for all redemption types on the platform and in the future of loyalty.
         1. Example: Points expire 30 days after the customer’s last purchase.
         2. Purchase protection for non FIFO based programs should be implemented to achieve high CLTV outputs from loyalty programs. 
      2. FIFO (First-In-First-Out) reporting can be outdated for more modern programs running than programs with points purchase protection. You should also not use FIFO when members can choose individual points to redeem from a specific order or for programs whose points expiration can vary by point (gifted, manually adjusted, multiplied points during time windows only for specific audience members, etc.
   9. How do I run Breakage Estimates with Purchase Protection?
      1. Breakage estimates should allocate your redemption’s to points earned. When customers deplete their points for redemption, costs should be allocated to specific point earnings.
         1. Your main concern is around breakage balancing member loyalty and growing revenue and therefore estimating the percentage of open points that will never be redeemed. 
         2. Liability = open points x (1-% breakage) x the projected cost of each point that is redeemed. This is a constantly updating calculation in quarterly financials. 
         3. If your breakage forecasted is high then deferred revenue will be too low, requiring a material increase in program liability while the opposite will result in trapped revenue.
         4.  Alternatively some programs will be projected using Fair-Value-Per-Point estimates in order to discover deferred revenue. This is also a dynamic estimate that changes based on tier/ reward levels available to members at any given time, currency exchange rate, inflation.
      2. Points earned should be placed in deferred revenue based on the value cost of the points with breakage used to calculate it. Redeemed points should be recognized as new rev which lowers your deferred liability. Points that expired wouldn’t be adjusted unless your deferred revenue incorporates point expiration estimates

DO NOT USE: Audience Points Reports

Audience Points Reports show Personas who are currently in the audience at the time the report is run, regardless of the date range ran. This means the Audience Points Report will retroactively change as merges occur.

 The logic reflected in the Audience Points Report reflects the current logic in the account and does NOT reflect the logic in the account for the time frame in question. This means if the same, historical Audience Points Report is generated multiple times, the reports  will vary over time and have a variable outstanding point balances as logic in your account changes.

Because Audience Points Reports will inherently change over time, they are considered dynamic and should NOT be used to determine the financial liability from outstanding loyalty points .

Examples of Changes in Historical Audience Points Reports (and why they should NOT be utilized):

1. Change in Expiration Logic
   1. Loyalty Program begins Jan 1, 2022
   2. Expiration Logic is Changed on June 1, 2022 and applied retroactively
   3. However, from Jan 1 2022 through May 31st, 2022, that expiration logic was not implemented. Therefore, actual financial liability of usable loyalty points during Jan 1 2022 through May 31st, 2022 should NOT incorporate expiration logic as that logic did not exist at that time.
   4. However, Audience Points Report WILL incorporate the expiration logic from Jan 1 2022 through May 31st, 2022 as Audience Points Reports utilize the EXISTING logic for the historical timeframe and NOT the historical logic when reporting on the historical timeframe.
2. Merges
   1. In August 2022, I was incorrectly merged with an unrelated Persona as the clerk was using Dummy Contact Information when collecting contact information at check out. This resulted in me having 300 points for August 2022.
   2. However, in October, it was discovered that I incorrectly was merged with another unrelated individual. So, in October 2022 I was unmerged resulting in me having a remaining point balance of 200 points (as 100 points were a result of the ‘bad merge’ and were therefore removed once the bad merge was corrected).
   3. If the August 2022 report is regenerated after October 2022, my outstanding point balance will reflect my ‘un merged’ account with 200 points instead of the ‘merged account’ with 300 points that was seen the first time the report was generated. This would cause variable financial liability as a result of the variable outstanding point balances seen within the same report, generated at different times (pre Aug 202 VS post Oct 2022).

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Starting March 1st, 2022, some carriers will begin releasing heavier restrictions and fees. As a part of this rollout, Alpine IQ will now provide the ability for you to turn on T-Mobile/ Sprint at your leisure via the left navigation menu -> Configure Alpine IQ -> SMS Defaults. Please understand the associated risks and fees outlined below. It is important to note that although certain fines have been publicly marketed by carriers, Alpine IQ and it’s vendors for facilitating the sending of text campaigns have not had a single non-compliance fine or even warning. Given that these were enabled last year, we feel confident that you can explore leveraging these carriers.

10DLC Registration Fees

10DLC Carrier Fees

T-Mobile and AT&T have notified customers of increasing fees for traffic from phone numbers not registered for 10DLC, effective March 1, 2022.

T-Mobile Non-Recurring 10DLC Messaging Fees

T-Mobile 10DLC Non-Compliance Fees
Please note that Alpine IQ and it’s telecom providers have not received a single warning or fine in the history of these non-compliance fees being in existence.

