Overview of Promotion Types

To set up loyalty promotions, you must be either a Loyalty Program Administrator or a Loyalty Program Manager. There are two main types of loyalty promotions:

Reward Promotions. These promotions give members opportunities to earn points that they can exchange for products or services or to earn other rewards. For example, the promotion might allow them to earn extra frequent-flyer miles. You can optionally specify a future accrual date for points, which is useful when products are returnable or a flight must be taken first.
Redemption Promotions. These promotions execute when members redeem points for rewards. They reduce the member's available point balance and provide the member with some reward.

There are a number of different types of reward promotions. Some common types are:

Simple Promotions. These promotions reward members for a single purchase.

For example, if they fly from SFO to LAX in August 2013, then they earn 1000 bonus points if they're a Platinum member or 500 bonus points if they're not a Platinum member.
Frequency Promotions. These promotions reward members for multiple purchases of the same type.

For example, if they fly from SFO to LAX in August 2013 three times, then they earn 3000 bonus points, if they fly four or five times, then they earn 4000 bonus points, or if they fly more than five times, then they earn 5000 bonus points.

Frequency promotions aren't based on transaction processing directly. Let's say you have a transaction that contributes to a points balance crossing a frequency bucket threshold, which results in the member qualifying for a frequency promotion. For example, this frequency promotion rewards the member with 3000 bonus points. If you cancel this qualifying transaction, any rewards or actions, resulting from the frequency promotion, such as the 3000 bonus points in this example, can't be canceled.

Note:
Make sure that the bucket rule applies to the promotion or member attributes and not to the transaction attribute. This rule is applied when a promotion attribute is updated, and it doesn't have the context of the transaction. Any action initiated by the bucket rule isn't displayed in the transaction processing information. If the bucket rule assigns points to a member, then this action is only visible at the member point item level without a transaction reference number.
Complex Promotions. These promotions reward members for multiple purchases of different types. These are often run with partners to encourage members to buy both the company's and the partner's products.

For example, if members stay at a specific hotel and rent a car from a specific car rental company, then they get 5000 bonus points. You can also create base promotions that you can leverage in complex promotions.
Action-Based Bonuses. These promotions reward members for some action other than a purchase.

For example, if members update their member profile, then they receive 500 bonus points, or if they register with your reward program, then they get 2000 bonus points. These points are granted only once.
Partner Promotions. These promotions reward members' activity with partner companies.

For example, an airline has hotel companies as its partners, and it runs a promotion giving bonuses for renting hotel rooms.
Enrollment Promotions. These promotions require members to enroll in the promotion for it to be applied to their transactions. Enrollment promotions let loyalty program managers set up promotions targeted for a specific audience, letting them measure the effectiveness of the promotions at converting incremental sales or change in member behavior independent of coincidental promotion criteria fulfillment.
Order-Based Promotions. These promotions reward members for multiple purchases made in a single order.

For example, if members buy flights and a hotel in the same order, then they receive a 5% discount.
Event Promotions. You create event promotions for use with event-driven rewards.

For example, an event-driven reward can reward members on their birthday or anniversary, to promote emotional loyalty.
Base Promotions. These promotions are designed to simplify the process of setting up complex promotions. They're used to calculate base points, based on any of the transaction attributes, member attributes, promotion attributes and so on. Each program can have only one base promotion. This type of promotion is created, with no rules, as soon as the program is saved. Users can't manually create this promotion, nor can they delete it, but they can add rules to calculate the base points or accrual, based on the transaction attributes.

You can create all of these types of promotions using the same framework of rules, criteria, and actions.