Loyalty Program

7 Types of Customer Loyalty Programs That Work for All Businesses

What are some examples of businesses with the best loyalty programs?Studies suggest that around 84% of consumers are more likely to stick to a brand that runs a loyalty program. This is the reason why more than 90% of brands run a loyalty program today. Loyalty programs can definitely drive immense success to a business, but only when they are executed in the right manner. The best loyalty program for a business depends on various factors, including the type of business, the customer base, and the business objectives. Choosing the right program for your brand might be a real challenge. However, there are some common types of loyalty programs that work for almost every business. Some of these programs are as follows:

1. Rewards Points-Based Programs

Reward Point-based programs are one of the most widely used loyalty programs by businesses of every type. These programs are being used since the 1700s and are still considered one of the most successful strategies to win customer loyalty. In a rewards program, customers earn some sort of reward points every time they make a purchase. The number of points against a particular spend amount is pre-specified by the brand and customers earn accordingly.

For example, if a brand offers 10 Reward Points against every spend of Rs. 100, customers will earn 50 RPs on spending Rs. 500, 100 RPs on spending Rs. 1,000, and so on. Now, the monetary value of these reward points depends on the brand running the program. More valuable rewards are able to attract more customers. A program offering 5 Reward Points with each point equivalent to Re. 1 would be better than a program offering 10 Reward Points with each point equivalent to Re. 0.25.

Customers can later redeem these points against discount coupons, merchandise, or even against the products of other brands in some cases. You can create a separate rewards portal to run your loyalty program and add multiple redemption options for your customers. The more redemption options you offer, the happier your customers are. Though rewards programs are very good for acquiring new customers and encouraging them to stay loyal, these are not much effective in motivating customers to spend more.

2. Cashback-Based Programs

The cashback-based programs are the second most popular type of loyalty program after reward-based ones. These are very similar to reward programs in terms of their functionality. Instead of reward points, customers earn cashback that can either be directly redeemed against future purchases or can be credited back into their bank accounts. The percentage of cashback is fixed by the brand and customers get the corresponding amount back every time they make a purchase.

The most effective way to retain customers via cashback-based programs is to offer store-specific cashback, i.e. cashback that can only be redeemed against future purchases at your brand. The loyalty program run by Flipkart is one of the best examples of such cashback programs. Flipkart offers SuperCoins to its customers on every purchase they make. These SuperCoins are just like cashback as one coin is equivalent to Re. 1. Customers can redeem these coins against Flipkart purchases as well as against several other brands available for redemption.

Restricting the redemption option only to your brand might not be a very good idea, but make sure that it is the primary redemption option. You can allow your customers to redeem the cashback against other coupons or gift cards as well, but keeping your products as the most valuable redemption option can help you make your loyalty program successful.

3. Tier-Based Loyalty Programs

Tier-based loyalty programs also work well for almost every type of business. Though these are less popular compared to the rewards and cashback-based programs, many businesses are now running tiered loyalty programs as these can be amazingly successful if implemented correctly. These programs generally have three or more tiers with benefits getting more exclusive with each upper tier. The more a customer purchases, the higher tier he/she enters. And the higher tier a customer enters, the better rewards and benefits he/she earns.

For example, suppose you run a tiered loyalty program having three tiers. Customers enter the first tier as soon as they make their first purchase and they get 5% cashback under this tier. After making 10 purchases (worth above a pre-specified amount), they enter the second tier and start earning 7% cashback along with discount coupons on every purchase. Now, once they complete 30 or more purchases with your brand, they enter the third and the most premium tier that offers 10% cashback, discount coupons, as well as additional spend-based rewards.

This is how tier-based loyalty programs work. One of the biggest advantages of these programs is that you can customize them as per your business requirements. Also, you can offer more value to more loyal customers with this type of loyalty program.

4. Punch Card Programs

Punch Card-based programs are one of the most traditional loyalty programs that businesses have been using for several decades. This program is one of the most effective strategies to drive repeat business and boost customer loyalty. In a punch card program, customers get a card with a specific number of empty boxes. Every time they make a purchase, one empty box gets punched with the store stamp. Once all the empty boxes get stamped, customers get eligible for a free gift or rewards that are specified in the program.

For example, suppose you own a burger restaurant and run a punch card program for your customers. Let’s say your punch card has 10 empty boxes and on the 10th purchase, you offer a free meal for two. Now, your customers will come along with the punch card and get it stamped every time they purchase a burger. Once they reach the 10th box, they are eligible for the free meal.

5. Subscription-Based Loyalty Programs

Subscription-based loyalty programs are less preferred but are one of the most successful loyalty programs. In this type of program, customers need to pay in order to participate and earn the benefits of the loyalty program. If you opt for a subscription-based loyalty program, you must be very sure that your customers will find your program exciting enough to pay for it. As customers pay for these loyalty programs, they are more likely to stay loyal and engaged with your brand.

As per research, the members of subscription-based loyalty programs are 60% more likely to purchase more often from your brand. On the other hand, free loyalty programs increase that cance only to 30%, which is comparatively very low. Although paid loyalty programs can be quite expensive for average customers, this is also a positive point at the same time. With these programs, you can identify your best customers and provide them with the most premium benefits.

6. Charity-Based Loyalty Programs

Charity-based loyalty programs are quite unique yet one of the most effective customer loyalty programs run by businesses. These programs are very similar to rewards-based programs other than the redemption process. In a charity-based program, customers earn reward points that are redeemable against charity donations. These programs work for every business as almost every customer loves to donate to a social cause. You can include multiple charity options with your program and allow your customers to donate the equivalent amount to the charity of their choice once they accumulate a certain number of points.

7. Spend-Based Loyalty Programs

Spend-based loyalty programs, also known as milestone-based customer loyalty programs, reward customers for making purchases beyond a specific amount. In this type of program, not every customer gets rewarded, but it rewards only those who purchase above a pre-specified amount. The rewards can also get better with more spends. Businesses can customize these programs as per their requirements and their customers’ interests. For example, you can offer 2% cashback on spends up to Rs. 1,000, 5% cashback on spends up to Rs. 5,000, and 10% cashback on spends beyond Rs. 5,000.

Run The Best Loyalty Programs for Your Business With RewardPort

Implementing a loyalty program is not a big deal, but choosing the right loyalty program for your business is. A loyalty program is most successful when it aligns with the goals of your business and also takes the interests of your customers into account. This is what RewardPort can help you with. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort takes every small detail of your business into consideration and helps you run a loyalty program accordingly. Moreover, RewardPort includes gamification strategies in your loyalty programs, which make them even more exciting for your customers.

Do ​​Customer Loyalty Programs Work for Manufacturing Businesses?

Customer loyalty programs do not only work for retail businesses, but manufacturing industries can also benefit by running these programs. Intermediaries, i.e. dealers, distributors, and wholesalers, play a significant role in the success of manufacturing businesses. Your end consumers may be loyal to your brand, but they rarely interact with the manufacturers. Therefore, their experiences depend entirely on how your dealers and distributors sell your products to them.

This is where B2B loyalty programs come into play for manufacturing companies. A loyalty program is the best way to increase RoI for your business and encourage your customers (dealers and wholesalers) to provide the best experiences to your end consumers. The loyalty programs for manufacturing companies work differently from the ones that are run by retailers. However, the end goal is the same in both cases and that is to improve end customer satisfaction.

Let us help you understand what are the advantages of loyalty reward programs for manufacturing businesses and how you can implement them:

How Customer Loyalty Programs Can Change The Game For Manufacturing Businesses?

In B2B businesses, the expectations of loyalty programs are very much influenced by the consumer experience. Before purchasing from a manufacturer, the wholesalers and retailers look for various factors, including the manufacturing company’s customer service, in order to enhance the experiences of their end customers. It is because good customer service allows them to contact the manufacturer whenever the end consumer faces an issue.

This shows how customer-centric marketing has taken over product-centric marketing. With this, it becomes essential for manufacturing companies to offer real value to their customers. As a manufacturer, you have to make your partners or dealers trust that you want their business to grow along with yours. When you are able to do this, you get loyalty from your partners as a result.

Your partners may be having other partners as well. What makes them sell your products on priority? It is a good loyalty program. There are various benefits of loyalty rewards for manufacturing businesses. When you offer valuable rewards or incentives to your dealer partners, they become your brand advocates and promote your products among their customers. They put more effort into selling your products so that they can earn more and more rewards.

How To Create a Successful Manufacturing Loyalty Program?

The following tips might help you build a successful customer loyalty program for your manufacturing business:

Focus More on Offering Value

It’s good to offer rewards, cashback, free gifts, etc, to boost your sales. But offering value is the best thing you can do to strengthen your relationship with your dealers, partners, or wholesalers. Offer rewards to your dealer partners not just for making more purchases, but also for participating in education and training programs. Everyone loves to learn and grow while working.

