
10 Common mistakes businesses make with their giveaways
You’ve probably seen your fair share of branded contests over the years. This is for a reason. Contests, when properly executed, can be one of the most effective marketing strategies.
Marketers have known this for years, and as a result, branded contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways have worked wonders for decades.
1. Ineffective Giveaway Strategy
The most serious mistake a company can make when running a giveaway contest is a lack of strategy. Most businesses often launch giveaways without first defining contest goals and objectives. This increases the likelihood of miscommunication and other technical issues that a comprehensive giveaway marketing strategy would otherwise eliminate.
A good giveaway strategy enables businesses to avoid low entry rates and ensure effective contesting to achieve the desired results. A strong giveaway strategy has the advantage of providing a standard for what a successful giveaway will look like. This way, you can reduce squabbles and get your team on the same page to meet specific objectives and achieve your desired level of success.
2. Unspecific Calls to Action (CTA)
The main goal of marketing your giveaway is to have a prominent CTA. Make it clear what the entry requirements are and use text and buttons to entice people to join.
3. Relying Solely on the Giveaway Publisher for Promotions
Create a contact list and send them an email about your giveaway. Be careful not to irritate existing customers by offering your product at a lower price than they paid for it – instead, offer them a free upgrade. Send out e-mails and follow-ups announcing the progress of your giveaway to give it the appearance of a real-life event, which it is.
4. There Are no Official Rules
Establishing official giveaway rules and regulations may require additional work, but it can often mean the difference between a successful giveaway contest and a failure. Without clear rules in place, your giveaway may confuse or, worse, expose your company to reputational harm, legal action, and complaints.
As a result, you must publish your official giveaway rules a few days before the contest to allow time for participants to review them.
When establishing rules, you must define participant eligibility by specifying residency and age requirements. Excluding your employees, affiliates, and their family members from the contest also ensures objectivity and avoids backlash from neutral participants. To avoid confusion and legal trouble, you should also specify how the winner will be chosen and notified, as well as how you will use the personal data you’ve gathered.
5. Unappealing Awards
Another reason most giveaways do not have a higher participant turnout is that the prizes are unappealing and irrelevant. Most people have no idea what giveaway prizes are, what they do, or how much they are worth.
When potential participants are not sold on the idea of your prize, they are more likely to participate without feeling completely convinced or to avoid the contest entirely. One way to avoid this is to come up with several social media giveaway ideas and determine what initially drew your audience to your brand.
As a rule, use your product as a giveaway to generate buzz and gauge customer interest. Using your products in giveaway contests gives the winners a taste of what they can expect if they continue to do business with you, ultimately increasing your conversions and sales in the long run.
6. Running Competitions for Too Long
Businesses frequently run giveaways for extended periods in the hopes of generating and maximizing traffic. This strategy, however, can backfire and result in participants completely forgetting about your contests. On the other hand, if you don’t run it long enough, you may limit the number of people who can enter.
Although there is no one-size-fits-all story when it comes to running giveaways, the sweet spot for a typical contest duration is two to four weeks. This is enough time to ensure that your marketing strategies mature, but not so long that it becomes tedious, and participants begin to complain.
Establish an appropriate contest duration to maintain a sense of urgency and entice people to enter sooner than later.
7. Registration Is Difficult
Many marketers make the mistake of requiring users to go through multiple registration processes and fill out multiple forms to participate in their contests. While this is a great way to collect relevant data, it may discourage potential entrants from converting and participating in your giveaway.
According to data, 74.3% of people despise forms because they take too much time and effort and provide little value. As a result, utilizing powerful marketing technologies such as a giveaway software solution is critical in reducing participant frustration and ensuring a successful contest.
It easily integrates with social media platforms and a dynamic giveaway software platform makes it easier for your customers to participate. The participants can easily log in using their Twitter or Facebook accounts.
Experts at RewardPort can also guide you with several such initiatives to ensure a high-performance Giveaway campaign for your brand.
8. Poor Reward-to-Effort Ratio
The purpose of a contest is to put in a little effort in exchange for a chance to win a large prize. Otherwise, you could save money and buy the item yourself.
This is true in any contest, but it is especially true when trying to get user-generated content in the form of essays, photos, videos, and other media.
Unfortunately, too many contests make this mistake and ask participants to do a lot of work for a small reward. As a result, even if you spent a significant amount of time and money executing the campaign, you may receive very few entries.
Here are some common signs that you’re asking too much of your audience:
- High entry barriers: If users require specific equipment to make submissions, such as a microphone or a camera, they will not accept low-quality prizes, such as cheap gift cards.
