Summary

• Members of the Loyalty program create multiple accounts or enroll in the same program twice by mistake and accrue points on both accounts. To avoid this type of scenario, a functionality called Merge is created under the Member Report through which the authorized users can Merge duplicate members together (through either ADR or API) into one account.
• As a result, multiple accounts of the same Loyalty Member can be reduced.
• Merge has been made compatible with Tiers, Action Series, Campaigns, etc., so because of the Merge, the updated Primary Members Tiers might get upgraded or downgraded, and based on their future activities, the updated Primary Members may get eligible for Actions or Action Series or they may be restricted due to various capping or points limits.
  

Advantages of Merge Functionality

Concept of Primary and Secondary Member

1. Primary Member: Post Merge, this Member will be the surviving Member. Therefore, the Merge should be initiated from a Primary Member.
2. Secondary Member: The Member who will be Merged and will be opted out from our Loyalty program. This user will be soft deleted from the system after the Merge process.

Access to Merge Functionality

• There are two ways to execute the Merge Functionality through either ADR or API.
• In ADR, you can either initiate Merge from the Member Report with respect to the Primary Member or you can click on the User Id and go inside the respective Member's member profile and initiate the Merge.

Navigation: Reports > Members Report

• Option 1: Initiation of Merge from the Member Report with respect to the Primary Member

Click on the Merge icon as shown in the below image to initiate the Merge process.

• Option 2 : Initiation of Merge from respective Member’s profile

By clicking User ID, you'll be taken to the Member's profile, where you can start merging the profiles by clicking the Merge icon as shown in the following images:

Process to Merge two Members in the ADR

As part of the Merge process, there are four steps to follow:

STEP 1: Search Member

STEP 2: Member Information

STEP 3: Points Evaluation

STEP 4: Additional Information

STEP 1: Search Member : This step is used to search a Secondary Member which will be Merged into the Primary Member.

• Once you have initiated the Merge then the Primary Member’s related data is displayed. Now you need to search for the Secondary Member which will be Merged with the Primary Member. Click Search Secondary Member and provide the User Id of the Secondary Member as shown in the below image:
  
• Once you have provided the User ID then due to auto search facility all the options related to the User ID provided is displayed. You must select one of the options from the list displayed.
  

Note: In the case of Non-Multi Template site, you need to provide only the User ID to search a member. For the Multi Template site, there will be one more additional option to select the template ID so the default current template is selected which means that you want to search for a Secondary Member within the same template.

If you want to search for a Secondary Member, apart from the current template, then you need to mention that template ID.

In the below image you can see that Template 75 - QA Testing has been selected to search Secondary Member in this template.

 After selecting the Secondary Member, all the related information is displayed as shown in the below image:

Note: If you have selected a wrong member or you want to change the Secondary Member then click Cross icon as shown in the below image and follow the same process to search the Secondary Member which has been mentioned above.

Once you've selected the Secondary Member, then click Next to start the second step that is, Member Information.

STEP 2: Member Information: In this step all the information from the Primary and Secondary Members are collected and it is updated in the updated Primary Member column as shown in the below image:

• System defined rule to be followed, in order to Merge Member related data:
  • The system checks member information field by field in the Primary Member's account, if Primary Member has value against that field then the same value will be retained in the updated Primary Member.
  • If the Primary Member does not have any value against a respective field, then the system will check whether the value exists against the Secondary Member’s account. If it exists, then the system will take that and update it in the updated Primary Member.

For example, in the below scenario you can see that in the updated Primary Member, User ID information has been taken from the Primary Member while the phone number information has been taken from the Secondary Member.

STEP 3: Points Evaluation

• Here all the Actions which are non-purchase and credit performed by both the members are listed, where earned points are not yet expired. The points earned against such Actions and the associated Expiration date will be displayed. You can unselect the Actions which you do not want to Merge into the Primary Member.

There are two ways through which you can sort the listed Actions:

• Latest to oldest : Basically, it arranges the latest data at the top and the oldest data at the bottom on the basis of the Action/Activity performed date.
• Grouped By Action: This facility is used to group all the activities against one Action together. For example, if you click Grouped By Action then all the activities associated with similar Action will be displayed together as shown in the below image:
  

• If you mouse over on any particular Action then the Activity Date when that particular Action happened is displayed. In the below image, you can see the Activity Date of Twitter Share that is, 07/12/2023.

Show Duplicate Performed Actions Only

• Once this flag is enabled, only Actions performed by both of the members are displayed.
• Below you can see that both the members have performed the Signup Newsletter and Create an Account Actions but both the Actions are supposed to be performed only one time so if the client wants the duplicate Actions can be discarded.
  

Discard Action

• By default, all the Actions performed by both the members will be Merged into the Primary Member.
• As long as no Action is being discarded, then just review it and continue the process. In that case, the points for all the Actions (lifetime points, current balance, expired points, debit points) will be summed up and updated in the updated Primary Member.
• If you want to discard some Actions, then you can discard and the points are recalculated based on what you have discarded.
• When you uncheck the below highlighted box, you will be presented with a Discard Action confirmation pop-up as once you discard the Actions then those will no longer be merged and their records will be deleted.

• For example, in the below image you can see that Signup Newsletter and Create an Account Actions which have been performed by Secondary Member is discarded means their points will not be added to the updated Primary Member.
  
• Therefore, post Merge 100 points will be discarded.

STEP 4: Additional Information

• In this you can review the Claimed Rewards and the Orders where points are on hold. These will be updated as is in the Primary Member account post Merge.