You can create a training program that allows your partners, dealers, and their sales team to learn about your products. Make sure that these programs allow them to develop a few other skills as well. As per research, over 84% of companies or dealers are likely to partner with a business that provides a clear understanding of their goals.

Other types of incentives that are much more effective than discount-based loyalty programs include co-marketing funds. You can offer marketing funds or provide your partner with access to your marketing experts.

Reward Your Partners With Targeted Incentives

Offering target-based loyalty rewards is another great way to make your loyalty program successful. Reward your partners on achieving different milestones, such as completing the onboarding process, and completing a training or certification program that you offer. It is important to make your partners very well aware of your products and services. And incentivized training programs are the best way to do this.

Other than this, you can offer incentives for achieving sales targets. Provide great additional discounts to your customers (dealers or wholesalers) when they perform exceptionally well. This will motivate them to perform even better and drive more sales in the future. You can also reward them for recommending your brand to other potential customers who can become your partners. This is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to expand your reach.

You can connect with the best loyalty program providers like RewardPort to create reward programs with targeted incentives.

Offer Personalized Customer Service

You can create a unique bond with your customers by offering them personalized customer service. When you personally address each of your customers, they feel valued and emotionally connected to your business. Send them personalized messages on special occasions and on achieving specific milestones. Studies suggest that over 70% of customers prefer doing business with companies that offer personalized experiences.

A multi-channel service system allows you to assist your customers whenever they need help and stay connected with them. The more a brand interacts with its customers, the better is the customer satisfaction. With a multi-channel service system, you can provide your customers with greater access to your support team and they will be able to interact better.

Good customer service is sometimes enough to hold your partners and make long-term relationships with them. Therefore, you must make sure that your customers are being heard and answered every time they have a problem.

Share Positive Customer Reviews

Consumers trust the review of users of a brand more than the promotions and advertisements of the brand itself. You can share your existing customers’ reviews on social media platforms and let your target audience know how you are performing. You can gather customer feedback through surveys or by asking them to write short testimonials.

You can offer rewards or incentives to your customers for sharing feedback or filing surveys. In case there are some negative reviews, make sure that you work on them in order to retain your existing customers. When you work on your customers’ feedback and let them know about it, they feel valued and are more likely to stay loyal.

Boost Customer Loyalty in Your Business With RewardPort

After knowing the advantages of loyalty reward programs, you might look for the best loyalty solution companies to manage your loyalty programs. Being the top loyalty program provider in India, RewardPort provides you with complete loyalty solutions aligning with your business goals. As a manufacturing brand, you must have a proper strategy to reward your partners as a way to enhance the experiences of your end consumers. This is what RewardPort can do for you. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort analyzes your business details thoroughly and helps you run an effective loyalty program that works perfectly for your brand.

What is Web3 & How Is It the Next Frontier in Sales Promotion Programs

A sales promotion agency can help you achieve your business goals faster with the right strategies and technologies. Web3 or Web 3.0, emerging as the new face of the internet, promises more transparency and higher security of user data. From static Web1 and then dynamic Web2 to the decentralized Web3, the way the internet works has changed. Businesses also use continuously evolving technologies to grow at a faster pace. Web 3 allows businesses to make new innovations in their marketing strategies by providing them with access to a global marketplace.

When looking for a sales promotions company, you must ensure that the platform is using the latest technologies and tools to provide you with the best results. Talking about Web3 and its impact on businesses’ sales promotions, you first need to understand what Web3 is and what are its key features:

What is Web3?

Web3 refers to the next evolution of the World Wide Web, which includes concepts such as blockchain technologies, decentralization, token-based economics, etc. Putting it in simple words, Web3 defines the next generation of the internet. It provides users with better control over data and improves the way they interact with the internet. Web3 allows users to get rid of intermediaries and aims to provide a more secure and transparent online experience.

The idea of decentralization lies in the heart of Web3. It means that data and the power to handle it are not in the hands of a central authority, but are distributed among more participants. This is exactly opposite to Web2, i.e. the current web, where market leaders like Facebook, Google, etc, have a lot of control over the data that users consume.

Key Features of Web3

The definition of Web3 is still evolving. Being fully decentralized, it aims to put content creation in the hands of creators and not the owners of the platforms. The key features of Web3 include:

1. Decentralized systems running on blockchain technology:

Decentralization of data and power is the core principle of Web3. The idea refers to a system where no central authority is controlling the data and the flow of information. It is instead distributed among many node networks.

Decentralized systems like blockchain technology are being used to build Web3. This technology provides a transparent, secure, and user-centric ledger to record transactions and track assets.

2. Interoperability, which allows different systems to work together:

Web3 is designed to create an open and inclusive online environment. It allows users to access different technologies and systems across different chains together. It gives the freedom of mobility to users and also maintains the security that users expect from blockchain technology.

3. Secure Communication between users:

Web3 allows users to communicate with each other securely while keeping their communications private. With this, users get greater control over their personal information. Moreover, it also reduces the risk of cyber attacks on user data.

4. Semantic Web & AI:

The semantic web makes use of AI technologies to understand the intention of customers in order to improve their overall experience. Web 3 aims to improve the technologies to generate, connect, and share the content by understanding the searches more accurately based on their meaning, and not on the keywords.

5. 3D Graphics and Spatial Web:

Earlier, the graphics of websites were slow, primitive, and use to fail often. However, the advancements like 3D graphics, virtual reality, etc, aim to provide a more realistic online experience to users. Various industries are already using 3D graphics to promote their products and services.

Best Web3 Marketing Strategies

The following are some best strategies that businesses can use for Web3 marketing:

1. Digital Strategy

Web3 allows businesses to develop a comprehensive digital strategy by looking at the latest trends and technologies. The strategy includes a clear understanding of business objectives, target audience, and goals that a brand intends to achieve. This digital strategy must include the following:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Promotions to get more traffic
• Content Marketing
• Boosting engagement to social media channels, websites, or apps.

2. NFT Marketing

NFT (Non-Fungible Token) refers to a unique e-identifier that is used as a certification of ownership and authenticity. The unique token is recorded in the blockchain and can not be substituted or copied. Web3 allows businesses to develop a marketing strategy and showcase its unique benefits and features through NFTs. With this, brands can target the most relevant audience and make the most out of their marketing tactics.

3. Token Distribution Strategy

Tokens in Web3 are like digital assets that businesses can use to represent specific values in a particular ecosystem. Businesses can build a transparent and clear token distribution strategy that includes allocation, total supply, and vesting schedule of the tokens. This helps them ensure fairness and attract more potential investors.

4. Decentralization Applications (dApps) Marketing

Another great practice for Web3 marketing is dApps marketing. dApps allow you to create content, become its owner, and share the value between different platforms that you use. You can promote your dApps through targeted online and offline marketing techniques. Some of the effective marketing efforts include community building, influencer marketing, and sponsoring events.

Web3 For Businesses and Their Sales Promotion Programs

The biggest impact of Web3 on businesses is going to be higher transparency and a greater user-oriented approach. The way businesses use and handle user data will change and customers will have a higher control over their data. With tokenization techniques like NFT marketing, businesses can develop marketing strategies and showcase their unique features to set their brand apart from their competitors.

The open interconnectivity of Web3 makes it easier for businesses to understand and meet the high expectations of their customers. With this, the sales promotion strategies of businesses become more effective and are likely to be successful. Web3 can also help businesses in strengthening relationships with their customers. With the decentralized blockchain technology, every transaction is recorded, which all the involved parties can see.

This makes companies directly accountable to the customers, increasing transparency among them. This transparency helps businesses in building trust and long-lasting relationships with their customers. This is how sales promotion techniques become more meaningful with the advent of Web3.

Run Powerful Sales Promotions with RewardPort

A sales promotion program that aligns with the needs of your business can help you achieve your business objectives. It is important to consider every single detail of a business and its customers while implementing sales promotion techniques. RewardPort, being the best sales promotion agency in India, has a team of experienced marketing experts who can plan the best sales promotions based on your business requirements.

With deep expertise in Web3 technologies and blockchain, RewardPort creates innovative solutions to help brands achieve their goals.

How to Run a Loyalty Rewards Program as a Small Business?

Running a loyalty rewards program is the best way to retain existing customers. It can also help you attract new customers by setting your brand apart from the competitors. With increasing competition in the market, more businesses are recognizing the need for customer loyalty. Encouraging customers to stay loyal has become a challenge for businesses, especially for the small ones, as customers have lots of options to choose from in the market.

This is where loyalty programs come into play. Almost every business, from average to large-sized, is running a loyalty program today. But for small businesses, it is not very practical to spend a lot on loyalty programs. However, with a proper strategy, small businesses can create effective loyalty rewards programs under their budget. Before you start looking for a loyalty program provider, you must understand why loyalty programs are so important for a business:

Why is a Loyalty Rewards Program Important?