- Too time-consuming and/or labour-intensive: If you’re asking people to put in hours of work, you should make it worthwhile.
- The prize is too specific: Assume you sell photography and video equipment. A lens may appear to be a good prize, but it is meaningless to those who do not own a compatible camera. Prizes like this are inferior to those that can be used by anyone.
The cost is low: Money cannot buy happiness, but it can purchase contest entries. The less expensive the prize, the less interest you will receive.
9. Arriving at the Worst Possible Moment
There’s nothing worse than missing out on a contest you’d love to enter because you don’t have the time, money, or energy to do so. Or, even worse, you simply didn’t notice it.
This type of error can turn off people who would otherwise enter your contest. That is a major issue.
Choosing the Incorrect “Location” (i.e., Poor Targeting)
We are all aware that location is important in the real world. You don’t want your contest to attract people who aren’t interested in your brand. While there are no “places” in the traditional sense on the internet, there is traffic – and various traffic sources.
Sometimes you must make a tradeoff: do you want hyper-targeted entrants, a mix, or are you willing to go crazy and accept anyone for the sake of expanding the campaign’s reach?
There are several things you can do to keep things more focused:
- Exclude advertising to specific demographics using Facebook Ads targeting.
- Make the prize specific to a specific demographic.
- Increasing traffic from websites that contain your target audience
Avoid Giveaway Mistakes & Ensure Success
For businesses that lack the tools needed to automate specific processes like contest duration, fraud protection, and contest creation, preventing giveaway mistakes can be difficult. Using a dynamic marketing software platform to manage your giveaways is one way to ensure a successful giveaway.
Alternatively, connect with RewardPort’s award-winning strategists to design and execute a custom Giveaway campaign for you.

14 Ways to promote your sweepstakes in 2022
If you’re an online retailer, you should think about incorporating sweepstakes into your marketing strategy. They’re an efficient marketing channel for expanding your business, generating more leads, promoting your brand, and increasing sales.
A sweepstake is simple and inexpensive to run, and the benefits are far greater than those of many other marketing methods when done correctly.
Email subscribers, new customers, and increased followers on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Increased brand exposure and awareness can all result from a single promotion and increase sales.
Planning and Construction
Sweepstakes are a low-cost marketing promotion method that can have a significant impact on growing an audience and building a business. However, before running sweepstakes, you must plan it out so that you have a road map for success with a set of predetermined goals.
Many businesses believe that by giving something away for free, they will receive a flood of new visitors, email subscribers, Facebook likes, and sales. Unfortunately, without a well-defined goal and a solid marketing strategy, this is rarely the case.
To start creating your roadmap for a successful giveaway, plan out each step of your promotion until you reach the goal that you want to achieve. You can begin building your sweepstakes once you have a clear roadmap.
Marketing
Setting up your sweepstakes is a good start, but if you want to accelerate your sweepstakes and meet your goals, you’ll need a solid marketing plan.
Here are 14 different ways sweepstakes can bring real and measurable results to marketers:
1. Make a blog post
Writing a blog post about your sweepstakes is an excellent way to notify customers and prospects that you have a promotion going on. Your post should include a brief description of the promotion, how to enter, what prizes are available, and when it will end. Bonus points if you can explain how winning the sweepstakes will benefit the reader’s life.
2. Send a newsletter via email
Send an email to your list announcing your sweepstakes and providing a direct link to the entry page. Even if these people are already on your list, you should still promote them because if they enter, they will share the giveaway with their friends and family (Facebook and otherwise)
3. Share it on Facebook
Make a post about your giveaway on your Facebook timeline. Include an image of the prize that will catch people’s attention, as well as a brief description of what they can win. Finally, in your post, include a direct link to the giveaway.
4. Share it on other social media portals
In addition to Facebook, promote your giveaway on Twitter by sending a tweet with details about what people can win as well as a direct link to the giveaway page. Pin the giveaway to Pinterest, and share it with your audiences on Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Instagram as well.
5. Make use of video
Creating a video is no longer a difficult task, thanks to the power of smartphones. You can easily create short video clips to promote your sweepstakes using Vine, Instagram, or YouTube. A good starting point would be to make a short video clip showing the prizes available.
6. AdWords by Google
If you’ve set aside money to promote your sweepstakes, Google AdWords can be an effective way to reach your target audience. It enables you to target specific keywords that people are looking for and have your promotion appear in search results.
