Why NFTs are well suited for brand loyalty

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are very powerful instruments to enable brand loyalty.

The Starbucks Odyssey program is a great example of how NFTs can be put to use to reward users, engage them and build a community around the brand.

Traditional Loyalty programs

First, let's look at the issues with traditional loyalty programs.

1. They usually only recognize purchases, while not giving credit for other forms of engagement that also add value to the brand.

2. The rewards are redeemable only with the same brand, so if customers do not visit often enough, they forget about the loyalty and do not get any benefits

The properties of NFT digital tokens

NFTs are digital tokens with these properties:

Verifiability:

They sit on a public blockchain, and can be verified. This mitigates fraud, and also allows the rewards to be channeled to the right people who have "proven" to add maximum benefit for the brand.

A customer can earn tiers of NFTs based on their engagement, with different levels of perks for each tier. For example, discounts for the lowest tier, co-creation opportunities for the next, and exclusive inner circle events for the highest tier,

Composability:

a. Possibility for a customer to earn rewards from two parties without any integrations. For example, earn coffee from one brand and a ticket to a book reading from an author at the same time.

b. Ability for partners to create cross-sell opportunities by promoting each other. For eg. if you earn an NFT from a brand and another NFT from a game, you might get more rewards than you would get individually

Reverse cookies:

Customer preferences and activities can be summarized as metadata within the NFT, and shared by the user selectively to get rewards from a brand. This puts the power back into the consumer's hand, while creating data privacy, but still leveraging data for the customer to get personalized rewards from a brand.

For more insights, see our podcast episode Is Brand Loyalty outdated?

About us:

Unthink is a decentralized creator commerce platform with two parts: a) A set of AI powered tools to create quick, personalized e-commerce content , and b) Tools like NFTs that can be created by brands or creators to grow a loyal community.