Studies suggest that acquiring new customers can be 5 to 25% more expensive than retaining the existing ones. Though it is essential to attract your target audience, focusing more on customer loyalty can take your brand to another level. Customer loyalty matters even more for small businesses, which can not spend much on customer acquisition.

In today’s competitive market, it becomes challenging to motivate your customers to stay loyal when they have a lot of other options. But with an effective loyalty program, you can keep your customers coming back again and again. With these programs, you can reward your customers for every purchase they make. It makes them feel that they are receiving something in return for their spend. As a result, they are encouraged to make repeat purchases to earn more rewards.

Some of the most significant advantages of loyalty reward programs include:

• Helps in customer retention.
• Encourages customers to make repeat purchases, which further increases the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
• Strengthens your relationship with your customers by improving customer satisfaction.
• Helps you differentiate your brand from the competitors.

Tips for Running loyalty programs for small businesses

If you are running a small business and trying to build an inexpensive yet effective loyalty program, the following tips might help you achieve your goal:

1. Profile your customers

Profiling your customers refers to creating a perfect picture of your target audience. It is important to identify what your target audience or your customer base looks like. You will have to study your customers and categorize them based on their interests, buying habits, locations, etc. Also, check your customers’ data to find out how many customers make repeat purchases and what is the percentage of one-time buyers.

You should also consider the reviews and feedback of your customers to understand what they like the most and what they do not. After recognizing the requirements and interests of your customers, you can build the most successful loyalty program that does its job of customer retention perfectly.

2. Find What Your Customers Value

You can not make the most out of a loyalty program until you offer something that your customers value. The rewards or benefits you are offering must be interesting enough for your customers to build excitement among them. They will definitely come back to earn more rewards, provided that the rewards are valuable for them.

To find out what your customers are interested in, you can take customer surveys or launch polls through your social media accounts. Another way is to launch short-term offers with different reward options and see which offer gets the most customer engagement. Going with a rewards-based or a cashback-based loyalty program is always a safe option. You can either offer a certain percentage of cashback or a certain number of rewards every time your customers spend a specific amount on your brand.

If you are creating a rewards-based loyalty program, try to offer some great redemption options to your customers. Allowing them to use the rewards against future purchases is the most effective way to encourage repeat purchases.

3. Build 2-3 Programs

Many businesses have different types of loyalty programs running simultaneously. You can also do the same to set your brand apart from the competitors and make the loyalty program exciting for your customers. Let us help you understand this with an example. Suppose you run a rewards-based loyalty program. You have a separate portal for loyalty programs where your customers can log in to track their rewards and redeem them.

To make this program more interesting, you can include gamification. Along with the regular rewards that your customers earn on making purchases, allow them to increase the number of earned reward points in some other ways. You can do this by running a ‘Spin to Win; contest on your website or app. Give your customers a chance to spin the wheel once every day and earn some additional rewards. This will help you increase log-ins to your website/app and also make the loyalty program interesting for your customers.

Similarly, you can even run tier-based loyalty programs along with a basic rewards program or a cashback program. The more rewards you offer, the more your customers are encouraged to stay loyal.

4. Find The Right Platform & Automate The Program

You can find various platforms online that run loyalty programs for small businesses. To find the right platform, you have to keep a lot of factors in mind. Your first step should be to set a budget and look for loyalty solution providers that fit your needs. RewardPort can help you run the best loyalty programs with rewards starting from as low as Rs. 10.

Also, make sure that the platform or tool considers your business objectives and creates a loyalty program that aligns with the interests of your customers. The platform should also allow you to automate the loyalty programs as running them manually can be a real challenge. For automation, you can build a separate rewards portal where your customers can create an account, and all their rewards get accrued automatically when they make a purchase.

Best Loyalty Program Ideas for Small Businesses

The benefits of loyalty rewards and not unknown to businesses these days. However, you need to choose the right type of loyalty program for your brand in order to make it work effectively. The following are some best and most cost-effective loyalty program ideas for small businesses:

Punch Cards:

A punch card is one of the most basic types of loyalty programs. With a punch card, you can encourage your customers to make a certain number of purchases in order to earn a free gift/reward. For example, suppose you run a salon. You can print punch cards with 9 empty boxes and include a free service (like a free hair spa) in the 10th box.

Now, every time your customer visits and avails of your service, a box in their punch card gets stamped. On their 10th purchase, they can avail of a free hair spa along with the service they are going to avail of. This is one of the easiest loyalty programs as you don’t need to make any special efforts to run this.

Come Up with Membership Plans:

Customers love it when they are appreciated for their purchase. Having a membership plan is one of the best ways to make your loyal customers feel special. You can either have a free membership plan or a paid plan or both. Allow your customers to sign-up for the membership plans and avail of the benefits.

If you are having a free and paid membership plan, you can include more benefits with the paid plan. Make sure not to keep the fee of these plans low and affordable for most of your customers. Your goal should not be to make revenue out of this fee, but only to make your customers stick to your brand. Once your customers pay a fee for the membership plan, they are very less likely to switch to other brands.

Points-Based Rewards Program

Points-based loyalty programs are the most popular these days. You can offer a certain number of reward points on every purchase your customers make. In these programs, the number of reward points is fixed against a certain spend amount. The monetary value of rewards and redemption options can be decided by the brand.

For example, you can offer 10 Reward Points for every spend of Rs. 100. Now if a customer makes a purchase worth Rs. 500, they earn 50 points. Let’s say the monetary value of 1 Reward Point is Re. 0.5 and you allow redemption against your own products or services. The next time your customer purchases something, he/she gets Rs. 25 (50 points worth Re. 0.5 each) off on this.

Referral Programs

Referral programs do not only work for customer retention but are also very effective in acquiring new customers. You can run a ‘Refer a Friend’ contest on your website or app. Make sure that you offer some valuable rewards or discounts so that your customers refer as many friends as they can. Once their friends sign up or make a purchase, your customers as well as the friends get the reward.

The benefits of loyalty rewards are not only restricted to customer retention, but these programs also help you acquire new customers, boost brand awareness, and improve customer satisfaction.

Run an Effective Loyalty Rewards Program with RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top rewards and loyalty program providers in India. With high-quality and low-cost rewards, RewardPort can help you run cost-effective loyalty programs that are just perfect for your small business. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort considers every small detail of your business to come up with an effective loyalty program plan that works best for your brand.

How to Use Sales Promotion Tools to Scale Your B2B Sales Funnel

Sales promotion tools can smoothen your marketing efforts by allowing you to market your products or services in a creative way. The B2B market is highly competitive today. To beat such high competition in the market, most businesses are using sales promotion techniques. Sales promotions are the strategies followed by businesses to boost their sales, increase revenue, or achieve other short-term goals. If implemented well, these strategies can take any business to the next level in a very short time period.

If you are facing challenges in generating leads or converting them, you first need to understand the four stages of B2B inbound marketing. Using the right sales promotion tools in each of these stages can help you achieve your business objectives faster. Before that, let us help you understand what sales promotion tools mean and how you can use them to scale your B2B business:

What are Sales Promotion Tools?

Sales Promotion Tools are the resources or methods that businesses use to achieve their short-term sales objectives. These tools help brands in encouraging their customers to buy specific products. The sales promotion tools can be consumer-oriented or trade oriented based on the type of business. Moreover, the objective of sales promotion programs can also be different. Some most significant benefits of sales promotions include an increase in sales, greater brand awareness, better customer engagement, etc.

Many businesses use sales promotions to increase the awareness of their newly launched products or to boost sales for a particular set of products. Some brands use these strategies to clean old stock and make space for new inventory. Whatever the goal is, sales promotion methods work best when you make the use of right sales promotion tools.

Tools for Complete Inbound Funnel Marketing

Inbound marketing is the process where businesses make their potential leads choose them over their competitors. The process consists of four stages, including attract, convert, close, and delight stage. From attracting potential buyers to converting and strengthening relations with them, the inbound marketing funnel covers every single phase. Here is a detailed explanation of all four stages included in the inbound marketing funnel:

1. Attract

‘Attract’ is the first stage of inbound funnel marketing. In this, you need to create engaging content and optimize it to attract your target audience. As a B2B business, your goal might be to attract more dealers, channel partners, or wholesalers. In this phase, you need to majorly focus on increasing brand awareness and finding potential partners who are not familiar with your brand. A great way to identify your target audience is to look at your current customer base and understand patterns among them.

You have to reach out to strangers who can become your potential buyers. After this, you must focus on building interest and excitement among your target audience through social media content, blogs, paid search advertisements, etc. To create engaging content, it is essential to understand buyers’ personas. Understanding buyers’ personas mean finding out their interests, requirements, and behaviors.

In this first stage, you can perform the following activities to attract customers:

• Strengthen the relationships with potential buyers via social media or other channels.
• Use SEO strategies and keyword research to target the right audience.
• Create engaging content to show your target audience that you have the solution to their problems.

