Loyalty Program

11 Epic Ways To Reward Your Employees

Don’t Break the Bank – Inexpensive Employee Rewards Programs

1. Certificate of achievement: Honor the employee how acquires a unique acknowledgment, give him or her an extraordinary nametag and also a certificate that articulates their achievement.

2. Thank you meeting: A sincere word of thanks costs nothing and is very effective. Saying thanks about something specific may be the ultimate reward. The words “thank you” are powerful. And sometimes all you need to do is to say it sincerely.

3. Wall of Fame:  Create a wall of fame for each recognized employee. Make a point to compose underneath their photo what they did that you’re remembering them for.

4. Company apparel: Offering employees free company apparel and other logo merchandise can be one of the simple employee rewards programs.

5. Recognition in front of peers: Feature your representatives accomplishments by recognizing them in an organization meeting, bulletin or on your organization Intranet site.

6. Department recognition bulletin board: Consistently a designated bulletin board highlights their duties regarding the affiliation, the individual employees, their most noticeable achievements, etc.

7. Secret Santa-style appreciation: Use the “Secret Santa” concept. Have all employees draw a name of another employee. They would then identify an achievement/contribution particular to that person and send an anonymous note of appreciation.

8. Work-from-home day: Remember significant events in your employees’ personal lives, and give them a work-from-home day so they can participate without worrying about coming into the office on time.

9. Sticky Notes:  Post a sticky note on their monitor, expressing profound gratitude and saying why. Simple, yet compelling, when it’s authentic.

10. Standing O: Get all your employees together in the same room. Then welcome the employee you’re recognizing and give him or her an overwhelming applause.

11. The Morphing Trophy: Get a big trophy and give it to the employee you are recognizing for the week. At the end of the week, they must return the trophy but they need to add one thing to it. Then next week give it to the next winner. At the end of the year, you’ll have a trophy with 52 things stuck to it. It looks crazy and has lots of memories. At the end of the year, retire the trophy and put it in your reception area. Do it every year.

So which one are you trying out for your team?

Top 10 Loyalty Programs in India in 2022 vs. 2023

Attracting customers and retaining them is not an easy task, especially in such a competitive market. Every brand is trying to offer its customers something better than the competitors in order to retain its loyal customers. Businesses are doing this through loyalty programs that are aimed at retaining customers by rewarding them for every purchase they make. Running and managing a loyalty program is not as easy as it might seem to be. From choosing the right program to running it effectively, you need to take every step carefully.

Most of the successful brands are running a loyalty program in India. Looking at some best types of programs can help you understand how different programs work and what can work for your customers.

What is a Loyalty Program?

A loyalty program is a marketing and promotional strategy businesses use to attract new customers and retain existing ones. Under a loyalty program, brands offer rewards, incentives, or other type of benefits to their customers in return for their loyalty. The more a customer purchases, the more rewards they earn. Businesses run many different types of customer loyalty programs based on their objectives and requirements. The primary goal of a loyalty program is to boost repeat business by retaining loyal customers. Its secondary goals include attracting new customers, improving brand reputation, and increasing customer satisfaction.

With every passing year, brands are coming up with new innovative ideas to run effective loyalty programs. The way loyalty programs used to be a few decades ago is too different from the programs that work today. Now, you cannot cheer up your customers just with warm greetings, but they expect a lot more in return for their loyalty.

Top Loyalty Programs of 2022

Here is the list of some top customer loyalty programs that were most effective in the year 2022 and are expected to remain effective for more coming years:

1. Community-Based Loyalty Programs

Community-based loyalty programs, as you can understand from the name, are programs that focus on creating an online community for people who share similar interests. Along with rewarding customers for their purchases and loyalty, a community-based loyalty program aims to retain customers by making them feel like they are a part of the brand’s community. Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is one of the greatest examples of this type of loyalty program.

2. Rewards-Based Loyalty Programs

Be it 2022 or 2023, rewards-based loyalty programs have always been in trend. These are among the most widely used programs where customers earn some sort of reward points after every purchase they make. These points are also known as loyalty points. Customers can redeem these points against a host of options offered by the respective brand. However, a rewards-based program is only effective when the points you offer are valuable and are redeemable against some useful options. Running a rewards program without understanding the interests of your customers can be quite risky.

3. Mission-Based Loyalty Programs

With Mission-Based loyalty programs, brands provide their customers with an opportunity to give back to the community without paying anything extra from their pocket. Many companies run these types of loyalty marketing programs that are not just unique but are also very effective in making customers feel good about a brand and retaining them. Mission-based loyalty programs are similar to rewards programs, where customers earn rewards after every purchase and redeem the earned points for charity.

For example, suppose a customer has earned 10,000 points with the monetary value of each point being Re. 0.25. Now, the customer can choose a charity option to redeem the points and an equivalent amount, i.e. Re. 2,500 gets donated to the selected charity in the customer’s name.

4. Subscription-Based Loyalty Programs

Subscription-based programs are quite different as customers need to pay a fee in order to participate in the program. Many top brands run paid loyalty programs, where customers can get exclusive benefits by paying a nominal annual or monthly fee. These programs can be designed in many different ways. Some subscription-based loyalty programs have different levels with every level having a different fee and different benefits. A level with the highest subscription fee has the most premium benefits and the one with low or no fee has basic benefits. These programs can be considered as the paid version of tiered loyalty programs.

5. Cashback-Based Loyalty Programs

Cashback-based programs are loyalty marketing programs where customers earn some percentage of cashback after every purchase they make. The cashback percentage may be the same for every purchase or may vary based on the amount of purchase. Some brands offer a fixed percentage of cashback to every customer irrespective of the amount they spend. On the other hand, other brands offer cashback on the basis of the amount spent by a customer. The more a customer spends, the higher the percentage of cashback he/she earns.

Top Trending Loyalty Programs in 2023

The programs that were run by brands earlier in 2022 are still running effectively. However, the following are some best loyalty programs in India in 2023 that you can consider if you are planning to run a new program for your customers:

1. Tiered Loyalty Programs

Tier-based or level-based programs are among the most popular retail loyalty programs in 2023. In a tiered loyalty program, there are multiple tiers with different rewards and benefits. With each higher tier come better rewards and incentives. These are quite different from subscription-based programs as subscription-based programs allow customers to choose a level by paying the respective fee. On the other hand, tier-based programs promote customers to higher levels as they make more and more purchases. These types of programs encourage customers to make purchases more often in order to earn better rewards.

2. Coalition Programs

Coalition programs are loyalty programs that a brand runs in partnership with other businesses. As a brand owner, you can partner with a loyalty program company, which runs and manages the loyalty program for your customers. RewardPort is one of the best loyalty solution providers to consider. Based on your business requirements, goals, and your customers’ interests, RewardPort can run a loyalty program that works effectively for your customer base.

3. Gamified Loyalty Programs

The concept of combining loyalty programs with gamification strategies has become quite popular these days. Most of the successful retail loyalty programs in 2023 have some sort of gamification that makes it interesting for the customers. Some best examples of gamified loyalty programs include ‘Scratch to Win’ contests, top spenders leaderboards, badge-based programs, referral contests, etc. Gamification is a great way to build healthy competition among your customers and encourage them to spend more on your brand.

4. Hybrid Loyalty Programs

Many companies also run hybrid loyalty programs, where customers can earn regular rewards as well as some additional benefits. In simple words, it is a combination of multiple loyalty programs with different types of rewards and benefits. Running a hybrid program is a great way to stand out from the competition and attract more customers by offering multiple benefits. Though these programs can be quite expensive, you can retain most of your loyal customers if you implement the program in the right manner.

5. Store Credit-Based Loyalty Programs

Store credit-based loyalty programs are similar to cashback-based programs, where customers earn store-specific rewards. For every purchase a customer makes, he/she earns some sort of points that can only be redeemed against future purchases from the same brand. Instead of offering multiple redemption options, these programs allow customers to redeem their points against the brand they have purchased from. When customers have some rewards to redeem against a particular brand, there are high chance that they will return back to the brand and make a purchase.