7. Blogger promotion
Bloggers are always looking for great content to share with their readers. Make a list of 10 or 20 bloggers in your niche and send each of them a personalized email about the sweepstakes you’re launching and how you believe it would be a good fit for their audience if they’d be willing to promote it for you.
8. Collaborate with another company
Collaboration with another company on your giveaway is a great way to increase the number of prizes and gain more exposure. Contact companies that are related to your niche but are not direct competitors to see if they would be interested in offering one of their products as a prize in your giveaway. If they agree, you now have another company to help you promote the giveaway. It’s a win-win scenario.
9. Publish a press release
Use a service like PR web, Pitch Engine, or PR Newswire to create a press release and schedule it to be sent out on the day the promotion goes live.
10. Incorporate a message into your packages
Tossing a little card inside each package telling them to enter the promotion is a great way to get people to enter your sweepstakes if you ship out physical products. Remember that just because these people are already customers does not mean that they will not refer their friends and family to you.
11. After transaction communications
If you sell a product, including a link to your sweepstakes after checkout can be an excellent way to collect entries. Because these people have already purchased something from you, they will most likely be delighted to have the opportunity to win something.
12. Collaborate with YouTube channels
Some incredibly popular YouTube channels may be the ideal partner to help promote your giveaway. Look for channels in your niche with many subscribers and make sure their videos have many views.
To get them to promote your sweepstakes, you may need to offer some form of compensation (either monetary or in the form of a gift- many of them review products for their audiences).
13. Banner of your sweepstakes on the business website
Most visitors to your website’s homepage will be unaware of your sweepstakes unless you notify them. Make an image that can be displayed on your homepage and links directly to your giveaway.
You can also use a simple service like Hello Bar to notify people on your homepage that you are running a giveaway. It appears simple, but many businesses simply do not realize it is an option.
14. Offline marketing
Social media and digital media aren’t the only ways to publicize your giveaway. If you have a physical store, consider how you can use walk-in customers to raise awareness for your competition. Here are some offline promotion ideas:
- Tossing a little card or flyer inside each package telling them to enter the promotion is a great way to get people to enter your sweepstakes.
- Make a check-in contest to encourage people to visit your physical store.
- Promote the contest at local events and communities in which you are involved. Create a banner or say something about your giveaway if you occasionally organize events. Using QR codes generated by a QR Code Generator is a good idea.
Conclusion
If you want your giveaway or contest to be successful, you must promote it frequently and on all available platforms. Make a page on your website for the giveaway, include details in your newsletter, and regularly spread the word on social media. Change your phrasing and timing on social media and monitor the response rate as you do so.
You may find that more people are willing to participate in the evening when they have “distraction time” and are winding down for the day. Contests, like any other marketing activity, can always be improved.
RewardPort sweepstakes can increase sales by up to 200%. Encourage customers to buy your products by offering them the chance to win big. Sweepstakes are ideal for brands seeking to introduce new items and boost trial numbers. Nothing beats sweepstakes to get users to buy your products.
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The Impact of Loyalty Programs: Pros and Cons
Loyalty programs are designed to reward your most valuable customers. Businesses choose to implement a rewards program to retain current customers and convert new buyers into loyal customers. Traditionally, many businesses use rewards programs such as rebate programs, cashback, earning points, and others to incentivize customers to make purchases.
What is a Loyalty Program?
The most basic definition of a loyalty program is that converting customers into brand loyalists necessitates a repeatable process that incentivizes them to continue purchasing from you. Loyalty membership is essentially the process of rewarding customers for their frequent or ongoing engagement with your brand through structured marketing strategies.
They receive more rewards as they spend more. Customers will feel good about purchasing from you if you put customer preferences at the heart of your marketing efforts and execute a program well, giving your business a competitive edge over your competitors.

Why Are Loyalty Programs Necessary?
Loyalty programs were created when businesses realized that the competitive advantage, they once had due to product differentiation was no longer valid due to the proliferation of similar looking and “me too” products. Having loyal customers became more important and difficult in such an environment.
Advantages of Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs became popular because they offered businesses a way to maximize their customers’ lifetime value, along with the following advantages:
1. Retention of Customers
A loyalty program’s primary goal is to retain customers by rewarding them for repeat purchase behavior. According to Khan and Khan, “loyalty exists when a person regularly patronizes a specific (store or non-store) that he or she knows, likes, and trusts.” In short, a customer loyalty program is a tool for retaining customers by providing them with a compelling reason to return to the company and establishing habits.