Small Business Low Volume 10DLC Campaign Type Fees

This is a special campaign type that can be used by any small business with low volume needs. (Daily volume less than 2,000 messages). If this campaign type is applicable to your organization, we recommend that you use this. For this campaign, the registration fees noted above do not apply.

Update: November 16th, 2021

T-Mobile has expanded on their fee structure for unregistered traffic. Unregistered traffic starting January 1st, 2022 will be charged $10 per message. Using 10DLC program evasion tactics (snowshoeing, dynamic routing, or non-approved number replacement will incur a $1,000 per violation fee.

UPDATE: September 29, 2021

Censorship change notification:
T-Mobile recently announced that they will be making changes to un-registered text message traffic starting October 1st 2021. “Registration” previously was not required by T-Mobile in order to send messages. Going forward all traffic will need to be registered in order to avoid massive fines levied by the carrier. Federally scheduling of highly regulated markets has prevented you from registering for their new program.

What options were on the table:

Alpine IQ has aggressively fought the T-Mobile stance related to highly regulated markets and awaited feedback from T-Mobile before choosing alternative routes for our clients. We have obtained feedback from many of you and have decided that effective October 1st, all T-Mobile text messaging will be suspended until further notice.

UPDATE: April 2, 2021

In this article we hope to identify, explain, and address the most common questions related to 10DLC updates and carrier filtration in highly regulated markets. This is extremely important to the success of your business as it relates to text messaging as a marketing channel. At the end of the article we will tell you how we are moving forward to protect you, why we chose the path we did, and how it affects your return on investment for these campaigns.

Definitions/ terminology used in this article:
– A2P = Application-to-Person. Meaning a technology-driven message vs a person-to-person message.
– 10DLC 10-digit long code = A normal phone number, not tollfree and not a shortcode.
– AIQ = Alpine IQ

Carriers are updating their systems to provide better delivery quality and lower filtering risk for certain companies/ purposes. The reality is that this is most likely to pick and choose who is allowed to send messages over their networks. These updates will launch both for AT&T and T-Mobile in 2021 and AT&T requires a business or technology service register and pass a manual audit process to get approved. Smaller networks and aggregators such as Google Fi/ MVNO‘s are also affected if they are running on AT&T infrastructure.

So why does this matter?
Simply put, highly regulated companies are strictly forbidden from registering for approval and risk higher filtration rates or complete shutdown of SMS/ MMS messaging services starting June 1st. The reality is that the carriers have not voiced which of the two is likely to occur but slower delivery times is likely. As crazy as it is… they are letting payday loans and liquor register but not other highly regulated markets. Unfortunately, they are on the wrong side of history and it won’t change until federal legalization (Telus in Canada continues to be an issue even post-legalization).

Last week, Twilio banned over 100 highly regulated vendors/ brand accounts with less than 24 hours notice! Luckily Alpine IQ was not leveraging Twilio for messages at this time. Many of the largest SMS users/ tech platforms in the space were on this list and experienced rapid engineering sprints to recover.

Verizon launched its own 10DLC filtration system in 2019. Although its changes have not had much of an effect on highly regulated markets, they do tend to be one of the harder carriers to deliver highly regulated messages on and their filtration tactics have escalated in 2021. Telus in Canada has also leaned towards an anti-highly regulated market/ anti promotional approach regardless of the upcoming 10DLC changes.

What do I need to do IF I want to keep attempting to send highly regulated content? (See further down in this article for how to send whatever you want without losing your messages to filtration)

• Do not include highly regulated terms in your AIQ account brand name. I.E: “GreenAlpine” etc. This will prevent blocked terms from appearing on consumer-facing pages that can be audited by carriers when sending messages.

• Personalize your message with Alpine IQ macros as much as possible. This helps prevent spam flags because carriers can’t catch on to duplicate mass messages as easily.
  
• Do not send highly regulated terms within your SMS messages. Carriers are also much smarter with filtration and can easily find tricky alternatives such as (“S.AT..IVA” or weights “2(g)”). Avoid all mentions of weights, products, brands, categories, or word such as “reward”, “promotion”, “BOGO”, etc. When you create new campaigns in Alpine IQ, our system automatically will recognize and notify you that you are violating highly regulated markets promotional guidelines. This blacklist is updated often but it is important that you understand that you should avoid any terminology that a physical auditor at a carrier could consider highly regulated related will get flagged.
  
  Every time you send a message and you violate keyword/ content restrictions, carriers will flag the phone number, root domain for links shortened, server address of landing pages, etc. From this point onward, most of those assets will be useless/ blocked by carriers from further sends until replaced.
  
  NOTE: For Telus in Canada, please refrain from content restrictions common elsewhere in the world. They do not treat Canada differently due to it’s federal highly regulated status.
  