Why Choose RewardPort as Your Loyalty Program Partner?

To run an effective loyalty program aligning with your business objectives, you must have a thorough understanding of how these programs work and what can make your customers come back. Many top brands that are running the best loyalty programs in India already trust RewardPort. This is what RewardPort’s marketing experts team can do for you. They analyze every small detail of your business and look at your customers’ interests to find out what works best for your brand. With rewards starting from as low as Rs. 10, you can start a loyalty program that is affordable yet effective.

7 Gamification Ideas for Your Loyalty Programs to Excite Your Audience

A loyalty program is a powerful tool in itself as it helps companies in attracting and retaining customers. When combined with gamification strategies, a loyalty program becomes even more effective and exciting for the customers. As per a study, consumers engage with only half of the loyalty programs they enroll in. This is major because the loyalty programs are not interesting enough to keep the customers engaged for a long period of time.

This is where gamification acts as a powerful tool. By incorporating gamification strategies in your loyalty program, you can keep your customers engaged and boost loyalty. The following are some most effective gamification ideas for your loyalty programs:

1. Streaks & Milestones

Loyalty programs based on streaks and milestones are different from the regular rewards programs. In these programs, customers receive rewards or benefits after achieving certain milestones and not for performing a single task. For example, you can offer a discount coupon to your customers for logging in to your website/app for 30 or 60 days in a row. If they skip even one day, they lose the reward. Similarly, you can offer a free gift on completing a certain number of purchases with your brand.

Through milestone-based loyalty programs, you can ensure that your customers do not forget about your brand even when they are not making a purchase. This also helps in boosting customer engagement. As your customers engage more, they are more likely to stay loyal and purchase frequently from your brand.

2. Levels and Tiers

Including different tiers in your loyalty program is an effective way to constantly encourage your customers to purchase more. With each upper level or tier, customers get better rewards and benefits. You would have seen rewards programs where companies have two or three tiers, including bronze, silver, and gold tiers. You can also run similar loyalty gamification programs for your customers. As soon as they make their first purchase, they enter the first, i.e. the lowest tier, which has the most basic benefits.

After making a specific number of purchases or spending a certain amount on your brand, they move to the next tier and become eligible for higher rewards and benefits. This is how tiered loyalty programs work. When customers get basic rewards after entering a tier, they are automatically encouraged to purchase more often in order to get promoted to the upper tiers and receive higher rewards.

3. Code Words

This is quite a unique yet effective loyalty program idea that can help you retain most of your customers and turn one-time buyers into brand loyalists. You can convert online engagement of customers into sales by providing them with access to a rewarding ‘code word.’ By applying this code word, your customers can get a discount or rewards on making a purchase from your brand. For customer retention and loyalty, you can make this ‘code word’ accessible only to the registered users of your website/app. With this, you can not only motivate more customers to register on your website but also boost sales by offering rewards and discounts.

4. Referral Challenges

Referral loyalty programs have also gained very much popularity and are considered an effective way to expand the customer base of a brand. By running ‘refer a friend’ challenges, you can encourage your customers to recommend your brand to more and more people. This enables you to get access to many potential customers that you would have never known without running a referral contest. Different brands run referral contests in different ways. For example, you can offer a 50% discount coupon on five successful sign-ups or offer a free gift on the first successful purchase made by your customer’s friend.

5. Scratch-to-Win Games

These types of loyalty gamification programs are very effective in retaining customers and keeping them engaged with your brand. You can add a ‘scratch-to-win’ feature on your website or app and encourage your customers to log in every day in order to get a chance to scratch. Make sure that you offer valuable rewards/gifts in scratch cards so that your customers don’t lose interest in the contest. You can include different options, such as a certain number of reward points, a discount coupon, or a free gift. Make sure that your customers get at least some reward points every day that they can accumulate over time and redeem for some discount coupon or free gift.

6. Seasonal Challenges

To ensure that your customers don’t lose interest in your loyalty program, you can come up with seasonal challenges. Keep launching different contests or reward programs for a certain period of time. If the challenges are really exciting and you offer valuable benefits under them, your customers will see each challenge as an opportunity to win a reward. You can make the challenges more interesting by including qualification criteria. For example, a customer becomes eligible to participate in a challenge only if he/she makes a purchase after its launch.

7. Quizzes and Leaderboards

You can even run quiz challenges on your website, app, or social media platforms, and give a shoutout to the winners through leaderboards. You can add questions related to your products, services, or your industry, and update the leaderboard on a daily/weekly basis. This type of loyalty programs helps keep customers engaged and encourages them to learn more about your brand. Make sure that you keep the quiz interesting and engaging for your customers

Include Gamification in Loyalty Programs with RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top loyalty solution providers in India and is trusted by a number of businesses. If you want to make your loyalty program more engaging by combining it with gamification strategies, RewardPort is the right company to partner with. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort analyzes your business requirements deeply and comes up with an effective gamified loyalty program that works for your brand.

9 Types of Channel Partner Programs for Rapid Business Growth

Most of the successful B2B companies are investing more time, money, and effort in running and leveraging channel partner incentive programs. Some top companies even run multiple-layer channel partner programs to encourage different channel partners. As per a study, more than two-thirds of channel partners have reported that they have more choices in rewards and incentives than ever before. By running the right channel partner program for your partners, you can take your B2B business to the next level.

Apart from boosting sales, effective channel incentive programs also focus on improving partner satisfaction, boosting brand awareness, and achieving other business goals. If you are planning to start some effective channel partner programs for the growth of your company, you can consider the following programs:

1. Sales Performance Incentive Funds

SPIFs (Sales Performance Incentive Funds) are the funds that you offer your channel partners to encourage their sales teams. Your channel partner can use these funds to offer performance-based incentives to their sales team members when they achieve a specific target or perform extraordinarily. Offering SPIFs under your channel partner program can be extremely effective in boosting sales, achieving short-term goals, and driving sales during the off-season.

Some key benefits of offering performance incentives include staying ahead of the competitors, increasing sales momentum, and boosting sales for particular products/services. To make a SPIFs-based channel incentive program successful, you need to ensure that your channel partner’s sales team understands the incentives and the incentives are valuable for them.

2. Value-Added Incentives for Resellers

Value-added Reseller Incentives are the rewards or benefits that you offer your channel partners when they add some value to your existing product. The value addition can be done by the channel partner in any form. Anything that they do to enhance your existing product, such as adding an extra feature, integration, or offering additional warranty, etc, comes under value-addition.

As per a study, value-added channel incentive programs can help you increase the overall sales of your business by 6% to 9%. Running channel partner programs based on value-added incentives can have dual advantages for your business. Along with improving the value of your existing products or services, these programs help you boost your brand’s market penetration

3. Market Development Funds

Companies or manufacturers provide their channel partners with MDFs (Market Development Funds) to help them improve their marketing efforts. By offering MDFs, you can encourage your channel partners to run better marketing campaigns for your brand. This also allows them to put more effort into boosting your brand awareness. You can offer MDFs to increase the overall sales or to boost the sales for a particular range of products.

Marketing development funds, if used wisely, can be very effective in improving your brand reputation and staying ahead of your competition. For example, channel partners can use this fund to purchase radio advertisements, run offline/online marketing campaigns, organize webinars, and participate in trade shows.

4. Channel rebates

Rebates are a type of refund or cashback that the channel partners receive after achieving specific sales targets. Offering rebates under your channel partner program is one of the most effective ways to encourage your partners. When you offer some refund or cashback on achieving certain targets, they will definitely try to achieve the target by influencing their buyers and putting more effort into boosting your sales. The rebates percentage is not the same for every channel partner but it is decided on the basis of order frequency and other factors. They can earn the benefits and even transfer the same to their customers.