Tools You Can Use to ‘Attract’ Your Customers

The following are some great tools that you can use to make the most out of the ‘attract’ stage in your inbound marketing strategy:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

As the number of internet users is increasing every day, it has become important for businesses to have an online presence. Writing engaging content and publishing it on your website is not enough. You also need to ensure that the content is well-optimized to rank higher on the search engines like Google. If your content is not SEO optimized, it will hardly be visible to your target audience.

2. CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

CRM is the process of managing business relationships and interactions with your existing and potential customers. As per research, over 62% of marketers use some sort of CRM tool to strengthen communication with their potential clients. Zoho CRM, Zendesk, and Hubspot CRM are some most popular tools used for customer relationship management.

2. Convert

The next stage in complete inbound funnel marketing is ‘Convert.’ As suggested by the name, this stage is all about making efforts to convert your visitors into qualified leads. These can be your social media followers, website visitors, blog readers, or any audience that you have access to. Some most common elements that you can use for conversions include case studies, gated content, webinars, ebooks, resource libraries, etc.

Engaging and valuable content is the heart of inbound marketing for B2B businesses. This content should educate your target audience about your brand and the products/services you offer. Make sure that your content is well-researched. Also, avoid writing it in a too promotional tone.

Gated content is one of the powerful tools to convert visitors into leads. This is the content that users can access only after providing their information, such as name, email, mobile number, etc. Gated content doesn’t only help you boost engagement on your website, but also allows you to collect the data of your potential customers. Though these leads have not yet made a purchase on your website, they become a regular visitor of your website once they sign up.

Tools You Can Use To ‘Convert’ Visitors into Potential Leads

The process of conversion is indeed challenging. The following are some best tools for sales promotion that are effective in encouraging your target audience to become your qualified leads:

1. CTA (Call to Action)

As the name suggests, CTA refers to the strategies planned by businesses to encourage their audience to take action. You can add links and buttons to your content that motivate your customers to download a file, fill out a form, or visit a specific page. You can add such links to your landing pages.

2. Lead Capture & Conversion tools

Some popular tools that you can use in this stage include TypeForm, Optinmonster, and Sumo. TypeForm allows you to create surveys without writing any code. Optinmonster is a WordPress plugin for lead generation, which is used by over 1 million websites.

3. Lead Generation Tools

Lead Generation tools like Leadpages, Unbounce, Instapage, etc, can help you find prospects. Leadpages is an online software that allows you to publish landing pages quickly to convert clicks into customers. Unbounce allows businesses to create attention-catching landing pages with minimal effort. The third tool, Instapage, is useful for creating landing pages for your marketing and promotional campaigns.

3. Close

The ‘Close’ stage is the most important and exciting one for businesses as this is where your leads turn into your customers. This is the point where your potential leads trust your brand. They must feel that the products or services you offer are the best potential solutions to their problems. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to make your leads become your customers. Though this stage is not very easy to deal with, this is where all your hard work or attracting and converting customers might pay off.

Tools You Can Use To ‘Close’ The Deals

The following are some best tools for sales promotion that are effective in helping businesses convert leads:

1. Email Marketing

After collecting the email addresses of your potential customers in the ‘convert’ stage, it becomes easier to directly communicate with them. You can send them emails related to your products, about your new launches, sales, ongoing offers, etc. Sending relevant emails to your customers is the best way to gain their trust. But make sure not to spam their inbox.

2. Marketing automation tools

Marketing automation tools allow you to relax and just observe the processes while they perform their tasks. With these tools, you can reach out to your customers with the most relevant content at the most suitable time. Moreover, these tools score your customers based on their chances of making a purchase. Some popular marketing tools, include Drip, LeadsBridge, and Marketo.

4. Delight

Even after attracting a generating leads and transforming them into customers, your task is not over. You need to make every possible effort in order to make sure that the customers stay loyal. The ‘Delight’ stage is all about building stronger relations with your customers and encouraging them to make repeat purchases. Loyal customers not only purchase more often, but they can also help you generate more leads by recommending your products and services to their friends.

Make sure to engage with your customers on a regular basis via social media or other channels. Your customers must not feel that they are getting valued only until they make a purchase.

Tools You Can Use To ‘Delight’ Your Customers

Converting your leads into customers and thinking that you are done is not a good idea. Retaining your existing customers is much more important than acquiring new ones. The following tools can help you with the same:

1. Social Media Management Tools

Social Media is the best way to stay connected with your customers and engage with them on a regular basis. Some most powerful social media management tools include BuzzSumo, Buffer, and Sprout Social.

2. Loyalty Programs

Running continuous loyalty programs is another great way to keep your customers coming back. By offering them rewards for every purchase, you can make them feel appreciated for their purchase. It helps you boost repeat purchases as well as customer satisfaction.

Create an Effective Sales Promotion Strategy with RewardPort

An effective sales promotion strategy is what aligns with your business goals and takes your customer needs into consideration. RewardPort is one of the top sales promotion solution providers in India. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort can execute the best sales promotion programs for your business, keeping in mind every detail of your business.

5 Simple & Inexpensive Loyalty Programs for D2C Companies

A Loyalty Program, if created and implemented in the right manner, can bring incredible growth to a business. Many D2C brands in India are missing out on the fundamentals of building brand loyalty. The Indian D2C market is estimated to grow to $100 billion by 2025, which shows the level of competition arising in the industry. Succeeding in such a competitive market is a challenge. But if you understand what it takes to set your brand apart from others, you win the game.

One of the most important factors determining the success of a brand is brand loyalty. This is why businesses are now investing more and more in building loyalty programs to retain their customers. Loyalty programs are the strategies used by businesses to boost brand loyalty and improve customer experiences. Customers love it when they get valued for their purchase and this is exactly what loyalty programs aim to do. Before you start looking for a loyalty program company, you must be aware of the importance of boosting customer loyalty:

Why Customer Loyalty is Important for D2C Businesses?

D2C businesses are facing more competition than ever before, especially online ones. To stand out in such a competitive market, it becomes important to focus on building brand loyalty and improving customer experiences. Studies suggest that loyal customers spend 25% more per transaction than other buyers. Moreover, acquiring new customers can be much more expensive than retaining the existing ones.

Most D2C companies in India focus more on customer acquisition than customer retention. However, that should not be the case. It is fine to invest in acquiring customers. But to recover high customer acquisition costs, retaining existing customers is also equally essential. One-time buyers are less likely to become brand loyalists. Loyal customers generally feel emotionally connected with the brand and they tend to purchase more often.

A loyalty program does not only help your business increase repeat purchases, but it also enhances your customers’ experiences. Your customers feel valued when they get rewarded for their purchases. As a result, they start purchasing frequently to earn more rewards. This is how the benefits of loyalty programs are not just restricted to customer loyalty, you can also acquire new customers and improve their overall experience.

Every D2C business needs to earn customer loyalty to beat the competition in the market. Here are some most effective loyalty program strategies for D2C businesses. Make sure that you look for these features while choosing a loyalty program company:

1. Start with Reward Points/Discounts

Reward Points-based programs are the most basic type of loyalty program. Under these programs, customers earn a certain number of loyalty points every time they purchase from a brand. The monetary value of these reward points is decided by the brand only. If you are trying to start with a cost-effective loyalty program for your D2C brand, a reward points-based program would be the best option to consider.

You can build a separate portal to run the loyalty program, where your customers can log in to track their rewards and redeem them. Make sure that you offer some great redemption options. If the redemption options are not good enough to excite your customers, they will not be interested in earning more rewards. Allowing your customers to use the reward points against their next purchase is also a great idea to encourage your customers to come back.

2. Include Gamification

Gamifying your reward program strategy makes it even more interesting for your customers. Gamification is a powerful tool that helps businesses in maximizing the benefits of loyalty programs by keeping their customers engaged. Along with increasing the level of excitement, it encourages your customers to keep coming back for more. Below are some great examples of gamification strategies to boost customer loyalty:

Spin to Win Contests

You can run Spin to Win contests on your website or app and allow your audience to Spin the Wheel once every day. This encourages them to log in to your app regularly to earn rewards or prizes. It can benefit your business in two ways. First, you get more app downloads and log-ins. Second, people who win discount coupons/rewards will make purchases to redeem these rewards.

Top-Spenders Leaderboards

Having a leaderboard for top spenders is another effective gamification strategy. You can add a leaderboard to your website, where your customers can check real-time top spenders of the day, week, or month. It encourages them to spend more to see their names on the top of the leaderboard.

Referral Contests

Running referral contests is the most cost-effective way to acquire new customers while improving the experience of your existing customers. You can keep different rewards for different stages of referral. For example, offer a 10% discount on referring to a friend, a 30% discount when they sign up, and a 50% discount when they make their first purchase.

3. Promote Loyalist To Higher Tiers

A tier-based loyalty program also works amazingly well. As a D2C brand, you must understand that not every customer is equally loyal. There are customers who really like your brand and prefer you the most. Also, there are other customers who only consider you an option and might switch as soon as they see another opportunity. More loyal customers deserve better rewards as they play a significant role in the success of a business.