  To combat this, AIQ automatically rotates and isolates those resources within a private pool assigned to each client. This is why some users report delivery issues while other users can send millions of messages without issue. If you abuse content guidelines, your entire network of assets for sending will need to be replaced. Again, this auto-rotation happens by default within AIQ but charges are incurred for repeated abuse. Heavy violators can run through these assets as much as 3 times per day.

Why is it that e-commerce companies can deliver order confirmation messages, receipts, delivery/ pickup notifications but I can’t?

Notification messages are one-off sends that do not have any highly regulated related content in them:

• “Your order has been placed, click here to check the status so you can pick it up at the store: LINK”
• “Your order is ready for pickup”
  etc…
  
  These also have been known to be difficult to send in highly regulated markets and every major vendor has experienced filtration. However, these DO NOT have anywhere near the same carrier filtration patterns as they have variant time delays between sends, no highly regulated content within the message itself (sometimes only behind landing page URLs), and they also fall under separate TCPA restrictions related to opt-in consent. Again, carriers are trying to get rid of promotional messaging containing highly regulated terms and media files.

Highly regulated markets is an ever-changing landscape and Alpine IQ is dedicated to helping you achieve your most important work. We understand that changes to your SMS infrastructure can affect in-store revenue heavily and it’s important that our systems consistently deliver messages on your behalf. There are many ways to combat carrier filtration and we have tested every combination of them you could possibly imagine.

Here are just a few examples and the pros/cons to each:

• Send SMS without removing highly regulated terms and references
  Highest chance of filtration. Avoid this at all costs.
  
• Send nothing that violates guidelines in the text but instead send an MMS media file (PDF or IMG commonly) containing terms/ promos
  Carriers have been known to use image recognition software to detect text/ keywords and highly regulated products within images
  
• Send links through systems like Bitly that redirect to landing pages
  If you use a standard link shortening tool such as Bitly/ Rebrandly/ TinyURL, you run a severe risk of messages being undelivered. These are highly abused systems even outside of highly regulated markets and should be avoided at all costs. AIQ maintains your own link shortener private to your brands account that has highly regulated markets specific avoidance protections built into it.
  
• Send links to landing pages with highly regulated domains (Meta information, text on page, resources easily picked up with programmatic scanning of source code)
  Carriers will audit your page and easily can scan the meta information and text of your website to determine if you are a highly regulated brand. This same technology is commonly used by search engines and payment processing onboarding audit software packages.
  
• Auto rotate link shortening domains, servers, dedicated IP addresses.
  This works well but can prove to be expensive and failure rates increase if this pool is not dedicated to each individual brand. If someone else on the platform you use violates content guidelines, your messages could be affected at the same time. This is why AIQ doesn’t share your assets with other clients on the system. Even with all of this, you must still have a “captcha”, “Are you a robot”, “age gate”, “pin code” request in order to access the landing page on the other side of a link.
  
  Note: Alpine IQ will enforce a one click redirect “Are you a robot” until we see any reason to escalate this walled garden to something more severe. You can customize this message to create an age gate or pin code flow for further protection.
  
• Send links that lead to a landing page where the customer inserts a pin code that they previously setup. If they forget the code, they need to remember a keyword they can text to obtain it or they need to go online to reset it. After entering in their pin they are redirected to a landing page. This prevents the carrier from manually auditing a message and getting to the final landing page where highly regulated terminology is present
  This is not a terrible solution but it does decrease conversion rates due to customers having to remember pin codes vs simply clicking a button.

After extensive testing, Alpine IQ has decided to move forward with a new strategy to protect you from the massive resource burden it takes to create, submit, audit, revise and send messages all while following carrier guidelines. This cycle is extremely cumbersome and at the end of the day you just want to communicate with your customers without losing ROI.

FINALLY! Is SMS still a viable channel? What is Alpine IQ implementing to keep me competitive?

Absolutely SMS is a viable channel. We will continue to be as transparent as possible as carriers roll out and enforce content restrictions using new technologies. At this time, SMS is one of the most effective ways to get the attention of customers and direct it into sales both online and in-store. We are playing a short-term game to protect the voices of highly regulated operators from being silenced while awaiting an imminent federal legalization ruling in the USA.

We must all band together to achieve what we know to be right for highly regulated markets. As June 1st approaches, we will have you more than prepared to achieve the same ROI out of the AIQ platform as you do today. We wish we could share some of the amazing technology innovations we have in the works, but for now, we must put our heads down and prepare together.

Alpine IQ will automatically be switching all messages to use the highest performing strategy. You do not need to do anything for this flow to be in full effect.

As of April 6th, 2021 we will be switching all Alpine IQ customers to the following user flow/ strategy for text messaging:

If you wish to utilize texting as it was before this change, you can simply request that your account rep revert your account and you can proceed at your own risk.