5. Deal Registration Incentives

Deal registration incentives are the rewards and benefits offered by vendors to their channel partners for bringing new leads. The channel partners need to close the deal before a pre-specified time period in order to receive the incentives. The more registrations they bring in, the more rewards and incentives they earn. Through a deal registration-based channel incentive program, you can reward your channel partners who play an important role in the success of your business and increase partner satisfaction.

6. Cooperative Incentives

Cooperative Incentives or Co-Op funding is another effective strategy used by businesses to motivate their channel partners. With these incentives, companies aim to encourage their channel partners to achieve their own objectives. You can offer cooperative incentives to your channel partners for their loyalty and regular purchases. All the actions performed by the channel partners that help you achieve your business objectives should be incentivized under a cooperative incentives-based channel partner program.

7. Loyalty Rewards for Partner Retention

Loyalty rewards, as the term suggests, are offered to loyal channel partners and are aimed at boosting channel partner loyalty. The aim of channel partner loyalty programs is to build and sustain long-term relationships with channel partners and encourage them to stay loyal. Under such programs, you can offer continuous rewards and incentives that are valuable enough to make your channel partners feel encouraged.

8. Training Incentives

You can offer training incentives to your channel partners in the form of subscriptions to learning programs, access to the tools they need for sales, etc. Everyone wants to grow their personal skills while doing a job. If you provide your partners’ sales team with an opportunity to learn more and more about their field, you can make them feel valued while encouraging them to increase sales. Provide them access to learning and certification programs, tools, etc, and reward them on completion of the training.

9. Referral Incentives

Referral incentives are also one of the most widely used strategies under channel partner programs. Under these programs, you incentivize your channel partners to bring more potential channel partners on board. B2B referral programs for channel partners work similarly to the programs that B2C brands run to attract more customers through referral contests.

Why Choose RewardPort as Your Channel Partner Program Manager?

RewardPort is one of India’s top reward and loyalty solutions companies. With low-cost rewards starting at as low as Rs. 10 and a team of experienced marketing professionals, RewardPort becomes the first choice for many businesses when it comes to choosing the right channel incentive management company. They have a wide range of reward options suitable for every business type. After understanding your business objectives and channel partners’ requirements, RewardPort can help you run the most effective channel partner program.

15 Sales Promotion Ideas & What You Should Understand About Them

Consumers sales promotions have become an essential component of every business as these are the strategies that help a brand attract new customers, retain the existing ones, and boost the overall sales. If you want to boost sales or build a larger customer base for your business, an effective sales promotion program is what can help you achieve these goals. To get the best out of a sales promotion program, you need to plan and implement it wisely keeping in mind all your business requirements. Here are some great sales promotion ideas that work for almost every business:

1. Discount Coupons

Discount coupons are one of the most common sales promotion strategies used by businesses these days. Don’t confuse discount coupons with general discount offers here. Discount offers are the general offers that all shoppers can avail of. But, discount coupons create a sense of exclusivity. Only the customer having a discount coupon can access the offer and get the respective product at a discounted price. You can either offer discount coupons after a customer makes a purchase or get the coupons distributed by your partner brands. Using both these strategies can help you attract new customers and encourage the existing ones to make repeat purchases.

2. Flash Sales

In flash sales, brands offer their products or services at heavily discounted prices. You can run flash sales to boost the sales for selected items, clear out old inventory, or simply increase your overall sales. For the best results, flash sales should be run only for limited periods of time. When a great discount offer is valid for a limited period, it creates a sense of urgency among your customers. If the items under sale are relevant to your customers’ interests, they will definitely try to make a purchase before such a good deal ends.

3. Rebates

Rebates are just like cashback offers and work amazingly well when it comes to customer satisfaction and retention. It is a form of refund that you offer to your customers after they make an eligible purchase. For example, suppose a brand is offering a 12% rebate on all purchases worth Rs. 10,000 or more. Now, if a customer makes a purchase worth Rs. 20,000, he/she gets a cashback or cheque, or refund of Rs. 2400. This is how rebates work. When customers receive such a great deal after making a purchase, they are highly encouraged to come back to your store again.

4. Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are physical or digital cards that a customer can exchange with a product or service of the respective brand. You can offer gift vouchers for discounts or for your products or services. These vouchers are valid for a limited period and to avail of their benefits, customers need to make a purchase before they expire. Now, if you are trying to understand the difference between a voucher and a discount coupon, here it is.

Vouchers often allow customers to get a product without paying even a single rupee. On the other hand, discount coupons can be used by customers only to reduce the bill amount and not to get a product for free. For example, if you offer a voucher worth Rs. 1,000, your customer can get any product worth up to Rs. 1,000 free using it. On the other hand, using a 50% discount coupon, a customer can purchase a product worth Rs. 1,000 for Rs. 500.

5. Free Samples & Trials

By offering free samples or trial products, you can attract many potential customers who would have never looked at your product otherwise. The best way to introduce a new product in the market is to distribute its free samples to your target customers. If you have an offline store, you can also offer free trials instead of distributing sample products. Customers are often afraid of spending on something that they are not very sure about. You can eliminate this risk by offering free samples and allowing your customers to buy a product only if they like it.

6. Bundles

The strategy of selling bundle products also works amazingly well and hence can be listed among the top consumer sales promotions. Under a bundle product offer, you provide your customers with a combined discount on purchasing a bundle of multiple products. The products in the bundle can be the same or different based on the type of your brand. For example, if you run a beauty brand, you can offer a combo pack of 5 different makeup products at a discounted price. If you run a clothing brand, you can offer a combo pack of three t-shirts at a lower price than the actual combined price of the three.

7. BOGO Deals

‘Buy One Get One’ deals are also among the great sales promotion ideas of all time. From a survey conducted on various consumers, it was found that most customers prefer a ‘BOGO’ deal over a 50% discount offer, though both are the same. To boost sales for some specific products or to clear out old inventory fast, a BOGO offer is the best strategy you can use. Customers get tempted to make a purchase when they get two products for the price of one.

8. Exclusive Offers (‘Only For You’ Offers)

If you want to make your customers feel special, the exclusive ‘only for you’ offers can work the best. Instead of running a general discount offer or flash sales that everyone can access, provide your customers with exclusive offers that are only valid for selected consumers. You can randomly choose any consumers and offer them a 50% discount on all products they purchase within 24 hours. In another 24 hours, you can choose other random customers and offer them a BOGO deal. This is how exclusive offers work and encourage customers to make a purchase.

9. Referral Discounts

Referral discount offers are a great way to attract new customers while improving the experience of existing ones. If you want to expand your customer base without spending much on advertising and marketing campaigns, you can simply go for referral discounts. Provide your existing customers with a good discount when they refer a friend and the friend becomes your customer. Word of Mouth marketing works more effectively than other types of marketing. A consumer is more likely to purchase a product recommended by his/her friend than the one they have seen in an advertisement.

10. Seasonal Sales

Both seasonal and end-of-season offers are great marketing strategies used by businesses to boost their sales. You can run discount offers or sales based on the current season. For example, a clothing brand can offer a 30% discount on the new summer arrivals at the beginning of the summer season, a beauty brand can offer summer skincare products at a discounted price, and so on. Similarly, at the end of a season, you can offer discounts to clear out the inventory.

11. Social Media Giveaways

As the number of internet users is constantly increasing, social media has become a powerful platform for marketing and advertising. To boost customer engagement, you can run giveaway contests on your social media accounts. You can even run a top spenders offer and giveaway some free products to the top spenders of the week or month or the specific offer period. Such offers trigger the customers’ wish to get listed in the top spenders’ list and win a free gift.

12. Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are like lucky draw offers where customers do not even need to register separately. All the customers of an offline store or an online website are considered the participants and any random winners are selected. The winners then get some free products, vouchers, or discount coupons as a gift. Along with encouraging your customers to spend more or engage more with your brand, sweepstakes contests also help you catch the attention of new potential customers.

13. Same-Day Delivery

It is an underrated but powerful sales promotion strategy that can help you take your brand to another level. You would be surely aware of how some grocery brands have come to the top by offering delivery within a few minutes after order placement, Similarly, you can make it to the top of your industry by providing same-day delivery options to your customers.

14. Free Shipping & Returns

If you do not want to miss out on thousands of potential customers, you will have to offer free shipping and returns on all your products. Many customers who like a product often change their minds when they see a shipping fee levied on it. Similarly, offering free returns becomes important to allow your customers to try your product without any risk. If they don’t like it and want to return the product, they can easily do it without any additional charges. However, very few consumers return a product after purchasing it, and that too only when the product really disappoints them. If your product is quite worthy and suitable to their needs, your customers will definitely keep it.

15. Birthday Discounts

Customized offers like birthday discounts are very effective in making your customers feel valuable. By offering special discount offers on birthdays, you can let your customers know that you really value them and appreciate their contribution towards the success of your brand. Such offers not only encourage your customers to make a purchase on their birthdays but also help you boost brand loyalty.

Gamify Your Sales Promotion Program with RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top sales promotion companies providing its services across 6 different countries and several industries. The team of experienced marketing professionals at RewardPort analyzes all your business details and comes up with the most suitable sales promotion strategies that work for your business. By combining sales promotions programs with gamification techniques, RewardPort makes consumer sales promotions even more interesting and exciting for your customers.

5 Reasons RewardPort Should Be Your Partner for Employee Rewards Programs in 2023

As per a study conducted on 3 million employees, companies that used an effective employee rewards program gained over twice the three-year median return than the ones that did not have any such program. This is evidence that employee rewards and recognition programs play a vital role in the growth and success of an organization. But, planning and implementing a rewards program for your employees is a challenging task as you need to take every small business detail into account and consider a lot of other factors to make it successful. However, there are various employee rewards program companies that you can look up to.

RewardPort is one of the top reward and loyalty solution providers to consider. Here are some most significant reasons why you should partner with RewardPort for your employee rewards program in 2023:

1. Experienced Team

RewardPort has a team of experienced marketing professionals, who have already executed over 11,000 reward programs across different categories. The team manages loyalty programs for several companies not only in India, but across 6 countries, including India, Sri Lanka, UK, Canada, UAE, and Kenya. Trusted by more than 750 clients, RewardPort becomes one of the top options to consider when it comes to choosing the right company for your employee rewards program.

Planning and running an employee rewards program requires good research and understanding of what types of rewards are suitable for a particular company. This is what RewardPort’s marketing team can do for you. With their industry expertise and years of experience, they can come up with the best rewards program for your employees.

2. Multiple Rewards & Redemption Options

With RewardPort, you can run an employee loyalty program using rewards starting from as low as Rs. 10. Being one of the top loyalty solution providers, RewardPort provides you with a host of reward options to choose from. You can always find a suitable option under your budget and start running an employee rewards program. Along with the reward points, your employees also get plenty of exciting redemption options. They can redeem their rewards across over 70,000 products or services across different categories.

To make a rewards program effective, you don’t only need to focus on offering rewards but also on redemption options. If your employees can not find any valuable redemption option, they will not be encouraged to earn reward points that are of no significance. This is why offering multiple redemption options always becomes a necessity to make your rewards program successful. RewardPort’s marketing team keeps this in mind and offers valuable rewards to cater to every employee’s interests.

3. Seamless Execution

Once you partner with RewardPort, you can leave all your employee rewards-related worries behind. From planning the rewards program to executing it with perfection, the team of marketing professionals at RewardPort gives you a seamless experience. You are given a team of experts that analyze all your business details and plan the employee rewards program accordingly. RewardPort majorly focuses on the following key points:

• Culture of Appreciation: Creating the values of appreciation and recognition in your employees.
• Celebrating Milestones: Making employees feel valuable by celebrating their achievements and promotions.
• Targeting Performance: Rewarding employees based on their performance to push them to perform better.
• Imbibing Company Values: Ensuring that a solid foundation of your organization’s culture is imbibed in your employees.
• Employee Retention: By offering continuous rewards and recognition, RewardPort focuses on boosting employee retention rates.

4. Easy-To-Use Reward Programs

One of the most important characteristics of a successful rewards program is its ease of use. An employee rewards program makes sense only if your employees understand it and are interested to earn the rewards. A complicated user interface of the rewards portal or a lengthy reward redemption process can lead to the disinterest of your employees in the program. However, this is not the case with RewardPort.

The rewards programs designed by RewardPort, one of the top employee rewards program companies, are not just easy to use but are also interesting enough to keep your employees engaged. The web interface has been designed keeping all types of employees in mind. They can conveniently earn and redeem reward points against any redemption option of their choice.

5. Customer Services

When partnering with a rewards and loyalty solution provider, it is also important to look for their customer support services. If the customer service is not good, your queries and feedback will not be considered by the rewards company. With RewardPort, you get a dedicated customer care team that is responsible for answering all your queries and handling your feedback. This is another significant reason to choose RewardPort as your employee rewards program partner.

Boost Employee Retention at Your Organization with RewardPort

Almost every organization is now adopting a culture of employee rewards and recognition. However, only a few of them are able to implement these programs effectively. A survey conducted on employees of various companies has shown that over 65% of employees received no recognition for over a year. This is the primary reason why most employees leave their organization even after receiving a decent salary.

Just running an employee rewards program is not enough but you also need to ensure that it encourages every single employee at your company. The team of marketing professionals at RewardPort keeps all these factors in mind and runs a rewards program that effectively rewards every employee while motivating them to perform better.

15 Customer Incentive Programs & How to Boost Their Results

The idea of running loyalty incentive programs to attract and retain customers has become very popular now. To keep up with the competition, brands are providing their customers with more rewards and incentives than ever before. Studies suggest that consumers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand that offers more rewards and discounts. However, rewards and other perks are not the only factors that contribute to building brand loyalty. Even running a charity-based or community-based program is a very effective strategy. Here is the list of some top customer incentive program ideas:

1. Cashback Programs

In cashback-based loyalty incentive programs, customers get a percentage of their spent amount back. If you run a cashback program, you can fix the percentage of cashback that your customers earn on each purchase. In most cashback-based incentive programs, the percentage of cashback increases as spending increases.

For example, you can offer a 3% cashback on spends up to Rs. 1,000, 5% cashback on spends between Rs. 1,000 & Rs. 3,000, and a 10% cashback on spends beyond Rs. 3,000. After your customers pay the bill, credit the cashback via their preferred payment mode. When they receive a percentage of their spending back, they are encouraged to purchase from you again in order to save some money.

2. Discount-Based Programs

Discount-based programs are very effective in retaining loyal customers and encouraging them to make more frequent purchases. In this type of loyalty program, you can offer your customers a discount coupon after every purchase they make. This discount coupon can either be redeemed against their current purchase or they can save it for future purchases. However, offering discounts for future purchases with a limited period of validity is a better idea. Just like the cashback-based programs, you can increase the value of discount coupons as the spending of your customers increases.

3. Loyalty Points

Customer incentive programs that offer loyalty points are among the most widely used loyalty programs. Under a loyalty points-based program, customers earn some form of reward points after every purchase they make. The percentage of loyalty points is fixed by the brand and customers get rewarded accordingly. These reward points can later be redeemed against various options that are provided by the respective brand. When running a points-based loyalty program, you must ensure that you offer valuable rewards and provide some interesting redemption options against them. One of the biggest reasons why many points-based loyalty programs fail is that they don’t offer valuable rewards or useful redemption options.