You can come up with a loyalty program with different tiers. Many D2C businesses are already having such programs. The more your customers purchase, the higher tier they get promoted to. And a high tier means better rewards.

For example, suppose a brand has a loyalty program with three tiers A, B, and C. The customers enter tier A on making their first purchase. In this tier, they get 5 Reward Points for every Rs. 100 they spend. As soon as they complete 10 purchases, they enter tier B, where they earn 10 points for every Rs. 100 they spend. Once they complete 50 purchases with the brand, they enter tier C and start earning 20 points for every Rs. 100 they spend.

4. Provide Proactive Assurance To Your Customers

Loyalty programs are not just about offering rewards and discounts to your customers. You also need to focus on enhancing your customers’ experiences and making them feel good about your brand. You can ensure this by providing proactive assurance to your customers. Make sure that all their questions are answered and their doubts are resolved. This is why many D2C brands are adding AI chatbots to their websites and apps.

If your business is online, you can add AI-powered chatbots to your website. With this, you can ensure that your customers’ queries are resolved quickly and with maximum accuracy. Even if you run an offline business, make sure that you have some support representatives present at your offline store. It gives a sense of satisfaction to your customers and boosts brand loyalty among them.

5. Reward Your Most Loyal Customers With Unexpected Gifts

The most loyal customers of a business are the most precious ones. You can identify brand loyalists by looking at your customer data. It is important to value these customers and appreciate their loyalty. You can do this by sending them personalized messages and small surprise gifts on special occasions like their birthdays. It helps in building stronger relationships with your loyal customers, encouraging them to stay connected with the brand for a longer period.

Boost Your Brand Loyalty With RewardPort

Being one of the top rewards and loyalty program providers in India, RewardPort helps businesses in strategizing and running the most effective loyalty programs. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort has already executed loyalty programs for several leading brands.

Taking every detail of your business into account, RewardPort can help you run a loyalty program that aligns with your brand objectives. With lost-cost rewards and the best marketing strategies, RewardPort can help you boost repeat purchases within three months.

5 Channel Partner Loyalty Program for Next Level of Revenue Growth

As per studies, over 43% of businesses run a channel partner loyalty program. Developing a long-lasting relationship with your channel partners is even more challenging than finding and onboarding potential partners. Channel partnerships can be amazingly effective in boosting sales and increasing brand awareness.

However, first, you put effort into a strong relationship with your partners to use their resources effectively. This is where channel partner programs come into play. With effective channel partner incentive programs, you can motivate your partners to invest more time and resources in your business.

Before you start running a loyalty program, you must know some basics. Let us help you understand what channel partners are and how you can use channel partner programs for next-level revenue growth:

What is A Channel Partner?

A channel partner is a company that partners with manufacturers or vendors to sell their products or services. Channel partnership is generally a co-branding relationship where two companies come together to promote and sell each other’s products along with their own.

Resellers, distributors, etc., are also examples of channel partners. Having potential channel partners is beneficial for your business in many ways. You get access to a wider target audience with minimal effort, which helps you expand your market reach.

Why is Channel Partner Loyalty Program Important?

The following are some most relevant reasons for having a channel partner loyalty program:

A Stronger Relationship with Partners

Your channel partners feel valued when rewarded for their contribution to your company. Loyalty Programs open a new door for better communication with your channel partners. Building a strong relationship with your channel partners becomes easier with loyalty programs.

A Chance to Co-Brand

Your channel partners might have other brands as partners as well. Channel partner loyalty programs which include co-branding, feature your channel partner with the brand name in the ads for the region.

This adds value to your brand in building trust among local consumers while your channel partner receives praise for the partnership.

Extend Your Market Reach

Your channel partners might have a customer base of your target audience. You get access to these customers through your channel partners. By rewarding your channel partners through a loyalty program, you can motivate them to market your product to the most relevant customers and expand your reach.

Encourage Partners to Complete Essential Training

Your partners must understand your product to sell it and find new opportunities to present it to the consumers. While you can design learning and training programs for your partners, you must ensure they complete the programs and retain the knowledge. You can incentivize learning by rewarding your partners for completing the training.

Motivate partners to invest more in your brand’s success

Your channel partners probably have other partners as well. The best way to make them focus more on your brand is to run continuous channel partner loyalty programs. The more time and effort they invest in your brand, the more rewards they earn.

Ideas for Channel Partner Loyalty Program

Channel Partner Loyalty Programs should be different from the general loyalty programs for retail customers of a brand. Here are some great ideas for channel partner loyalty programs:

1. Discounts on Wholesale Products

Offering discounts on wholesale products is one of the best loyalty programs for B2B businesses. You can offer wholesale discounts to your channel partners every time they purchase. However, the discount offer need not be the same for every channel partner. The more your channel partners buy, the more discount they get.

For example, you can price your product at Rs 20 per unit when they buy 100 units, Rs 19 per unit when they buy 150 units, and Rs 17 per unit when they buy 200 or more units. These types of programs are beneficial for both you and your channel partner. Your partner can buy more for a lower price, and you can encourage them to purchase more than planned.

2. Rebates

Rebates refer to partial refunds post-purchase. Rebates are among the most common types of channel partner incentive programs. Under these programs, you can give a percentage of the sales back to your partner. Your channel partner must achieve a certain sales volume within a specified time to receive the incentive.

The benefits channel partners can pass to their customers are more attractive for the value chain.

3. Market Development Funds

MDFs (Marketing Development Funds) are the allowance you offer to your channel partners to help them with their marketing and sales efforts. These can be monetary allowances or other resources, such as learning programs.

Your channel partners can use these funds to increase brand awareness. Using MDFs, they can participate in trade shows, launch a marketing event, and purchase radio spots.

4. Sales Performance Incentive Funds

SPIFs (Sales Performance Incentive Funds) are funds brands can use to reward the sales team of their channel partners. The incentives benefit the entire channel partner sales hierarchy based on their performance. These incentives are aimed at motivating the sales team of your channel partners to perform better.

You can offer SPIFs to your channel partners’ sales representatives during slower times to boost your sales. Incentives can be monetary or non-monetary, such as gift cards, restaurant vouchers, flight vouchers, free products, etc.

5. Free Training & Certifications

Everyone loves to learn and develop professional skills while working. You can offer free training to your channel partners and combine the training with decent rewards to make it interesting for them. You can include different milestones in the training program and offer exciting awards for achieving each milestone.

Design a great learning program your channel partners and their employees can be proud of completing. If the program and the certification are not valuable and exciting enough, your channel partners will not be motivated to complete it.

Channel Partner Loyalty Program with RewardPort

The most impactful channel partner loyalty programs consider the requirements and goals of your business and your channel partners. RewardPort is a leading loyalty rewards provider in India.

RewardPort offers modern rewards and methods of engagement for your brand that will keep your channel partners engaged. RewardPort can execute your rewards program online or offline, with awards starting as low as Rs. 10.

You can include gamification, tier-based programs, and other industry-proven methods to drive engagement in your program.

7 Loyalty Program Rewards for Small & Medium Enterprises

More and more brands are now adopting the concept of loyalty program rewards to retain customers. Research shows that over 90% of companies, whether small, medium, or large enterprises, have a loyalty program today. Businesses must have effective strategies to boost customer retention and stand out in a competitive market.

Running a loyalty program is the most used and effective way to encourage customers to stay loyal to a particular brand.

Loyalty program rewards motivate customers to turn into repeat buyers. However, a loyalty program will work only if it aligns with the interests of the customers and the business. A loyalty rewards program that works for a large-sized business might not be suitable for other small brands.

Here are some best loyalty program ideas for small and medium enterprises:

1. Loyalty Points

Points-based programs are one of the most common loyalty programs for businesses of any size. Such loyalty programs aim to motivate customers to stay loyal to a brand. Under these programs, customers receive a few points every time they purchase.

The number of points is fixed against a certain amount spent on the brand. For example, you can offer 10 points on every spend of Rs. 100 to your customers. If they make a purchase worth Rs. 1,000, they receive 100 points.

These points can be redeemed against various options available at a rewards portal or in the form of store credit that is redeemable for future purchases. You must ensure that the loyalty points are valuable for your customers to make these loyalty programs successful.

If your rewards program is not interesting enough for your customers, it cannot encourage them to repeat purchases and stay loyal to your brand. When the loyalty points are valuable, your customers feel they are getting something in return for their spending and will be motivated to repurchase.

2. Referral Purchase Rewards

Referral purchase rewards are the rewards/benefits customers receive for referring a product to their friends. Under these programs, your referring customers and their friends (to whom they refer your products) get some benefits.

However, the terms and conditions for receiving the rewards can be different with different referral programs. Some programs offer rewards/discounts as soon as customers refer a friend. However, other programs reward them only when their friend signs up or makes a purchase.

