Loyalty programme recommendations

Hey Rosa! I’ve modeled, set up, and launched multiple loyalty programs, and so far Talon.One has been my favorite, mainly because I tend to come up with some bananaland use cases 😅 and Talon has nailed every single thing I’ve needed to build.

At Scooter’s Coffee (coffee chain of about 950+ locations based in the USA, primarily in the midwest), we use Braze for orchestration/messaging and Talon.One as the decisioning + rules engine powering loyalty state and real-time outcomes.

Some examples of how we're using Talon:

-Status tiers (we have three statuses + future-state "hidden" status for the top ~1%) Talon evaluates tier eligibility/state and returns tier-up outcomes + benefits, which we then message and visualize (progress, “you’re X away,” etc.).

-Badges + gamification; We award badges/achievements for behaviors and then award for other things like firsts, streaks, feature adoption, trying new items, social share, IAM mini-games/side quests). Talon determines eligibility and returns the award so we can celebrate instantly via in-app/push.

-For our visit challenges and streak challenges, Talon powers challenge enrollment/progress/completion, and we use it to dynamically populate the active challenge + progress so the experience stays current without a bunch of brittle logic elsewhere.

-Stored value / wallet balances; Because we’re a coffee app and habitual behavior matters, we also use Talon to support dynamic balance experiences; reflecting when a user loads funds, what their available balance is, and when they spend down to zero, so we can trigger the right UX + lifecycle comms at the right moment (low balance, reload nudges, etc)

-We built a fraud layer using Braze canvas that works with our events + Talon rules to help protect reward issuance (flag/block suspicious patterns, enforce visit rules/cooldowns, prevent repeat abuse of high-value rewards). The biggest use case for this was users who were registering repeatedly to get a free welcome drink; we needed a solution that didn't require dev work ASAP and were able to get a robust solution up and running within a week using Braze/T1/Twilio - we have blocked over 1K fraudulent accounts from receiving a free welcome drink now. This is a big one actually - I would really grill the loyalty vendors you are talking to about fraud protection, don't let them downplay its importance, many loyalty providers I've worked with DO NOT have the right security measures in place to protect those recurring freebies (birthday, anni, welcome, etc.) with Braze & Talon there IS DEFINITELY a solution.

Ok so... tradeoff: there’s a learning curve + you want strong event taxonomy / ownership of “source of truth,” but once it’s in place it’s insanely flexible.

HMU if you want to chat more! linkedin.com/in/anne-sc