4. Store Credit

Store credit-based loyalty programs are similar to cashback programs. In this, you offer a special kind of cashback that can only be used against your store purchases. Therefore, it’s like offering small discounts for future purchases. Many e-commerce companies are using this loyalty program to boost their customer retention rates. You can create a separate loyalty portal for your customers. Every time they make a purchase, the eligible store credit points are credited to their loyalty portal and they can redeem it any time they want.

5. Tiered Reward Programs

Tier-based loyalty incentive programs have also gained significant popularity in the last few years. In a tier-based loyalty program, there are different levels of loyalty and customers earn higher rewards with every increasing level. These programs are generally divided into three or more tiers. The more a customer purchases, the higher tier they get promoted to. As they enter a higher tier, they get a higher reward rate and also some additional benefits. These programs are effective in motivating customers to spend more in order to earn higher benefits.

6. Charity-Based Reward Programs

Charity-based reward programs are very similar to loyalty points-based ones. In this program as well, customers earn reward points after every purchase they make. The only difference is that the reward points here are redeemable only against charity donations. Many consumers prefer brands that take social causes into consideration. By allowing your customer to donate to charity without spending a single extra penny, you can create a big impact. Just make sure you provide multiple charity options so your customers can donate to a social cause of their choice.

7. Choice-Centred Loyalty Programs

These loyalty programs are rare but interesting. In a choice-centered loyalty program, you can allow your customers to choose rewards of their choice. They can choose to earn any one of the reward points, cashback, or store credit. Not every customer might be interested in the hassle of earning reward points and redeeming them. Some may prefer loyalty points and others might like to earn cashback or store credit. By running a choice-centered customer incentive program, you can give your customers the flexibility to get rewarded as they want.

8. Gamified Reward Programs

Gamified reward programs are loyalty incentive programs combined with gamification strategies. You can run leaderboards contests on social media, ‘spin the wheel’ contests on your website, sweepstakes, top spenders offer, etc, to improve customer engagement and boost loyalty. Including gamification strategies in your loyalty program is one of the best ways to make your program exciting for your customers. A loyalty program is successful only when customers are interested in it.

9. Subscription-Based Programs

These are paid loyalty programs, under which customers need to pay a fee in order to avail of the program’s benefits. However, subscription-based programs do not work for every business. Before implementing a paid loyalty incentive program, you must ensure that your customers are really interested in the rewards you are offering. A good idea is to include a paid and an unpaid version in your loyalty program. Customers can either choose to earn basic rewards by opting for the free version or they can earn more premium rewards by opting for the paid program.

10. Spend-Based Rewards

Spend-based reward programs work amazingly when your goal is to make your customer spend more every time they visit your store or website. You can run a spend-based rewards program, where customers do not earn rewards on every purchase but they get rewarded only on spending beyond a certain amount. You can include multiple spend thresholds and add different rewards for each spend threshold. For example, your customers get a 15% discount on spending Rs. 2,000 or more, a 20% discount on spending Rs. 5,000 or more, and a 30% discount on spending Rs. 10,000 or more.

11. Rewards for Top Spenders

Along with your continuous rewards or cashback-based loyalty incentive program, you can run top spenders’ offer. Under this, customers who spend the maximum amount in a month or quarter are rewarded with some premium gifts. You can choose the top three spenders of the month or quarter and gift them some free products from your brand or even from some other brand. Many e-commerce brands run such offers, where top spiders can win premium gifts such as free TVs, mobile phones, earphones, etc.

12. Referral Rewards Program

A referral program is not just a great way to expand your customer base but is also very effective in boosting your customer engagement. In a referral program, you ask your customers to refer a friend and get rewarded for each successful referral. To make your program more interesting for your customers, you can add different levels to it. For example, offer them a 5% discount coupon when they refer a friend, a 10% discount coupon when the friend signs up, and finally, a 25% discount coupon when the friend makes his/her first purchase.

13. Early Access to Sales

It is not fair to treat your loyal customers equally to the non-loyal ones. Loyal customers are valuable and you must show them that you value them more. One of the best ways to do it is to provide them with early access to the sales and discount offers at your store or website. If you are launching a three-day flash sale, give your registered users access to it 24 hours earlier than the actual start time of the sale. This doesn’t only make your existing customers feel valued but also encourages non-registered users to register on your website.

14. Community-Based Programs

As the name suggests, community-based programs are not just about offering rewards or loyalty points but creating an online community of customers who share the same interests. You can build an online platform where customers can accumulate rewards and also share their views with each other. Building an online community is another great way to encourage loyalty among your customers. Once they join your brand’s community, they consider themselves an important part of your brand and are more likely to stay loyal.

15. Free Perks Programs

Everyone loves free gifts. If the rewards or cashback-based programs do not seem exciting to you, you can simply go with a free perks-based loyalty program. Every time your customers make a purchase, you offer them something for free. The free gift can be as small as a hair clip to as large as a travel bag from some premium brand. Based on the spending made by your customer, you can provide them with free gifts and motivate them to come back to your store.

Run Your Loyalty Incentive Program With RewardPort

To build an effective and suitable loyalty program aligning with your business requirements, you need to put a lot of time and effort into it. This is why partnering with loyalty program companies like RewardPort is always a good idea. RewardPort is one of the top reward and loyalty solution providers in India. The team of experienced marketing professionals at RewardPort analyzes all your business needs and comes up with effective loyalty solutions that work for your business.

12 Effective Employee Rewards Programs that Cost Almost Nothing

To make your employees perform to their full potential, it is important to keep them motivated. Employees play a vital role in the success of an organization. The more engaged and motivated your employees are, the higher the chances of your organization’s success. This is the reason why employee rewards programs have become an important part of almost every business. It is not necessary to offer monetary rewards or expensive gifts to your employees, but recognition and appreciation are also equally valuable. Studies have shown that employees who are frequently appreciated are more engaged at work.

If you are planning to implement an effective but inexpensive employee rewards program, here are some best ideas to consider:

1. Celebrating Personal Occassions

Celebrating personal occasions like birthdays and work anniversaries of your employees is one of the best ways to make them feel valued. You don’t need to organize an expensive party, but just send your employees personalized messages, give them a day off on birthdays, send cakes or chocolates, and let them know that you are thrilled to have them at your organization. Similarly, you can organize small work anniversary celebrations in the office, where your employees as well as you can share your experiences of working together.

2. Peer-to-Peer Appreciation

Peer-to-peer appreciation is not so popular strategy but works effectively in making the employees feel motivated at the workplace. By encouraging your employees to appreciate their peers, you can create a healthy work culture at your office. It further increases employee productivity and engagement. Promoting peer-to-peer appreciation is totally free of cost, but is one of the best engagement activities for employees. Encourage your employees to appreciate each other’s work, contribution to a particular project, or any other achievement they have made.

3. Social Media Shoutouts

Social media is a great platform to leverage your reward programs for employees and engagement activities. Many companies that use social media to recognize their employees often observe an increase in the motivation levels of their employees. You can give a social media shoutout to one or a few employees every week for their commendable work. Write a post describing the milestone they have achieved or their great performance and publish it along with their photos on your social media account. Make sure that you recognize every employee at some point in time to keep their engagement levels high.

4. Personalized Thank-You Notes

Personalized thank-you notes can work much more amazingly than you expect. Whenever an employee completes an important project on time, you can thank them for their contribution. Keep a hand-written thank you note on their desk and they will definitely be thrilled after receiving it. Though you have the option to send thank you emails or text messages, hand-written notes are always more effective. Make sure that you don’t miss out on any opportunity to thank your employees and make them feel appreciated.

5. Creative Tailor-made Rewards

Tailor-made rewards that align with the interests of your employees are truly encouraging for them to perform better. Some companies only focus on offering rewards without worrying about the interests of their employees and this is one of the biggest reasons why their corporate employees rewards programs don’t work. By offering creative rewards that add value to your employees, you can motivate them to perform even better in the future to receive higher rewards. Some best examples of creative rewards include an upgrade in the office chair, a personalized office desk, etc.