The latter is a better option. You can run a referral purchase rewards program under which your customers receive decent benefits when their friend signs up to your website and makes a purchase. You can also keep different rewards for different levels in the referral process.

For example, your customers receive a certain number of reward points when they refer a friend, then they get a discount coupon when their friend signs up, and finally, they get a gift when their friend makes a purchase.

Referral programs are a great way to expand your market reach and acquire new customers. You can encourage your customers to make more and more people aware of your brand. The programs help you increase your brand awareness through word-of-mouth and boost sales.

3. First Access

Giving your customers the first access to your new products, flash sales, and discount offers is also an effective way to boost customer loyalty. Whenever a new product is launched, you can make it accessible to the registered customers on your website before it is available to others in the market.

Another way is to provide your customers early access to flash sales, discount offers, BOGO deals, etc., via e-mails or text messages.

With these loyalty program techniques, you can encourage your target audience to become your registered customers. Also, as your existing customers feel special when they get early access, they promote your brand through word-of-mouth.

The early access strategy works better for online businesses, where purchase does not require registration.

4. Charitable Activities

Giving back to society can be the best reward sometimes. Your rewards program can give your customers opportunities for charitable donations. Offer loyalty points to your customers for their purchases and let them redeem their earned rewards against charity.

Such programs can encourage socially conscious consumers to stick to your brand as they get to contribute to the charity through you. You can include different charity options in your reward redemption program and allow your customers to choose what they prefer.

Once they accumulate a certain number of loyalty points, the equivalent amount gets donated to charity in their name. The program becomes more effective when your charity partners are related to your brand.

5. Pay Later Accounts

Most top e-commerce companies provide ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ options in partnership with financial services companies. Pay Later is a small line of credit that allows customers to purchase and pay for it over a month or in installments.

The pay-later option makes it convenient for customers to make frequent purchases. Moreover, they often spend more than they would without this credit option.

By providing pay-later and EMI options to your customers, you can make them feel that you trust them and understand their needs. Customers with a line of credit with a brand are more likely to stay loyal to it.

6. Freebies

Who doesn’t like getting free products? One of the most effective ways to retain customers is by offering them freebies. Whenever your customer makes a purchase, surprise them with a random free product.

It can be anything as small as a free pair of matching earrings with the main outfit. If you have launched any new products, the best way to make your customers aware of them is to send them free samples along with their purchase.

You can also let the consumers redeem their loyalty points for a free product. The redemption options can include other brand vouchers, discount coupons, etc., to make the program more exciting. Using the word ‘free’ in your loyalty programs can be much more effective than it seems to be.

7. Limited Period Offers

Keep coming up with limited-period offers exclusively for your customers. When your customers make a purchase, you can provide them with a discount coupon that is only valid for a short period. Make the discount offer exciting enough to motivate your customers to visit your store back before the offer expires.

Offering great discounts for a limited duration creates a sense of urgency in your customers and prepone their purchases.

How To Build a Loyalty Program?

Almost every brand runs a loyalty program to retain customers today. However, the loyalty rewards program can be considered effective when it adds value both to the customers and the brand.

Here are some important points to consider when building a customer loyalty program for your business:

• The loyalty program must offer value to your customers. If the customers don’t find your loyalty program rewards valuable, they may not feel motivated to repurchase.
• Tie the rewards back to your brand to make the program more effective. You can offer rewards or cashback that the customers can redeem against your products.
• Keep a mix of instant and premium rewards for different segments of customers. Not every customer is loyal. Before offering premium rewards and benefits to boost loyalty, you can identify long-term customers and one-time buyers coming for discounts.
• Make sure that the rewards program is cost-effective for your business and that you don’t spend without analyzing the results.

Set up a Loyalty Program with RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top loyalty program solution providers in India. With RewardPort, you can set up a loyalty program that works for your brand and fulfills your customer needs. Experts at RewardPort can plan and execute loyalty program strategies according to your business goals and consumer profile.

RewardPort helps you provide loyalty program rewards online and offline as your budget and consumers allow.

11 Employee Loyalty Programs for 360-Degree Employee Engagement

Running employee loyalty programs is an effective way to boost employee engagement and retention in your organization. Research shows that engaged employees are 17% more productive compared to dismissive co-workers. They consider company success their success and work hard to help their organization achieve its business goals faster. Employee engagement is beneficial for an organization in many other ways.

It boosts employee retention rates, lowers employee turnover, and most importantly, encourages employees to be more productive at work. However, studies suggest that only 34% of employees are engaged at work (as of 2022). A low employee engagement rate usually results from a lack of appreciation and motivation at the workplace.

Employers must ensure that they make their workers feel valued, and boost employee engagement. Here are some effective employee loyalty programs and activities to boost employee engagement:

1. Joining Benefits

While hiring valuable resources for your company, understand that they might be considering other job offers from your competitors. Offering a joining bonus is one way to make them choose your organization. You can also use the joining bonus as a bridge between your employee’s expected salary and the salary you are offering.

You can also pay it as compensation against any additional benefits that your employees were getting in their previous company. Generally, a joining bonus is 10% to 20% of the annual CTC of an employee. A joining bonus creates a positive anchor for the journey of your employee.

2. Rewards for Personal Occasions

Recognizing your employees on their special days, like birthdays, work anniversaries, etc., is another great way to boost employee engagement in your organization. You can send them personalized messages, organize a celebration, and ask them to share their experiences at your workplace.

Gift your employees something valuable, such as paid time off, gift cards, discount coupons for restaurants, etc., on special occasions. You can also recognize and award your employees when they achieve a new milestone. No employee likes a workplace without any
emotions. Celebrating their happy days makes them feel valued and encourages them to stay loyal to your organization.

3. Festive Bonuses

Studies have shown that employees’ engagement rises when they have a sense of belongingness to the organization and its leaders. Providing festive bonuses or gifts is a great way to build a strong relationship with your employees. Organizations should try to make employees feel that their organization cares for them and not just about their work.

Offer them a decent bonus or valuable gifts, such as gift cards, as a festive season benefit. When employees feel good about your company, employee engagement rises and increases productivity.

4. Milestone Rewards

A milestone-based rewards program can help you build a healthy competitive environment for your employees. Recognize their accomplishments at work and award them something valuable, such as a certificate of appreciation or a small gift. For example, you can reward your employees for completing a big project successfully.

Another example is rewarding them for completing their tasks within the deadlines. These rewards motivate your employees to perform even better with dedication in future projects. Running continuous employee loyalty programs with different tiers is also a good idea.

5. Performance-Based Incentives

Performance-based incentives are another great motivational driver for employees to work hard. These rewards are reciprocal for both employers and employees. Performance-based reward account for employees’ contributions to the employer’s growth. Most businesses have defined KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for every role in the organization.

Performance-based incentives will often remain linked to these KPIs. Anyone exceeding the KPIs can drive the following actions:

• Renewed or upgraded KPIs
• Surprise rewards or bonus
• Promotions or role upgrades

These incentives can be general or extraordinary financial bonuses that the employees receive with their fixed salary. You can offer these incentives to appreciate employees for working overtime, completing their tasks on time, making more than the expected sales, and being punctual.

6. Peer-to-Peer Recognition

Peer-to-peer recognition refers to the appreciation between co-workers who may not have a direct rapport. Generally, employees expect feedback from the employer. However, getting appreciation from co-workers can be equally amazing.

You can encourage peer-to-peer appreciation in your firm by recognizing your employees publicly and frequently. Organize team meetings to let all your employees know the accomplishments of their co-workers. It improves company culture, strengthens team morale, and boosts employee productivity.

7. Annual Perks and Promotions

Studies suggest that even the most engaged employees often feel demotivated at work. This can happen for several reasons, including if they do not receive appreciation or promotions in due time. Employers must ensure that deserving employees are promoted adequately and within due time.

You can promote them designation-wise, salary-wise, or both. Offering annual bonuses at the end of each financial year is also a great way to motivate your workforce.

8. Referral Incentives

Referral incentives are the monetary or non-monetary benefits employees receive on referring qualified candidates for vacant positions in the company. Your employees may have a good network of qualified candidates, which include their college peers, former co-workers, etc.

Referral incentives can encourage your employees to recommend your company to their connections. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to recruit potential employees. Well-executed referral programs are also effective in increasing employee satisfaction and retention rates.

9. Long Service Rewards

Long service rewards incentivize the service period of the employees at the firm. These can be considered a token of thanks to the employees for their commitment to the organization.
Generally, these rewards are offered on completing 5, 10, 15, and 25 or more years with an organization.

As a long-service reward, you can offer financial bonuses, discounted loans, family vacation packages, home purchase assistance, etc. Synchronizing this incentive with the employee’s ongoing financial or personal needs will ensure that the employee sticks with the firm longer.

10. Sales Incentives

The job of a salesperson is one of the most stressful jobs. It is common for sales executives to feel demotivated at times. Offering sales incentives is one of the best ways to help them deal with this stress and keep them motivated.

