Your loyalty programme is not why contractors buy from you

Building materials manufacturers spend heavily on loyalty programmes for installers. Points per bag, a catalogue of rewards, tiers. The programmes are easy to launch and easy to copy. They are also, according to the contractors themselves, not why they buy.

What contractors say

The Home Improvement Research Institute surveys US professional contractors regularly. The findings are consistent.

• About 30% of contractors describe themselves as extremely loyal (HIRI, 2023).
• Only about one in seven would switch supplier for a better price.
• Reliability is the main reason they would try a new supplier: 53% name it.
• They still buy mostly in store: 91% buy offline, 29% order online for delivery.

The data is American, and we did not find a European equivalent with an open methodology. But the logic travels: a crew leader's real problem is finding the next job and getting materials on time, not collecting points.

Two programmes that didn't work well enough

Knauf Insulation came to us with two loyalty programmes that weren't working well enough. We didn't start by redesigning them. We started with research across the whole market.

The research showed a dependency loop. Homeowners look for a reliable professional and a convenient store. Professionals look for new clients and better purchasing terms. Retailers look for buyer traffic. Each group needed the other two, and none of them had a direct way to find each other. Knauf Insulation had access to all three and wasn't connecting them.

What was built instead

Itochka.pro: one platform, one database, one login, four roles — homeowner, crew leader, retail outlet and partner.

• Homeowners post jobs and choose professionals by rating, reviews and a portfolio of completed work.
• Professionals respond to leads, manage orders and build a public profile.
• Retailers publish store information, price lists and range, and appear on an interactive map.
• Construction calculators turn a homeowner's saved estimate into a direct contact with a nearby store.
• A rewards catalogue with cart and order tracking keeps professionals engaged between jobs. It is part of the platform, not the reason for it.

The platform also earns beyond loyalty: media placements for non-competing manufacturers, access to the professional audience and a coalition programme with accruing and media partners.

The results

• 6,000 top installation professionals on the platform.
• 1,500 retail stores registered, 70% actively recording purchases.
• More than 30,000 unique monthly visitors.
• Over 3,000 homeowner-to-professional orders a year.

The full story is in Three audiences. Nobody introduced them.

Why this is harder to copy than points

Any competitor can launch a points scheme in a quarter. What it can't copy is the database: a single record of the demand chain, from the first estimate a homeowner saves to the purchase a professional makes at a named store. It belongs to the manufacturer, and it grows more valuable every day the platform runs.

The caveat

Ecosystems usually fail. Only one in ten of 100 large companies studied earns 5% or more of revenue from its ecosystems (McKinsey). Platforms built without research into what each audience needs from the others tend to stay empty.

That is why the work starts with the market, and why delivery runs in stages — MVP, pilot, trial operation, production — each one testing one hypothesis before the next.

Questions to ask about your own programme

1. What share of members are active in a normal month?
2. Would they notice if the programme stopped tomorrow?
3. What does a crew leader need from you that they can't get from a competitor?
4. Who else in your market do your installers need to find?

Related: Dealers order by WhatsApp. A portal should start there. · What 57,494 owner messages taught us about trust