6. Monetary Incentives

Offering monetary incentives is quite an expensive deal, but it is totally worth it when your employees have performed amazingly on a project. You can offer performance-based incentives to selected employees who have fulfilled their deadlines, excelled in a project, etc. If you want to keep your incentive program less expensive, don’t offer incentives every month, but you can do it once every three-four months. Just make sure that every employee receives monetary incentives at regular intervals so that they continue to give their best at work.

7. Learning & Development Rewards

Monetary benefits or expensive gifts are not the only options to consider when you want to offer some valuable rewards to your employees. You can even boost their engagement by providing learning and development-based rewards. Provide them with access to educational webinars, send them to conferences, and allow them to access online courses of their choice for free. Everyone wants to grow their skills while doing a job. By giving your employees an opportunity to learn and develop their personal skills, you can give them an additional reason to work at your organization and perform their best.

8. Organizing Lunch with Top Performers

Another amazing idea to boost employee engagement is to organize lunch for monthly top performers with the company owners. You can choose one or multiple employees who have performed the best in a month and allow them to have lunch with the leaders of their company. Team lunches are one of the most effective ways to improve team building and work culture. If organizing an outdoor lunch seems challenging, you can just order the favorite snack of your best-performing employees and get it delivered to their desks along with a thank-you note.

9. Include Gamification

Gamification has become a powerful tool that companies are now using to make their corporate employees’ reward programs more interesting and effective. By organizing gamification activities for employees, you can create healthy competition at your workplace and motivate each employee to perform to their full potential. Some best gamification ideas include the employee of the month program, game-based learning or certification programs, achievement badges, etc. You can partner with rewards and loyalty solution companies like RewardPort to gamify your reward program for employees in the best way possible.

10. Monthly Awards and Recognition

Rewards and recognition are effective when offered on a regular basis. Another great way to boost the productivity and motivation levels of your employees is to run monthly awards and recognition programs. At the end of each month, give your employees feedback reports on their performance throughout the month. Make sure to add some positive as well as negative (if any) feedback in this report. Recognize the employees who have shown consistent dedication and hard work throughout the month and award them a certificate of appreciation.

11. Gift of Flexible Timing

Everyone values time and if your can gift some time to your employees, it would be one of the best rewards for them. Whenever an employee completes a project on time or gives an excellent performance, you can allow them to leave a few hours earlier or to come a few hours late on the next day. If this doesn’t sound like a good idea, just allow them to work from home for one day. Flexibility in timings is something that every employee wants and if you can offer this based on their performance, you can motivate them to give their best every single day.

12. Award for Punctuality

There are some employees who are always on or before time. Encouraging them to continue this behavior is important. When you reward punctual employees, it doesn’t only motivate them, but their co-workers are also encouraged to reach the office on time. You can track the timings of your employees and offer rewards or recognition to the ones who have been punctual through the month, quarter, or year.

Build Your Employee Rewards Program With RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top rewards and loyalty solution providers offering a range of services, including employee rewards and recognition programs. The team of experienced marketing professionals at RewardPort can help you plan and implement an employee rewards program as per your requirements. With rewards starting at as low as Rs. 10, RewardPort is the best company to consider if you wish to have an effective but inexpensive employee rewards program.

5 Reasons Why You Need Consumer Sales Promotion Programs as a Mid-Size Business

Consumer sales promotion programs can drive an immediate boost to the sales and revenue of a business. Be it a large business or a small to miz-size one, correctly implemented sales promotions are extremely advantageous for every type of business. If you are running a mid-size business and want to take it to a higher level, it is important to attract new customers while making sure that the existing ones stay loyal. This is what consumer sales promotion programs help you achieve. These programs are the set of strategies that businesses use to achieve short-term business goals, like boosting revenue and increasing brand awareness within a short period of time.

Boosting sales is generally the primary reason for running sales promotion programs. However, that is not the only reason. There are various benefits of running promos like sweepstakes, free gift with purchase, consumer loyalty programs, etc. The following are some most significant reasons why you must run a consumer sales promotion program for your mid-size business:

1. Generating New Leads

Running consumer sales promotions is one of the greatest ways to generate new leads and acquire new customers. By offering products under heavy discounts, free trials, buy one get one deals, etc, you can encourage your target audience to try your product. Studies suggest that consumers are more likely to buy a new product when they are getting it at a lower price.

By providing discounts or running free gift with purchase offers, you can encourage many potential buyers to try your product who would have never bought it at the original price. Consumers don’t like to spend on something they are not sure about and this is why offering good discounts on the first purchase is always a great idea.

2. Clearing Out Old Stock

It is not a desired situation, but it happens sometimes that you overstock certain items. Selling the overstocked products within your targeted time frame becomes challenging in such cases. However, consumer sales promotions are a great solution to this as well. You can offer these products at a 50% discount or under a Buy One Get One deal. Such offers trigger your customers to buy discounted items before the deal ends.

Though it might sound a bit less profitable to offer items under such heavy discounts, this is the best way to clear out old inventory and make space for new ones. This doesn’t only help you clear overstocked items but is also an effective way to make new potential customers buy your products.

3. Introducing New Products in the Market

Even the largest brands have to build a strategy for introducing new products in the market in order to ensure that it seems worth trying to the customers. As a mid-size business, the greatest way to introduce a newly launched product in the market is to align it with a consumer sales promotion strategy. Consumers are often afraid to spend on a product that they are not very sure about. This is where promotional strategies, such as free samples, sweepstakes contests, etc, can be very effective.

You can offer free samples of the newly launched product with your bestselling products, so that it reaches maximum target customers. Another idea is to run a sweepstakes contest to make the announcement of your new product exciting. For example, you can choose a winner randomly from the buyers of your new product and offer a free electronic item (like a TV, Mobile Phone, Laptop, etc) to the winner.

4. Boosting Loyalty in Current Customers

Your efforts should not end after customer acquisition because customer retention is even more important. Studies have shown that loyal customers spend much more than new buyers. Also, the cost of managing loyal customers is less than that of acquiring new ones. Running effective sales promotions and loyalty programs can help you boost loyalty among your existing customers and constantly encourage them to spend on your brand.

One way to do this is to offer discount coupons for future purchases. Every time your customer makes a purchase, give them a discount coupon that they can use in their next purchase. When customers have an opportunity to save on their purchases, they are very much likely to come back to your brand rather than switching to something else. Make sure that these discount coupons are valid only for a certain period of time so that you can make your customers come back more often.

5. Boost Sales and Revenue

All the above factors ultimately lead to a boost in the sales and revenue of your business. If you run interesting sales promotion programs, your customers will most likely talk about it with their friends and relatives. This is how word-of-mouth marketing works and more people become aware of your brand even without any extra effort made from your end.

With sales promotion programs, your customers are encouraged to spend more and it ultimately brings more sales to your business. Consumer sales promotions help in increasing brand awareness, boosting customer loyalty, and acquiring new customers, which further increases sales and revenue.

Run Effective Consumer Sales Promotions With RewardPort

If you are still trying to figure out the best sales promotion strategy for your mid-size business, you must connect with RewardPort. RewardPort is one of India’s top loyalty and reward solution providers. The team of experienced marketing professionals at RewardPort takes every detail of your business into account and plans sales promotions accordingly. If you want your consumer sales promotion strategy to be aligned with your business objectives, RewardPort can help you find the best solution.