Claimed Rewards

• We want our clients to be aware of these liabilities, so in total these will be the claimed rewards that will be added to the updated Primary Member. There is nothing we can do about it, but if client does not want that the updated Primary Member should use those rewards, then the client can deactivate them.
  

Order points on Hold

• In the same way, we are showing the orders that are on hold to keep you informed that once the merging is complete, these points will not be lost and Annex Cloud will release them to the updated Primary Member after the Merge is complete.
• If you want to see the details of an individual Order, then you can click on the respective Order Id.
  

• After providing confirmation to Merge the members, the Merge process is complete.
  
• Once the Merge process is completed, you will be directed to the Member Report. Here, in our example you can see that the Primary Member’s Tier has been upgraded from Silver to Gold due to Merge.
  

Note: Post Merge, Secondary Member’s data is deleted from the system. For example, in the below image you can see that no data is found related to Secondary Member in the system.

• In the All Interaction Report of the Primary Member, you can see that apart from the duplicate Actions which have been discarded, all other Activities like Campaign benefit, Tier bonus etc., got Merged into the Primary Member.
  
• In the Points Report you can see that all the respective points are updated for the Primary Member.
  

Points Calculation Post Merge

Scenario 1: When no activities are discarded

• The system will sum up all the points that is, Lifetime points, Available points, Debit points etc., of both the members as shown in the below image:
  

Scenario 2: When Updated Primary Member’s Available points are greater than the discarded points

• In this case the discarded points will be deducted from the Lifetime points and Available points and rest other points get summed up.
• Assume 100 points must be deducted due to discard activity, then 100 points will be deducted from Lifetime points and Available points of the Updated Primary Member post Merge.
  

Scenario 3: When Updated Primary Member’s Available points are lesser than the discarded points.

• In this scenario the system will deduct whatever points it can deduct from the updated Primary Member's Available points and the rest of the points will be deducted from the debit entries i.e. (Redeemed + Returned + Debit) points.
• The discarded points will be deducted from the Lifetime points as well.
• Assume 1400 points must be deducted due to discard Activities which is more than the Available points, then in this scenario 1400 points will be deducted from Lifetime points and Available points and the remaining, -10 points will be deducted from the (Redeemed + Returned + Debit) points of the Updated Primary Member.
  

Points Limitations/Capping consideration Post Merge

• Capping is a restriction in which bonus or any benefits are limited to certain number or points. Members can only receive a limited number of points or bonuses as per the defined restriction.

Capping Examples

Example 1:

• There is an Action Group in which two actions are added, Twitter Share and Email Share, and maximum group limit of this Action Group has been capped to 200 points meaning a Loyalty Member can earn up to maximum 200 points by performing Twitter Share or Email Share, irrespective of number of times the members perform the Action.

• Now in the following images, you can see that before Merge the Primary Member had performed Email Share and earned 50 points, while the Secondary Member had performed Twitter Share and earned 100 points.
  
  
• When both the Members will be Merged, the system will check that whenever next time the updated Primary Member will perform Twitter Share or Email Share the maximum of 50 points can be awarded, because both the Members will be combined and 100 points earned against Twitter share by Secondary Member and 50 points earned by Primary Member against Email Share becomes 150. Therefore, as an individual now they just have 50 more points to earn against that Action Group as shown below:
  

Example 2:

Here there is a Campaign where any Loyalty Member who makes purchase, gets 2x ratio on the purchase and this can be received multiple times during the Campaign period.

• In addition, there is a Campaign benefit of 500 bonus points that is triggered by Action ID 1008, but it can only be awarded once per member as per the limitation set.
  
• Before merge, as you can see in the below image, the Secondary Member had already participated in the Campaign and had earned the Campaign benefit of 500 points.
  

Audit Log

• Click Audit to see all the information associated with the Merge. For example, in the below image following information is displayed:
  

Merge frequency in Audit Report

• In the Audit Report, if you want to see that how many times Merge event occurred during a specified date range, you can see that detail as well. For example, in the below image you can see that between 10th July 2023 and 12th July 2023, only two times Merged process have been taken place.
  

Benefits getting triggered post Merge

Example 1: 

• Let us consider a scenario in which Tiers are based on purchase amount. For Tier2, the Tier bonus of 100 points is configured which should be awarded once per member as shown in the below image:
  
• Before Merge, as you can see that both the members were in Tier1.
  
  
• Now post Merge, their spend amount has been summed up and they are eligible to upgrade to Tier2. As you can see in the below image, the Tier bonus got triggered post Merge.
  

Example 2:

• Let there is an Action Series in which two custom Actions ( Action IDs 345 and 689 ) have been added and Whoever will perform these two actions will get Action Series bonus of 500 points as shown in the below image.
  
• Before Merge, you can see that the Primary Member had performed Action ID 345 and partially completed the Action Series. Similarly the Secondary Member had also performed Action ID 689 and partially completed the Action Series, as shown in the below image:
  
  
• Post Merge, the Action Series will be marked as completed and the Action Series bonus will be triggered as shown in the below image:
  

Example 3:

• There is a Campaign where anyone who has Available points greater than 700 and makes a purchase, will get 5x ratio and a Campaign bonus points of 200.
  
  
• Before Merge, both the members Available points were not more than 700 so they were not eligible for the Campaign as shown in the below image.
  
• After Merge, the Available points will be more than 700 so whenever the updated Primary Member makes a purchase, the member will get 5x ratio and 200 bonus points.
  

APIs used for Merge

The following APIs are used while merging two members:

For more details refer: User API