Introduction and Overview of Ecommerce Integration

As a Clutch Partner, it’s important to understand the breadth of the platform so that you can make the best decisions on how to deliver this functionality through your eCommerce platform.

Knowing the full spectrum of functionality that Clutch can provide makes it easy to understand how crucial the eCommerce website is relative to collecting data, understanding customers in real time, and providing ability to interact with customers in relation to Loyalty and Stored Value needs and transactions.

In the following overview sections you’ll be able to get a good understanding of all that Clutch has to offer as well as how it typically interacts with various systems within the client’s ecosystem.

What is Clutch

Clutch is a powerful marketing platform that allows brands to understand and identify their customers, as well as engage and interact with them through all channels of activity.

The key functionalities Clutch delivers to a brand include:

• Loyalty/Rewards Program administration and automation.
• Customer (members and non-members) and transaction data consolidation.
• Consolidated 360° Customer Profiles and information that can be leveraged both by marketers, as well as in-store associates.
• Reporting and Analytics including customer activity, campaign performance, and commerce.
• Customer Segmentation on all facets of the customer profile, for use in marketing, campaigns, and research.
• Triggered, Automated Campaign Creation and Management based on customer activity for both Members (typically of a Loyalty or Rewards program) and Identified Non-Members (customers who are not formally enrolled in a Loyalty or Rewards program, but can have their purchase activity tracked from transaction to transaction).
• Communications Suite – Scheduled marketing for members and non-members through any of the communications channels Clutch supports which include email, SMS, direct mail, and API.
• Gift, Stored Value, Merchandise Credit, and Promotional Cash

To make your integration as successful as possible it’s important to know the full product suite outlined above. It’s also very useful for you to know, should you be speaking with clients, the full range of functionality Clutch can easily support with a certified integration.

What Sets Us Apart

In some ways integrating Clutch is not unlike other integrations with Loyalty and Gift/Stored Value providers, but there are some key differentiators in what we do that are important to understand. These differentiators manifest themselves in unique requirements for the eCommerce platform, so we’ll outline them here:

• Deep Understanding of Customer Activity
  Because much of the intelligence and automation in the Clutch platform is triggered on a particular customer’s activity, it’s important that we have detailed transaction information including where the purchase occurred, how much was spent, and what the items purchased were. We take this and consolidate purchase and non-purchase activity such as site visits, product reviews, cart adds, as well as outbound communication related activity to provide a robust understanding of every customer.
• Unique Real Time Incentives & Rewards
  Like most other loyalty providers, Clutch is able to track activity, enable customers to earn points/punches/cashback/etc, and keep track of those balances. Unlike most other loyalty providers, Clutch also provides the ability to provide real-time incentives and discounts based on what a particular customer is purchasing at a given time. This requires the website to make API calls to Clutch as a customer’s cart is being created to find out if that customer qualifies for any personalized and targeted promotions.
• Reporting & Analytics
  Because Clutch makes understanding every customer a priority, we’re able to provide brands with best in class tools to segment customers, compare member to non-member behavior, generate customer scores, and track milestones and achievements. As one of the key inputs of customer data collection, the eCommerce website is responsible for sending all transactions to Clutch, as well as detailed information on identified and member transactions.

Overall Data Flow

The diagram below outlines the overall data flow in a typical eCommerce integration, and how it fits in with other elements in a client’s overall platform. The key takeaways here are that any number of input sources feed transaction, customer, and event data to Clutch. The Clutch processing engine then normalizes that data, runs any logic and campaigns, and provides updated information back to various applications. In this flow, the ecommerce site is feeding information real time to Clutch, and also receiving real time customer, balance, and campaign action data back from Clutch.

The Importance of the eCommerce Site

When thinking about the eCommerce integration there are a few key areas that should be considered and accounted for. Compared with other touch points in the overall Clutch integration, the eCommerce site plays important roles in collecting data, processing transactions, enrolling customers, as well as providing the most accessible way for customers to get account information including checking reward balances, history, and program information. In quick summary, here are the key roles the eCommerce platform plays within the Clutch integration:

1. Transaction Processing (both members and non-members)
2. Enrollment
3. Rewards Account Access
4. Reward and Stored Value Redemption
5. Stored Value (Gift) Card Sales – Both physical and e-delivery
6. Customer Event Processing (visits, reviews, etc)