Along with their fixed salary, you can offer monetary incentives for completing targets, making more than expected sales, and getting potential clients onboard.

11. Retirement or Exit Rewards

Retirement rewards are the benefits employees will receive on completing their years of service at the firm. It is a great way to thank your employees for their continuous hard work and dedication towards your company.

You can offer monetary benefits or run pension schemes as retirement benefits. Great retirement rewards also encourage other employees to stay loyal and work for your company longer.

Why Choose RewardPort for Employee Loyalty Programs?

RewardPort is one of the top rewards and loyalty solutions providers in India. RewardPort can run loyalty programs that work best for your organization. Some of the features of Employee Loyalty Programs by RewardPort are as follows:

• Culture of appreciation
• Imbibe company values
• Lead to employee retention
• Gamification for a higher engagement

RewardPort offers modern rewards with proven engagement tactics for multiple generations to ensure the effectiveness of employee loyalty programs.

11 Consumer Sales Promotion Tactics to Generate More Business Faster

Consumer sales promotion tactics are the strategies that businesses use to boost their sales during a particular time. The only way for a business to succeed is by gaining more customers and selling products or services. You must inform them about it and increase sales with the appropriate consumer sales promotion techniques.

Successful companies use sales promotions to boost sales, increase brand awareness, and improve customer satisfaction. All these factors are critical and ultimately drive more sales. You can find several examples of sales promotions that different businesses use. However, not all of them might be suitable for your business.

First, you can identify your business goals and plan sales promotion strategies accordingly. Here are some most effective consumers sales promotion strategies to drive more sales faster:

1. Discount Coupons

Offering products at discounted prices is one of the oldest yet most effective sales promotion techniques. The end-of-season sales are great examples of such discounts. Customers wait for end-of-season sales to purchase the products they couldn’t afford to buy during the season. Discounts are beneficial both for customers and retailers. Customers can buy more for less price, and retailers can clear their stock faster.

Apart from running seasonal discount offers, you can provide discount coupons to your customers for their next purchase. If customers have your discount coupons, they are more likely to return to your store before they expire. This is how you can drive repeat business and encourage customers to purchase more often.

2. Free shipping/returns

Consumers do consider the shipping cost while making online purchases, especially when it’s their first purchase from a brand. They are most likely to change their purchasing decision if high shipping costs are associated with a product. If your brand is charging a shipping fee on its products, you might be missing out on many potential customers.

Most customers don’t want to spend money on a product if they doubt its quality, usage, life, etc. With high shipping costs and no guaranteed returns, the overall price of the product becomes expensive, and the purchase seems riskier to the customer. Offering free shipping and guaranteed returns with a 100% refund reduces the customers’ fear of wasting money on the wrong product.

3. Contests & Giveaways

Running prize contests online or offline is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to increase brand awareness and boost sales. These contests create healthy competition among your customers, making it interesting for them to participate. Social media contests can be very powerful and bring unexpected results. Some common examples of social media contests include:

• ‘Top Spenders Offer’ under which the top spenders of the week or month are awarded. These contests aim to boost the overall business revenue.
• ‘Purchase to Win’ contests under which a brand chooses random buyers of a particular product as winners. These contests are focused on boosting the sales of the product.
• ‘Like, Comment, and Share to Win’ contests under which the participants are rewarded for sharing your brand’s official social media page with their friends. These contests are aimed at increasing brand awareness.

4. Buy 1 Get 1 Free

BOGO deals are the most popular consumer sales promotion tactics for retail businesses. The idea of getting two items for the price of one seems amazing to the customers. Businesses generally run BOGO offers to clear the stock or to encourage customers to purchase a newly launched product.

It also increases brand awareness as many customers share the free product with their family or friends. Though it is the same as a 50% discount, calling it a BOGO deal is more impactful as freebies attract more customers.

5. Free Samples

If you allow your customers to try your product for free, most of its buyers would have never bought it without trying it. Customers don’t want to spend money on a product without knowing whether it works for them or not. You can offer free samples of the new product with a popular product that most of your target audience knows about.

This has dual benefits. It boosts the sales for your main product and introduces your new product in the market. After trying the free sample product, many customers may buy it.

6. Flash Sales

Big discount offers become more effective when combined with limited periods. The duration can be anything between 24 hours to 30 days depending on your stock availability and customer interests. Flash sales develop a fear of missing out among your customers. Under these sales, products are offered at heavy discounts for a limited duration.

You can build excitement ahead of time by announcing the sale launch date. This creates a sense of urgency, and your customers buy their favorite products as soon as the sale is live.

7. Bundle Products

Bundle products or combo offers discounts on related products when you buy them as a bundle. For example, a combo of shampoo (priced at Rs 150) and a conditioner (priced at Rs 120) can be offered at a combined price of Rs 230.

This encourages customers to buy combo packs instead of buying only one product to save some money. Bundle offers can move your inventory faster as you sell more products with a low discount.

8. Loyalty Reward/Cashback Programs

Research has shown that gaining a new customer can be five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. This is why customer loyalty is important for every business. Running a continuous loyalty program is one of the best ways to motivate customers to stay loyal to your brand.

Loyalty programs can be of different types:

• Rewards-based programs
• Cashback-based programs
• Tier-based programs

Under these programs, your customers get rewarded every time they make a purchase. For successful loyalty programs, you need to make sure that you offer interesting redemption options against these reward points. These programs can retain customers only if the rewards you offer are valuable and useful for them.

9. Referral Discount

Referral discounts help you increase your market reach by encouraging your customers to recommend your brand to their friends. You can offer discounts to your customers and their referral friends when they purchase your products. The referral program becomes more efficient when you give a higher discount for more referrals.

You can also offer them incentives for sharing their experiences with your product on social media. Consumers believe in user-generated content more than a brand promoting itself.

10. Scratch Cards

Scratch Cards are like mystery offers. You can offer scratch cards with different discounts, such as 5%, 10%, and 25% discount. The customers only know their reward after they purchase and scratch the gift card. Human minds are curious, and curiosity makes them participate in the offer to see what they get inside the scratch cards. Once they get a discount, they will most likely purchase before the discount coupon expires.

11. ‘Spin to Win’ Contests

‘Spin to Win’ contests are one of the best ways to include gamification in your sales promotion and make it interesting for your customers. You can run a ‘Spin to Win’ contest on your website or offline store. Provide your customers with an opportunity to spin the wheel once every day. You can include reward points, cashback, discounts, and a few big prizes in this wheel.

Make sure that they win something most of the time. If not discounts and rewards, they should at least get a few reward points for spinning the wheel. They can redeem these rewards once they have collected significant points.

This motivates them to visit your website at least once every day. These contests also help you increase your brand awareness through word of mouth.

How Can RewardPort Help?

RewardPort is a reward and loyalty solutions providing company. RewardPort can help you plan and run a sales promotion strategy that works for your business and aligns with your customer interests.

The marketing experts at RewardPort take every business detail into account and run sales promotions exclusively for your business. Your marketing campaigns are not restricted to one or two platforms with RewardPort but are executed on multiple platforms, including on the web, offline, SMS, etc

Three Rs of Effective B2C & B2B Consumer Sales Promotion

Effective consumer sales promotions can provide rapid growth to your business. Studies suggest that 90% of consumers make their first purchase after receiving an offer from a new brand. Also, more than 90% of consumers prefer to repeat purchases from a brand that offers good discounts on the first purchase. This data shows how important it is to plan and execute sales promotion strategies to acquire customers.

Not every sales promotion works for every business. To make the most out of sales promotion, you need to understand your business goals and customer interests first. Apart from this, there are a few factors you should consider to drive a successful sales promotion campaign.

Here are the three important Rs of effective consumer sales promotions:

1. Risk Aversion

Sales promotions must be focused on risk aversion, especially when the aim is to attract new customers or launch a new product. By allowing your customers to try your products for free, you can get them out of fear of wasting their money.

Customers who purchase your product after a trial may not even consider buying it without the experience. Most consumers avoid spending on a product that they are not sure about. Here is how you can include risk aversion in your sales promotions:

• Offer free samples under giveaway contests.
• Offer free sample products with other popular products.
• Offer free shipping and returns.

2. Reciprocity

The principle of reciprocity deals with human nature that expects a mutually beneficial relationship. An ideal sales promotion strategy benefits the brand as well as the customers.

Sales promotion techniques like discount coupons, loyalty programs, etc., are based on reciprocity. You can make your customers feel that they are getting something in return for their purchase with these benefits.

3. Reward

Rewarding your customers for every purchase can bring them back to your brand. Though one part of the reward is covered under reciprocity and risk aversion, you should have a separate program that accepts everyone.

These rewards aim to identify potential customers, attract them, and motivate them to stay loyal to your brand. Examples of such reward programs include gift promotions, giveaway contests on social media, etc.

