Frequently asked questions
about Aklamio

Aklamio is a fully-serviced Customer Incentives Platform for large and mid-sized enterprises. Telecoms, energy suppliers, insurers and banks use it to launch and run referral, sales promotion, contract buyout, upsell and cross-sell, retention, winback and partner programs across every sales channel. Aklamio GmbH was founded in Berlin in 2011 and has since launched 400+ programs for its customers.

Aklamio connects to your sales channels or your CRM to reward customers automatically for specific activities. Once the reward criteria you set in advance are met, a reward is confirmed and the customer can claim it. You decide the audiences, rewards, reward criteria and supported sales channels. Aklamio provides the reward experience for your end customers: landing pages, user dashboards, emails and support, in your branding and on your domain. You track the results of your programs in the central Partner Interface. All of your incentive programs and reward campaigns run on one platform. You have one contract, one tracking setup and one team to work with, instead of coordinating separate tools, reward suppliers and agencies.

Aklamio works with mid-sized and large enterprises in telecommunications, energy, insurance and financial services. Our customers include leading companies such as Virgin Media, Vodafone, AT&T, Three, KPN, Lebara, E.ON, Endesa, Repsol, Allianz, AXA, Santander, Hanseatic Bank and IONOS.

Aklamio is a good fit for companies that sell to consumers and want incentives to drive acquisition, upsell or retention at scale. Our customers typically have 500+ employees. Aklamio is not a referral tool for small businesses or online shops.

Growth. Efficiency. Happy customers. Programs on Aklamio have generated €2 billion in additional revenue for our customers so far. That growth comes from the experience of 400+ customer programs, a flexible platform and the ongoing optimization of rewards, customer journeys and campaigns. Compared with running programs in-house, customers spend far less internal effort: IONOS cut it by more than 90% after moving its referral program to Aklamio. And because every program runs in one place, your team no longer manages a set of agencies, reward suppliers and tools. More than 12 million participants have registered for an incentive program with Aklamio so far, and they rate the experience “Excellent” on Trustpilot.

Aklamio operates in Europe and the Americas and fulfills rewards in 50 markets, each in its local currency. If you plan to launch an incentive program outside these regions, talk to us first.

Aklamio goes back to the Latin acclamatio, the shout a crowd raised for someone it believed in. It comes from acclamare, “to shout toward”, and shares its root with acclaim and acclamation. A customer recommending a brand to a friend does the same, which is why the name fits a company that started with referral programs. More on where our name comes from.

No, but referral is where it all started for Aklamio, and we are still the leading experts in it. Aklamio was founded in 2011 to digitize referral, and 15 years of experience and optimization now go into every program on the platform. Aklamio is incentive infrastructure, and referral programs are one of seven program types on it. That is an important difference from pure referral software.

Aklamio comes with seven program blueprints, each a proven starting point. Referral programs reward customers and non-customers for bringing in new customers. Sales promotions reward a purchase in a set period. Contract buyout covers the cost of leaving a competitor. Upsell and cross-sell rewards an upgrade or an added product. Retention programs reward customers for staying, and winback programs bring back those who left. Partner enablement gives partners, brokers and affiliates customer rewards to sell with. The blueprints often serve as the starting point, but Aklamio's ambition is to help wherever customers, partners or other parties are to be motivated with incentives.

Yes. A program can be rolled out omnichannel, to run online and in the app, in shops, in call centers, door-to-door and through partners and brokers. The customer can then receive a reward wherever they sign up, and each sale is attributed to the channel that made it. Most referral and incentive tools stop at online sales.

Very likely, and we are happy to talk about it. The seven program types are blueprints, and real programs often look different: another trigger, another audience, or a reward for someone other than the customer. Wherever people in or around your business are incentivized to act, book a demo and we will look at your use case with you.

Start with the program that serves your most pressing growth goal. For new customers that is usually a referral program, a sales promotion or, where switching costs hold customers back, a contract buyout program. For more revenue per customer it is upsell and cross-sell, and for churn it is retention or winback programs. Aklamio's consultants help you set the right priorities.

Aklamio offers seven reward types: cash, vouchers, gift cards, prepaid cards, bill credits, charitable donations and tree planting. The reward types can be easily adjusted and combined per program, especially as part of campaigns. The full range is in the reward catalog.

Only confirmed rewards can be claimed. You set the confirmation criteria per program, for example that the contract is still active after the withdrawal period or that the first bill has been paid. A reward is confirmed only once those criteria are met, so canceled or fraudulent sales lead to neither a payout nor a cost. During the confirmation window, which can last several weeks, Aklamio keeps the customer in your branded experience: they follow the status of their reward in their dashboard and get reward updates by email. Rewards are funded from a top-up budget that you load in advance.

