What is ‘Confrere Analysis’? And Why is it an Effective Way to
Measure Loyalty Program Success?

By Dr. David Cox

There has been a lot of debate in recent months about the most effective metrics to use when assessing the performance of a loyalty or incentive program.

Indeed there are a number of descriptive statistics that are clustered around the following:

• Enrolment Rates

• Communication call to action rates

• Participant referral

• Revenue increases

• Participant Campaign Engagement

• Share of wallet percentage

• Point accrual rates

• Redemption rates

• Customer Lifetime Value

• Recency Frequency and Monetary Value (RFM)

• Positive Social media activity

• Didactic ties in network analysis

All of these metrics are very effective in measuring and assessing existing loyalty and incentive programs and providing an enlightened picture as to the performance year on year of program participants.

The real effect of the power of loyalty and incentive program

To see the real effect of the power of loyalty and incentive program it is also recommended to use Confrere Analysis.

Confrere Analysis focuses on non-program participants and compares them to those who are enrolled in the program. Confrere Analysis originated from medical research where the effectiveness of a new drug compared those who are on the medication to those on a placebo. Thus in loyalty and incentive programs we can really assess the true motivational and loyalty effect of your program by comparing those who are participating versus those who are not.

The key criteria to conducting effective Confrere Analysis is to ensure that similar segment profiles are used in the analysis. In other words we need to compare same size firms in similar locations (to ensure that we correct for other possible variables that could impact on the analysis).

This is easier to achieve in B2B loyalty and incentive programs as there are customers that do not participate due to a variety of reasons (company policy, existing structured firm level rebate contracts etc). In many cases we are able to obtain data from both similar profile participants and non-participants across the following metrics:

• Firm Revenue

• Product mix

• Social media activity

• Customer Service satisfaction

• RFM

• Communication call to actions

• Company education and certification levels

Confrere Analysis often reveals much greater insights into the positive impact that loyalty and incentive programs have on the business and can provide additional guidance as to how the business would perform in the absence of such a program (a common question asked by both CEO’s and finance divisions).

Used in conjunction with other metrics, Confrere Analysis provides additional clarity as to how the loyalty and incentive strategy is driving growth (or not) in your business.