Templates
RFP template
For a programme owner or procurement lead who must compare loyalty platform vendors on the same basis. You will have a ready to issue RFP with scored sections, technical and commercial requirements, and a vendor response format that makes shortlisting possible in a week.
How to use it
Start this after the budget owner has approved the programme, before any vendor demonstrations. The procurement lead fills sections one to eight with the programme owner. The programme owner signs off section one and section eight. A legal reviewer signs off section six. Expect two half days to complete the first draft, plus one day for vendor questions to be incorporated.
What goes in each section
Programme objective and primary metric
Write one sentence naming the programme and one metric you will track weekly. Illustrative label: 'Increase repeat purchases among active members from 22 to 30 percent in 12 months.' A good answer names a behaviour change, not 'improve loyalty'.
Customer segments and access channels
List the two to five segments you will invite, with the channel each segment already uses. Illustrative label: 'App users with 4 plus monthly sessions, email, in store POS.' A weak answer says 'all customers'.
Functional requirements
Specify the member journeys the vendor must support, such as earn, redeem, tier, birthday reward, and referral. Illustrative label: 'Points accrue with each dollar spent online or in store, redeem at 100 points equals one dollar.' Write each as a testable sentence.
Technical and integration requirements
Name the systems the vendor must connect to, the direction of data flow, and the expected call volume per day. Illustrative label: 'Nightly batch from ecommerce order table to loyalty API, 3,000 records average.' Avoid asking for 'seamless integration'.
Data governance and security
State who owns member data, where it may be stored, and which standard the vendor must pass. Illustrative label: 'Data owner is the programme owner, EU hosting only, ISO 27001 certificate current.'
Commercial model and pricing table
Require the vendor to price per active member, per transaction, and implementation separately. Illustrative label: '1.20 dollars per active member per year, 0.05 dollars per points transaction, 40,000 dollars implementation.'
Implementation and support
Ask for a named launch timeline with three milestones and a support response time. Illustrative label: 'Go live within 90 days; P1 incident response within one hour, 24 hours a day.'
Vendor eligibility and references
Require two reference clients from the same sector and a stated number of live programmes. Illustrative label: 'Two grocery or retail references with at least one million members each.' This filters out vendors who have never run your type of programme.
Evaluation scoring model
Show how you will score each section and the minimum pass per section. Illustrative label: 'Functional requirements 40 points, minimum 28; commercial 20 points, minimum 12.' This makes the decision defensible.
What to watch for
The skipped question is usually the primary metric. If it is not specified as a number and a date, vendors will answer in features and the evaluation becomes a beauty contest.
The always wrong answer is 'all customers' in the segments section. A loyalty programme cannot serve everyone at once; that answer means the team has not decided what behaviour it pays for.
The section copied from a vendor is often the functional requirements list. Rewrite every requirement as a testable sentence with a yes or no answer, otherwise you will score vendor brochures.