Once a reward is confirmed, the customer can collect it and receive it in the form the program offers: cash by bank transfer or PayPal, a voucher or gift card delivered digitally, a donation made in the customer's name, or a bill credit on their next invoice. Customers follow the status of every reward in a personal dashboard and are notified by email when it is ready to claim.

Aklamio can run your program fully-serviced, including program management, customization and A/B testing, KYC and tax handling, fraud prevention, customer support for your participants, and expert consultancy on strategy, program design and reward economics. Reward fulfillment and payouts, KYC and tax handling, fraud prevention and participant support always run as a service. Program management, A/B testing and consultancy are agreed per contract.

Yes. Aklamio is built so your marketing and CRM teams can work in it directly. In the Partner Interface they edit the copy and design of the customer journey, set up a campaign for a season or a sales push, change reward amounts and types, and follow results per program and channel, without a ticket to Aklamio or to your own IT. The operations behind the rewards stay with Aklamio: payouts, KYC and tax handling, fraud prevention and participant support.

Most of your customers never need to ask: the reward experience is optimized for usability, and their personal user dashboard shows them what they have earned, when rewards are confirmed and how they can claim them. When questions do come up about rewards, eligibility or payouts, Aklamio's customer support answers them, so those queries do not reach your own service team. Questions about a customer's contract, order or bill stay with your customer service.

Yes, where your service level includes it. Optimization is available as a service: Aklamio runs A/B tests on rewards, copy and journeys, reviews program performance with you and recommends changes to reward levels, rules and promotion, based on what has worked in comparable programs. It is not part of every contract. With a reduced service level, your team optimizes the program itself, with the same A/B testing and reporting in the platform.

A first program typically launches in two to four weeks. The timeline depends on scope and integration depth: reward rules and triggers are configured on the platform without engineering tickets, and tracking goes in through a JS library or APIs. A program that is omnichannel from day one, launches in several countries or addresses several audiences is more complex and can take longer. Book a demo for a realistic timeline for your use case.

Aklamio connects to the systems where your sales are recorded, such as your online shop or website, your order or billing backend and the affiliate networks you already work with. Beyond that, everything on the platform is available through APIs, so Aklamio can connect to your CRM, your BI tools, your data warehouse, your marketing automation and more, as described under platform integration. For sales in shops, call centers and the field, your staff can use Aklamio's web interfaces, an option that avoids any technical integration. Where you prefer, those channels connect through the API instead.

Yes. Aklamio is GDPR compliant for programs in the EU and the UK and CCPA compliant for programs in the US. A data processing agreement, standard contractual clauses and the sub-processor list are available on request. Aklamio is also ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 compliant and FCA regulated in the United Kingdom. The details for review by your security, legal, compliance or procurement team are on enterprise scale.

Aklamio pricing is mainly performance-based and agreed per contract, so there is no public price list. Prices depend on the specific implementation, your service level and the reward volume across your programs. Book a demo for a quote.

No. Once you are a customer, you can run much of Aklamio yourself in self-service, but that is not the same as a free trial: every customer has a committed contract.

Aklamio contracts run for 12 months or more. The term is agreed per customer, together with the programs, markets and service level in scope.

Building in-house typically takes 6 to 18 months. An Aklamio program launches in a few weeks. After launch, the solution has to be supported, maintained and kept compliant. That, plus the cost of customer support and fraud prevention, is a running cost most business cases leave out. And an in-house program starts without our years of experience and our products and features optimized for performance.

An in-house build usually underestimates the operations around reward fulfillment. Participants need customer support for their reward questions. Fraud has to be prevented and investigated. Rewards have to be sourced, managed and paid out in every market and currency, potentially with identity checks and support with tax handling. Tracking has to cover shops, call centers and the field as well as online. Reward budgets need controlling and reconciliation, contracts with reward suppliers, agencies and other providers need managing, and GDPR and security certification has to be kept up. Each of these is a running cost, which is why in-house builds typically cover one program in one channel. And beyond the effort, an in-house build underestimates the experience it takes to get the best results: knowing which reward, which journey and which promotion convert best comes from years of testing across many programs, and a new build starts without it.

Yes, of course, and many customers come to Aklamio that way. A switch pays off twice. Performance usually improves, because the program moves to customer journeys already tuned for conversion and can easily be extended to more channels, audiences and products. And internal effort drops: IONOS ran its referral program in-house across five countries, at its peak with three full-time employees plus call center support, and cut internal effort by more than 90% after moving it to Aklamio.