5 Consumer Loyalty Programs for Automotive Companies

Due to the Covid pandemic, automotive companies have seen really hard times in the last few years. Their businesses were badly impacted by the pandemic. Now, vehicle manufacturing companies, dealerships, repair shops, and other automotive service providers are coming up with different ways to stand out in the competitive market and bring their businesses back on track. One such unique measure that can help automotive companies get success is a loyalty rewards program. Loyalty programs for automotive businesses work differently than other types of brands. In this article, we are going to discuss some top loyalty program ideas for automotive companies:

1. Tier-Based Loyalty Programs

Tiered loyalty rewards programs work effectively for almost every type of business including automotive. It has become a new trend to run loyalty programs with multiple tiers. While several businesses run paid tier-based programs, a better idea is to include free as well as paid tiers in your loyalty program. By doing this, you can encourage all your customers to participate in your loyalty programs by removing the necessity of paying a fee. Those who want more premium benefits can get into paid tiers and the ones who do not want to pay, can continue with free tiers.

With each higher tier, customers become eligible for more exclusive benefits. You can even run a fully free-tiered loyalty program, where customers do not get into higher tiers by paying higher fees but by spending more on your brand. For example, every customer enters the first tier when they make their first purchase from your brand. After spending a certain amount or availing of your services a certain number of times, they get promoted to higher tiers and can get better benefits. For example, you can offer 1 complimentary car wash every quarter in the first tier and 2 free washes in the second tier, and so on.

2. Community-Based Loyalty Programs

Community-based loyalty programs are one of the best ways to make your customers feel special and boost customer engagement. As an automotive company, you can create a community of your members (the owners of your brand’s cars) and provide them with additional benefits. Some common examples of rewards or benefits in a community-based program include personalized services, access to members-only events, and access to a group or community of like-minded people.

This type of loyalty program encourages your customers to stay connected with your brand and avail of your services on a regular basis. Expecting repeat purchases as an automotive brand is a long process as people do not buy cars every day. What you can do is just build a community of your customers and allow them to interact with each other. This doesn’t only boost customer loyalty but is also very effective in improving customer engagement.

3. Free Maintenance Plans

Existing customers of a company contribute to more than 65% of its total revenue. This data is sufficient to prove the importance of retaining your existing customers. It might need some extra effort from your end but will be totally worth it. You can offer complimentary maintenance plans with your services, customized welcome kits, and other exclusive rewards to your customers. When a customer purchases a car, offer them some complimentary services or at least some service discount coupons to ensure that they come back for servicing.

An interesting idea is to run giveaway contests on your social media accounts and offer one-year complimentary maintenance to the winners. This will help you boost customer engagement and increase traffic on your website or social media accounts. Small efforts like sending car maintenance tips via emails or giving a thank you card after they avail of your services can also have a huge impact on customer loyalty.

4. Rewards Program for Carwash Services

You can also integrate your loyalty rewards program with carwash services. Run a reward-based program and allow your customers to earn reward points every time they avail of your services, including car washes. They can later redeem these reward points against future car washes to get discount coupons for other services. Some car wash companies run such loyalty programs, which do need even require customers to register or sign up for the program. Every time a customer avails of a car wash service, their vehicle is recognized through the license plate and reward points are credited to their accounts.

5. Loyalty Rewards For Every Customer Action

Another great loyalty program idea for automotive companies is to run a rewards-based loyalty program and offer loyalty points for every customer action. When a customer purchases a car or any vehicle, you offer them certain thousand points. As they are not going to repeat this purchase very soon, how can you keep your loyalty program continuous? You can do this by offering reward points for logging into your website, following you on social media, writing a positive Google review, and participating in social media contests run by your company. Apart from this, offer some additional reward points to your customers on their birthdays and anniversaries with your company.

Run an Effective Loyalty Program with RewardPort

Planning and executing a loyalty program for your business might be a challenging process as you have to keep a lot of factors in mind. While building a loyalty program, you need to ensure that the program aligns with your business objectives and is interesting for your customers. This is what RewardPort can help you achieve. RewardPort has a team of experienced marketing professionals who take your business details into account and plan a loyalty program that works best for your brand.

5 Gamification Ideas for Sales & How To Implement The Rewards

The concept of including gamification in sales has become very popular among businesses these days. Gamification includes gaming techniques, such as badges, competitions, leaderboards, etc, which encourage customers to make more purchases in order to win prizes. In short, gamification can be defined as including gaming techniques in non-gaming fields, such as sales and marketing. By implementing it properly, you can boost your sales and make your business more successful in short periods of time. Other sales gamification benefits include increased brand awareness, higher customer engagement, etc. Let us help you understand what are some top gamification strategies and how you can implement them in your business.

Best Gamification Ideas to Boost Sales

Here are some top gamification sales strategy ideas to boost sales and improve customer engagement in your business:

1. ‘Spin To Win’ Contests

The ‘Spin to Win’ contests are among the most simple yet effective gamification strategies to attract more customers and boost sales. In this, customers can spin the wheel containing different reward options and win prizes. This type of contest works for online as well as offline retail businesses. Offline stores can place a physical wheel at their store and allow customers to spin it every time they purchase something from the store.

You can include discount coupon options (like 5% discount, 10% discount, 20% discount, and so on) in your physical wheel and allow customers to spin it before billing. For example, suppose a customer purchases items worth Rs. 2,000 from your store. Before billing, you ask them to spin the wheel and they win a 20% discount coupon. You apply the coupon and your customer gets a 20% discount, which means they can now get the same items at Rs. 1,600.

If you run an online business, you can also include a digital wheel on your website. Online stores can use this wheel in more creative ways. You can either keep it similar to the example mentioned above, i.e. add discount options to the wheel, or run a different contest. You can encourage your customers to log in to your website/app regularly by offering one chance to spin every day. By this, you can boost your website log-ins and also drive more sales. Customers will more likely make a purchase when they get a discount coupon, a BOGO deal, or any such prize by spinning the wheel.

2. Scavenger Hunts

Organizing scavenger hunts is also an interesting and unique way to boost customer engagement and drive sales to your business. This gamification strategy works better for online businesses but can be effective for offline ones as well if implemented correctly. In a scavenger hunt, you ask your customers to find a hidden word or object on your website (or in your offline store) and reward them if they are able to find it. This is a great way to get your customers to explore your website and look into the sections they might not notice otherwise.

To make a scavenger hunt successful, make sure that you keep great prizes that are exciting enough for your customers to participate in the contest. To make your customers aware, you can announce the contest on your social media accounts, send personal SMS/email to all your customers, and add a banner on your website as well. Make sure to define the terms and conditions while launching the contest, such as the number of winners and the process of finalizing winners, etc.

As many participants will be able to find the hidden clues, you might not be able to offer premium prizes to each customer. What you can do is include multiple hidden clues in the contest and the more clues a customer finds, the better the chances of their winning. Even after this, if multiple participants find the clues, you can select the top winners randomly or just offer some basic rewards or coupons to all of them.

3. Top Spender Leaderboards and Prizes

Everyone loves to see their name on top of a list when the list is related to some positive reinforcement. You can run a top spenders contest for a week, a month, or even a longer period. Adding a leaderboard to your website or giving social media shoutouts to the top spenders is a great idea to encourage your customers to spend more. Allow your customers to track real-time top spenders via the leaderboard or just update it on a daily basis. To make the contest more interesting, you can add filters to check top spenders of the day, week, and month, on the leaderboard. Add different rewards for daily, weekly, and monthly winners.

For example, daily spenders get basic rewards or discount coupons, weekly top spenders get a Buy 1 Get 1 deal, and monthly top spenders get the most premium prizes. Keep exciting prizes for monthly top spenders, such as complementary merchandise, up to 70% discount coupons, free movie tickets, complimentary lunch/dinner coupons, etc, for monthly top spenders. If the prizes are exciting enough, your customers will definitely try to become top spenders and as a result, they will spend more on your brand.

4. Tiered Reward Programs

Tier-based programs are one of the most popular ways of including gamification in loyalty programs to retain customers. These do not just boost loyalty but are also very effective in boosting sales for a business. In a tiered rewards program, there are multiple tiers with different types of rewards and benefits. As a customer gets into a higher tier, he/she becomes eligible for more premium rewards. With such a rewards program, customers are encouraged to make more purchases to get promoted to higher tiers and get more rewards.