Examples of B2C Sales Promotions

Sales promotions in B2C businesses are critical for business growth. The B2C sales promotions can be very effective in:

• Boosting sales
• Increasing brand awareness
• Building brand trust
• Driving repeat business

Discounts and other offers motivate consumers to make prepone their purchase decisions. Here are some most effective sales promotion techniques for B2C businesses:

1. Discount Coupons

Offering discount coupons for the next purchase is one of the most effective ways to drive repeat business. Whenever your customers make a purchase, you can provide them with a discount coupon for their next purchase.

These coupons must be valid only for a specific period, like one month or two months. It encourages your customers to keep shopping at your store more frequently.

2. Giveaway Contests

Giveaway contests work best for introducing a new product to the market or attracting new customers. You can run these contests on social media. Ask your followers to like and share your product launch post to win the product.

The more they share, the more their chances of winning. With this, you can make more and more people aware of your new product and gain more followers.

3. Flash Sales

Flash sales are short-term deals under which a brand offers some specific products at huge discounts. Flash sales will offer attractive discounts for a short period creating a sense of urgency for the customers.

As the deals are amazing, customers want cash on these discounts. They tend to prepone their purchases to benefit from the sale.

4. BOGO Deals

A ‘Buy One Get One Free’ deal is among the most widely used sales promotion techniques in B2C businesses. Though offering a 50% discount on a product is the same as a BOGO deal, the word ‘free’ has a greater impact on the human mind.

Combining these offers with certain limits makes them more effective. For example, you can run BOGO offers only on a particular day of the week or choose different days to run BOGO deals on different products.

5. Free Shipping/Returns

If your business is majorly online, you might be missing out on many customers by charging a shipping fee. Products with free shipping and return seem to be risk-free to the customers. Many customers change their minds at the time of final payment when the shipping cost is added to the price of the product.

The idea of offering free shipping and returns can be much more powerful than it seems to be.

Examples of B2B Sales Promotions

Sales promotions in B2B are different from B2C sales promotions. However, the impact can be equally good in B2B as well. Sales promotions can attract potential dealers and channel partners to your brand. Also, promotional offers can encourage your partners to give preference to selling your products and drive more sales. Here are some most popular B2B sales promotion strategies

1. Trade Shows

Trade shows are events where different businesses from a particular industry showcase their products to attract potential buyers. You can use brochures, displays, and other promotional materials to identify prospects and make your customers aware of the existing as well as new products.

The trade shows also allow you to gather information about your competitors. You can observe how your competitor businesses are presenting, selling their products, which offers they are running, etc.

2. Conventions

Participating in conventions or meetings with your industry professionals is also an effective B2B sales promotion technique. You can display your products and market them to the right audience.

For example, a textile convention allows you to display your sewing machine and its unique features. You can contact the market leaders in your industry and sell your products to them.

3. Advertising Allowances

You can give your channel partners trade allowances to encourage them to push a product. You can offer different incentives at all levels, i.e., to your wholesalers, distributors, and retailers, to boost the sales of a particular product.

Advertising allowance is a popular trade allowance you can offer to your partners and encourage them to advertise your products.

4. Sales Contests

Sales contests are incentive programs that businesses use to motivate their sales representatives to drive more sales. These contests generally focus on boosting sales for high-profit-making products. The more sales representatives sell, the higher incentives they receive.

The salesperson making the highest number of sales wins the contest. The winner can be awarded exciting prizes, such as a free vacation, monetary bonuses, a promotion, etc.

5. Free Merchandise

Free merchandise refers to a free product offered by the manufacturer to a partner or retailer to push a particular product to the market. For example, the manufacturer of formal clothing can gift a set of clothes to the staff of a high-performing retail store.

These gifts can be linked to the sales targets. The retailer can receive free items for selling a particular number of products within a pre-specified time.

Gamify Your Sales Promotions with RewardPort

You can attract more customers and retain the existing ones by offering discounts, rewards, etc. Including gamification in sales promotion builds healthy competition among your customers, making it more interesting for them to participate.

With RewardPort, you can plan and execute a sales promotion strategy with the latest tools and methods of consumer engagement. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, your sales promotion strategy should include rewards that modern customers value.

10 Elemental Strategies for Building a Successful Dealer Incentive Program

Dealer incentive programs are the initiatives taken by businesses to encourage their dealers and distributors to sell more by incentivizing their efforts. A dealership can be considered successful only when it adds value to the business as well as the dealers. Strong dealerships can bring unexpected growth to your business. However, you need to ensure the satisfaction of your dealers and distributor for this.

Even the most dedicated dealers can become less efficient at times. Although they work for their profit, it becomes necessary to encourage them to perform better. To keep them motivated for a longer period, the best way is to incentivize their performances.

You can build healthy competition among all your dealers or plan other types of incentive programs that align with your business.

1. Open-Ended Strategy

Under an open-ended incentive strategy, you can encourage your dealers to sell more than the previous year. Set a sales milestone slightly higher than their last year’s sales quota and offer attractive incentives for achieving their goal. These programs are budget friendly as you only need to reward the dealers on incremental sales.

You can also do it via a plateau-based incentive program. This type of program sets different goals and offers higher incentives for achieving higher goals. For example, set different milestones at 5%, 10%, and 15% of their last year’s sales. The higher milestone they achieve, the better incentives they receive.

2. Closed-Ended Strategy

This strategy is based on the concept of rewarding the highest-performing dealers. You can reward the top performers region-wise, category-wise, and based on other factors. Also, you need to plan whether you are going to offer these incentives monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly.
Along with the category-wise top performers, you can make your program more exciting by rewarding the overall topmost performers. If you are offering category-wise top performers incentives monthly, you can keep a different incentive scheme for the overall 3-5 top performers of the year.

3. New Product Introduction

When you launch a new product in the market, it becomes difficult to encourage your dealers to sell these new launches. They are already comfortable with selling the older ones and don’t want to complicate their process by learning about a new product. But with a well-planned incentive scheme, you can make your dealers sell these new products in the market.

It can be done by offering higher margins on these products as an introductory benefit. You can reward your dealers in the form of some monetary or non-monetary benefits for achieving a particular number of sales for a newly launched product.

4. Presales Incentives

When you give your dealers a yearly or half-yearly sales target, presales incentives can come in handy to help them stay motivated. While your dealers are focussing only on the yearly goal, you must focus on short-term as well as long-term sales goals. You can allow them to collect a part of their incentive commission in between. Or offer some small non-monetary gifts to remind them of the bigger incentive they can receive after achieving their goal.

5. Training Incentives

Educating and training your dealers is very important as they are the ones to deal with your end users. If they don’t have a thorough understanding of your products/services, they will not be able to explain them to the consumers. It affects them as well as your business.

So, creating dealer education programs and certifications becomes essential for every company, especially when you expect most of your revenue to come through dealers. But how can you make them enrol in these education programs?

Offer monetary incentives or certifications or other types of benefits upon completing an education program. After they complete the certification, you can send them on a fully-funded trip and ask them to visit your offices there. They can learn new things there and implement them after coming back.

6. Product-Specific Programs

When you want to boost sales for a particular product, the best way to do it is to offer additional margins or some incentives on it. Motivate your dealers to sell these products on a priority by offering them additional bonuses or rewards that they value.

However, you might be putting the sales of your other products at risk. So, implement such a scheme only when you need to push the sales for a particular product.

7. Split Incentives

A split incentive program can add excitement to your dealers’ programs and improve dealer productivity. You can ask two or more dealers from different locations to work together and achieve specific sales targets. This can be done by offering double bonuses to both dealers without any differentiation, i.e., each of the two dealers receives equal benefits upon reaching the target.

8. Dealer-Affinity Programs

To make the best-performing dealers valued, you can organise special meetups. Such meetups should provide the dealers with opportunities for networking, learning, and interacting with relevant managers at the company. Dealers from different locations and backgrounds can connect and learn from each other.

9. Sales Pusher Programs

To promote sales during a particular season, you can come up with short-term incentive schemes for your dealers. These schemes can either be target-based or performance-based. Offering bonuses or incentives based on short-term sales goals can be very effective in accelerating sales during a particular period.

10. Database Programs

The importance of customer data needs not be defined as every business is aware of it. This data will help you understand the interests of your customers and recommend products relevant to their needs. As your dealers are connecting directly with your consumers, you can collect customer data only through your dealers.

Incentivizing customer data collection by your dealers would be the best way to do it. The more data they collect, the more rewards they offer. Using your customer data in the right manner can be much more profitable for a business than you might have expected.

Build The Most Effective Dealer Incentive Program

Dealer incentive programs must be simple and offer rewards valued by your dealers. You can reward the dealership or specific employees at the dealership. The brand’s relationship with the dealership plays an important role here. However, rewarding the dealers personally for their business and achievement is also important.

RewardPort can help you create and execute an effective dealer incentives program for your business. RewardPort offers you access to thousands of the latest rewards products and a quick setup for the program.