Editor’s note: True to our role as the Global Voice of Customer Loyalty, The Wise Marketer invests itself to learn what brands are doing to engage customers and build loyalty. We also actively survey solution providers to understand the technology available to bring customer strategy to life. Our Provider Profile series focuses on specific solution providers that build a bridge between strategy and execution.
Tricycle Marketing (TM) recently announced their new President and CEO, Michael Hemsey a well-recognized industry leader. Knowing Michael was stepping into this position, The Wise Marketer wanted to take a closer look at what TM has to offer. We reviewed its InsightsOutward platform and share findings here. To supplement our review, you are welcome to view Tricycle Marketing directly at their website.
SUMMARY OF CAPABILITY — IO RELEASE 6.0
Tricycle Marketing (TM) solves to meet the demands of clients to build on customer relationships, beginning with impressions becoming prospects, to customers becoming loyal members, and through to member endorsement with quality referrals.
The primary focus of this approach is to simplify the effort required by clients to effectively use its marketing platform in its entirety, without the need for agency resources or significant technical costs.
In its latest release (6.0), TM has evolved its InsightsOutward platform to an entirely new level to enable a Loyalty Platform-as-a-Service. This latest release enhances the ability for clients to market to their member and non-member database throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
InsightsOutward enhancements have driven out the typical agency costs associated with full-service marketing and is intended to be a positive disruption to the loyalty marketing and platform industry through a lower cost solution for both implementation and ongoing platform management costs.
TRICYCLE ADVISORY, STUDIOS AND TECHNOLOGY
Michael Hemsey of TM outlined how they collaborate with enterprise and mid-market brands to evolve transactional relationships with prospects, customers, and loyal members of their rewards programs, into more transformational relationships.
He shared that TM’s passion is to “enable clients to deliver to their prospects, customers, and members the ultimate brand experience and that TM and the InsightsOutward platform deliver this in measurable ways by anchoring success to a client’s quantifiable results, derived across the metrics which matter to their brands’ key objectives, goals and bottom line.”
The company organizes around three key areas of delivery:
Tricycle Advisory works with brands to provide thoughtful strategy and insightful metrics and program support as the foundation to campaigns and value propositions, including targeting specific audiences or segments, or across the entire customer lifecycle.
Tricycle Studios works with brands to produce inspired and engaging creative to support their campaigns and value propositions, specific to the audiences they wish to impact, and the channels by which they are most highly engaged.
Tricycle Technology provides its InsightsOutward Loyalty Platform-as-a-Service to manage Loyalty, Rewards and CRM initiatives at scale, without incremental Agency resources, time, or expense. Release 6.0 of the InsightsOutward platform builds upon a suite of Campaign, Currency, Insights and Operational capabilities serving customers, prospects, and partner requirements globally.
PLATFORM — AREAS OF ASSESSMENT
Wise Marketer Research recently assessed the InsightsOutward platform and how it enables strategy and execution for Marketing, Technology and Operational teams. We tested and scored the InsightsOutward platform against requirements and use cases expected in the Retail, Financial Services, eCommerce, and Loyalty industries.
Wise Marketer Research noted key areas of capabilities, highlighted below.
The Insights/Outward platform delivers on the ability for brands to forecast, test, learn, innovate, and implement measurable currency, rewards, and campaign possibilities. The platform provides automated reports and dashboards for the metrics required at the Program, Campaign, Channel and Audience levels, through the following capabilities:
Accounts, Content and Audiences
The platform offers a complete set of configuration options to create personalized loyalty marketing campaigns and drive incremental results from Loyalty, Rewards and CRM programs.
Marketing Campaigns
The platform allows marketers to configure and manage any number of campaigns at whatever cadence required — from test to production — while limiting additional outside Agency resources, cost, or time.
Points & Currencies
The platform provides marketers the ability to mint any type of currency and its associated value, whether it is consumer earning and redemption of loyalty points, digital and print coupons, stored value, gaming badges, or a means of tracking customer sentiment.
Loyalty & Rewards Catalogs
The platform supports multiple loyalty programs and reward catalog and Partner offerings with significant capabilities, and customization for distinctive audiences, multiple channels, as well as various membership tiers.
Inventory Management
The platform offers customizable product and SKU-level campaign capabilities, tailored by channel, by location and by cost, and based on real-time physical and digital inventories.
Refer-a-Friend
The Refer-a-Friend option enables strategies to grow brand databases, increase sales, and drive end-to-end engagement.
IO Services, Object Definitions, API Docs, IO User Guides
The InsightsOutward Loyalty Platform-as-a-Service (LPaaS) includes the complete set of database object definitions and hierarchy, API and Data Factories documents, User Guides and External Services management tools
PLATFORM — POINTS OF DIFFERENTIATION
Interesting points of differentiation were noted in our review of the InsightsOutward Loyalty Platform-as-a-Service, including:
- Strategic capabilities: Support for multiple program strategies and campaign versioning is nearly limitless and can be implemented efficiently, reducing resource costs
- Technology capabilities: Microsoft Azure Cloud as the basis for data access & storage is best in class for security & compliance. Platform is highly configurable, including testing and deployment, enabling speed to market
- Communication capabilities: Platform can support all channels and multiple versions of communication utilizing simple GUI tools
- Implementation and Change Management: Primarily API and fully configurable
- GUI: Multi-lingual, robust and with complete self-service, including testing & validation
- Configuration Support: Both self-serve and managed options available
- Campaign Forecasting: Unique tool using synthetic account and transaction data to test, learn, and forecast in real-time against part or all of a campaign and audience segments to assess business impact prior to promotion
- Campaign Management: Configurable for ease of implementation without coding, including full testing and validation capabilities
- Refer-a-Friend: Applies currency against financial and non-financial transactions, for referrer and referee
- Analytics and Reporting: Data access and reporting is through a simple GUI and is available within minutes of activity
- Languages: Supports multi-lingual requirements
A SUCCESSFUL HISTORY WITH A LOOK TO THE FUTURE
TM has been a marketing and platform technology company for 25 years, with several major platform iterations during that time to support the Medical, Medical Tech, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical brands. TM has at least twice-yearly releases from their product roadmap, including the most recent 6.0 release. TM expanded its platform capabilities to address business, technical, and operational requirements of the Retail, Financial Services, Telecommunications and Entertainment industries, among others.
The Wise Marketer assessment of this latest release included a review of specific customer management and loyalty program management requirements expected from enterprise and mid-market brands across industries. Our assessment also included evaluation against approximately 100 platform Use Cases to validate the 6.0 release, including the enhanced focus on a fully configurable GUI, and campaign forecasting, measurement, and reporting capabilities.
This assessment confirmed Tricycle Marketing and the latest 6.0 release of InsightsOutward met the expectation of a platform that delivers a simplified and fully immersed GUI which resulted in less resource dependence.
The capabilities deliver efficiency for design, implementation, production, and ongoing platform management. Tricycle Marketing and their InsightsOutward platform are well positioned for the future.