Let us help you understand this with the help of a simple example. Suppose you run a tier-based rewards program with three tiers. Your customers enter the first tier on making their first purchase and they get a 5% discount on every purchase under this tier. After making 10 purchases, they enter the second tier and get a 10% discount coupon after every purchase in this tier. Finally, they enter the third purchase after making 25 purchases (or achieving a certain spend threshold) and in this tier, they get a 20% discount coupon after every purchase.

5. Referral Contests

Referral contests are one of the greatest ways to boost sales and attract new customers. You can encourage your customers to recommend your brand to their friends and offer them exciting rewards for the same. Acquiring new customers can be very expensive otherwise, but using your existing customers for this purpose makes it much more cost-effective and convenient. Many businesses run such contests under which the customers as well as their friends get rewarded after a successful referral.

You can even divide your referral contest into different stages in order to make sure that your customers’ friends don’t just sign up but also make purchases. For example, offer some basic rewards or a 5% discount coupon to your customers when they refer a friend. Once their friend signs up, your customer as well as their friend gets a 25% discount coupon. By offering this discount coupon, you can ensure that the friend makes a purchase to redeem this coupon. Once they make their first purchase, offer the final reward or discount coupon to both of them.

Include Gamification in Your Sales Promotions with RewardPort

Gamification makes your sales promotion strategies much more interesting for your customers to participate in. It builds healthy competition among your customers and they are encouraged to spend more to win more rewards. To include gamification in sales promotions, you can connect with top reward companies like RewardPort. RewardPort has a team of experienced marketing experts who keep every detail of your business into account and run sales promotions accordingly. By combining sales gamification benefits with the best strategies, you can achieve your business objectives faster.

5 B2B Rewards Programs for Consumer Products Businesses

Although loyalty programs are more popular among B2C brands, these can also work amazingly well for B2B businesses. As the competition is really high in the market, almost every business is running a loyalty program to attract potential customers and retain them. Running a loyalty program for a B2B brand can be quite challenging, but with the right strategies, you can make your loyalty program successful and bring immense success to your business. Before planning a loyalty program for your B2B brand, you need to keep a lot of things in mind. The most important thing to understand here is that B2B loyalty programs are different from the ones that work for B2C businesses.

You need to analyze your business requirements and your customers’ needs before implementing a loyalty program. Let us help you understand what B2B loyalty programs are, how are they different, and what are the best loyalty program ideas for B2B businesses:

How Are B2B Loyalty Programs Different From B2C Loyalty Programs?

One major difference between B2B and B2C businesses arises in the size of their customer base. As B2B businesses generally have a smaller customer base, they can customize their loyalty programs to provide each customer with personalized experiences and fit the requirements of each customer. Moreover, B2B loyalty programs need better communication as you need to communicate with each customer separately for encouraging them to participate in your program. Another significant difference between B2B and B2C loyalty programs is that rewards need to be more premium in the case of B2B programs.

5 Effective B2B Loyalty Program Ideas

Here are some top loyalty program ideas to boost B2B customer engagement and improve loyalty:

1. Offer Transaction Based Discounts

Discounts work amazingly well in boosting customer loyalty as well as in improving brand reputation. After your customer makes a purchase, provide them with a discount coupon that they can redeem against the current or future purchase. Discount offers are not just beneficial for your customers, but also for your business. Customers are likely to purchase more at discounted prices and as a result, your overall sales increase. Discount-based loyalty programs can be advantageous in boosting B2B brand loyalty in many ways.

Customers always prefer to buy items at sale and hence discount offers can attract new customers to your business. When they get items at lower prices multiple times, they are more likely to make future purchases from your business and stay connected with you for a longer period. Discount-based offers can be of different types. You can either offer a fixed percentage of discount to all your customers or offer higher discounts to customers who spend more.

For example, you can offer a 10% discount to customers who buy 100 units of a product and a 20% discount to those who buy more than 300 units. Another example is to offer a 10% discount to all customers irrespective of the units they purchase. To boost sales, the first offer seems to work more effectively.

2. Run a Rewards-Based Loyalty Program

A rewards based loyalty program works for almost every type of business, including B2B and B2C businesses. However, there can be a difference in the implementation of rewards programs for B2B companies. With this type of loyalty program, you can allow your customers to earn some reward points for every purchase they make and redeem these rewards against exciting vouchers or discount coupons. Make sure that you offer some exciting redemption options that can encourage your customers to earn more and more reward points.

You can fix the number of loyalty reward points against a certain spend amount and allow your customers to earn rewards accordingly. Also, the monetary value of these reward points can be fixed by you as per your preference. You can even keep the monetary value higher for some redemption options and lower for others. For example, suppose you offer 500 Reward Points for every spend of Rs. 10,000, where the value of each reward point is equivalent to Re. 1 for redemption against your products and it is Re. 0.5 for redemption against other options, such as vouchers or discount coupons of other brands.

With these loyalty programs, customers are encouraged to spend more in order to earn more rewards. And when you offer a higher monetary value of reward points for redemption against your products, customers are more likely to make repeat purchases in order to use their reward points. Reward and loyalty solution companies like RewardPort can help you run such loyalty programs and boost B2B brand loyalty.

3. Use Tiered Incentives

Offering tiered incentives is one of the fairest ways to treat your most loyal customers the best. Tier-based loyalty programs are also among the most popular types of loyalty programs for B2B companies. You can divide your loyalty program into different tiers, where a higher tier comes with better rewards and benefits. The more customer purchases, the higher tier they get promoted to. This is a great way to encourage your customers to purchase more frequently in order to get into the upper tier and receive more premium benefits.

For example, let’s suppose you run a loyalty program having three tiers. Your customers enter the first tier after they make their first purchase and receive a 5% discount coupon after every purchase in this tier. This discount coupon can be redeemed against future purchases. After spending a certain amount on your business or after making a specific number of purchases, they enter the second tier and receive a 10% discount coupon after every purchase. Similarly, they enter the third tier after fulfilling the pre-specified conditions and receive a 15% discount coupon after every purchase in this tier.

4. Stimulate Co-Marketing and Support Activities

Co-marketing activities do not just help you boost customer loyalty but also allow you to strengthen relationships with your customers. Provide your B2B customers with the marketing resources and allow them to expand their business as it is ultimately going to benefit your business as well. You can allow their marketing teams to work with your marketing experts and make better sales strategies together. You can mention their business in your advertisements and marketing campaigns to help them get a better reach.

For example, as a manufacturer of home decor products, most of your customers will be retail home decor shop owners. When you advertise your products, you can mention the addresses of your customers’ shops from where your end consumers can buy these products. This will not only help your customers but also improve your marketing campaigns.

5. Offer Referral Incentives

Referral incentives or discounts are one of the most effective loyalty programs with dual benefits. One, you can boost loyalty in your existing customers. Two, you can acquire new customers with minimum effort. In a referral loyalty program, you incentivize your customers to recommend your brand to their friends. The referral incentives can be in the form of rewards, discount coupons, or any other benefit that is exciting enough to encourage your customers to participate in this program.

To make the program more interesting, you can even add different incentives at different stages of referral. For example, suppose you run a discount-based referral program. In this, your customers get a 5% discount coupon when they refer a friend and they get another 10% discount coupon when the friend makes their first purchase. Along with acquiring new customers, this is a great way to boost B2B customer engagement.

Run the Best B2B Loyalty Program With RewardPort

RewardPort, being one of the top rewards and loyalty solution providers in India, can help you build a customized loyalty program for your business. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort makes sure that every detail of your business is taken into consideration and that the loyalty program is planned accordingly. A B2B rewards program is successful when it aligns with your business requirements and fulfills your customers’ interests. This is what RewardPort can do for you.