1. You will create an SMS/ MMS message as you normally would
   
2. You will notice when creating messages that the preview will always show something along the lines of “You have a new {{Your Brand Name}} notification: {{Link to landing page}}”

3. When clicking on the URL you are directed to a landing page that regenerates your message in a formatted exactly for the device it’s being shown on. The example below is short but you may create longer more customized messages with multiple line breaks, emojies, macros, etc.

There are a ton of amazing benefits with this strategy and after a deep financial/ performance analysis found that it actually works heavily in your favor:

• You will only ever send 1 SMS segment at a time… saving you a ton! Being that your message body is on a landing page hosted in your own private ecosystem, Alpine IQ only needs to send the message notification + link. No (“2 credits” or the higher rates MMS costs)
  
• You can say and post practically anything you deem reasonable without worrying about keywords or ridiculous content variations. Alpine IQ personalization macros still operate the same. So does our click tracking, identity resolution, and conversion analytics!
  
• Being that your message is now on a landing page, the length of your message can be extremely long, contain emojis, MMS media, and more without paying for extra message “credits/ segments” or 2x spend on MMR. Alpine IQ is not an SMS-only company/ product. Therefore, our motivation is purely to help you succeed. We do not need to shove bulk SMS down your throat in pitches or skate around the truth to keep our ship afloat. We are a data company at heart and texting is one channel we became experts on.

How much are these SMS changes going to cost me from an ROI perspective?

At the end of the day we believe this is actually a positive shift for the highly regulated industry. Although it seems like you won’t get as many people engaged because messages will be behind a link, this is not the truth and our data proves it. As the only true CRM/ data lake/ data analytics company in highly regulated markets that also touches SMS, you can sleep easy knowing we did our math.

• From an optics perspective you will be functioning similar to non-highly regulated businesses. SMS notifications with attached links to read secure messages are actually very common… i.e (Uber, Amazon, Redirects into native apps, etc.)

• Click through rate will drop by only 2-3 contacts avg per 100 that normally would have engaged. Those that don’t engage generally wouldn’t have converted regardless when performing exposed vs control tests. Meaning those that were too busy to engage with your text anyways, will simply be less annoyed that they have to hide a highly regulated related message that pops up on their phone to be read aloud by google home or siri driving in the car with family. You are actually being less intrusive.
  
• Revenue for in-store traffic essentially stays the same with an avg 11% CVR and avg. revenue generated per send of $6-$8!

• This strategy also saves you capital by alleviating the workforce burden required to write/prep/ send text campaigns the old way

Should I also implement strategies using my Alpine IQ account to get a leg up on possible future filtration until federal legalization?

Yes! We have many messaging channels and partners within the Alpine IQ marketplace. Over 60% of our clients don’t even leverage blast SMS campaigns. Top tips:

• Collect email both within your POS systems and in your loyalty/ member club signup forms/ website forms etc.
  If you didn’t know, Alpine IQ automatically will send an email to a persona on file if they request a link to their wallet app or for post-order messages that notify them with wallet links/ points updates. This is to ensure that the customer has no interruption in their customer experience due to a carrier.
  
• Continue to use the Alpine IQ default SMS flow for delivery. This includes private network rotation for IP, server, link shorteners, captcha walled garden, and our automated message landing page generator.
  
• Communicate with your AIQ rep if you experience heavy filtration issues and they can assist in helping you uncover solutions.

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To continue empowering our customers, we’re serving up a new integration with Tattle…and yes – we promise they’ve been up to all good. Our powerful partnership with Tattle gives companies a second (and sometimes a third) chance to win over their customers. 

Alpine IQ + Tattle Integration:

     This integration will improve our partners’ customer experience by seamlessly uncovering vital operational improvements through post-purchase surveys. The days of being blindsided by customer angst is over. All customers who purchase from participating retailers will be sent a link to an automated survey via SMS or email, pre-installed with their unique transaction data such as the location of order, timing, ordering channel, and more.

Upon receiving the survey, the customer will be able to share their experience in a quantifiable way. There are two customer flows: 

1. Advocate’s Journey 

If the customer experience is superb, the customer will be prompted to share compelling feedback on owned brand channels such as Google properties in order to boost SEO and foot traffic. 

2. Redemption Journey 

If the customer has any complaints, they will be given the opportunity to provide feedback through the survey. The results of the survey will be available to your team in Alpine within the analytics section. 

The core benefits of the integration include: 

• Survey platform to collect guest feedback data after purchases.
• Leverage improvement opportunities managers can understand/ implement directly within Alpine IQ reports.
• Protect your business’ reputation. 
• Trigger marketing outreach for customers with specific customer experience scores.
• Use Alpine IQ SMS to obtain higher survey open rates.

Finally, there’s an acceptable reason to Tattle! 

To learn how survey technology can transform your business, schedule a complimentary call with a member from our team here.

 To get the latest updates on our suite of services, make sure to subscribe to our blog today!