Many studies have been conducted to explain the relationship between loyalty programs and retention rates. According to one European study, customers’ relationship perception of a loyalty program offered by a Dutch financial services company explained about 10% of the total variation in customer retention and customer share.
Customer retention strategies have a well-established direct impact on the bottom line of a business. A company with a 60% customer retention rate loses three to four times as many customers as a company with an 80% retention rate.
2. Customer Information and Consumer Trends
When a customer registers for a loyalty program, their information is saved in the company’s database. Companies can use this data to segment their omnichannel, offline, and e-commerce customers, profile their best customers and tailor their offerings to specific groups of consumers.
Because loyalty program data provide a comprehensive picture of customer behavior, purchasing habits, and preferences, the company can use it to improve inventory management, pricing, and promotional planning. This information also allows marketers to assess the effectiveness of special promotions based on additional purchases, the use of additional channels, or a shorter time between purchases.
3. Increased Cart Value
Data collected by a company can be used to cross-sell and up-sell. It can provide extended warranties after a purchase, recommend accessories that complement the purchased item, and provide discounts on related purchases. Furthermore, the loyalty program can provide relief by increasing demand during slow seasons.
The best example is an airline mileage program that is only available on certain flights. Because there are less wastage, such targeted promotions are more likely to produce satisfactory results.
4. Getting Rid of Unprofitable Customers
One of the less frequently mentioned benefits of loyalty cards and programs is that they allow businesses to shed excess weight. A well-designed loyalty program enables businesses to segment their customers and identify profitable and unprofitable customers. It assists them in dropping customers who only buy discounted lines and avoid the premium range regularly. These customer profiles may end up costing more than they generate.
5. Improved Customer Communication
A loyalty program provides a direct line of communication with customers, making interactions much easier. Aside from promoting sales and announcing new products/services, a useful item on this list of the benefits and drawbacks of loyalty programs is that they facilitate recalls when necessary. This is possible due to the recalled items’ purchase date and barcode. Because it is based on the consumer’s actual purchase of the affected good, the recall notice gains weight and significance. In comparison to a store sign or newspaper notice, this email-borne recall notice has a high chance of being read by the public.
Disadvantages of Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs have not always worked the way businesses aimed them to. Here are a few disadvantages you should hedge against while using a loyalty program.
1. Loyalty Behavior Is Difficult to Assess
It is extremely difficult for the loyalty framework to break free from the transactional spirit. A frequent buyer appears to be a loyal customer often. However, this may not be the case, as he may be purchasing from the company simply because it is convenient for him. Or he may be purchased solely for the benefits provided by the loyalty program in the form of rewards. As a result, loyalty, which is essentially an emotion, may not be measured by the loyalty program.
2. Keeping the Bottom Line in Check
The financial aspect of loyalty programs is the most stressful of all the benefits and drawbacks. Discounts, in any form, are detrimental to a company’s bottom line. A typical $50 sale transaction has a cost of $40 and a profit of $10. A 5% loyalty discount—$5 off a $50 sale—reduces profits by 50%. The costs remain constant, but instead of earning $10 on each sale, the profit is reduced to $5. What appears to be a minor discount (in this case, 5%) can have a significant impact on profits.
The key to overcoming this financial setback is to ensure that your loyalty program is reasonably priced and effective. If the program is truly increasing repeat purchases and average order value, you should have no trouble recouping your losses if your discounts are balanced.
3. Saturation of the Market
Loyalty programs, like products, are ubiquitous and may appear identical. They are all similar in terms of membership requirements, purchase requirements, and benefits. However, in today’s ultra-competitive world, businesses are unable to back out of their loyalty program commitments due to the fear of lost sales.
With the average household participating in over nine reward programs, businesses must develop programs that are distinct and distinguishable. However, creating a loyalty program based on a sustainable competitive advantage that cannot be replicated is extremely difficult. However, advocate loyalty programs are a good way to stand out because you can reward customers for doing things that are unique to your audience.
4. Profitability Variability
Based on past customer behavior, loyalty programs hope to increase repurchases. However, their incomes, needs, and lifestyles change over time. Naturally, their purchasing habits shift. People prefer to avoid the traditional loyalty program. According to a Maritz poll, four out of every ten loyalty program participants left at least one program. That is why some experts are understandably skeptical of loyalty measures such as RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value). RFM is a useful tool for measuring customer loyalty, but it is far from perfect.
5. Loyalty Data Limitations
Because loyalty data excludes purchases from other brands and stores, it provides a skewed picture of consumers’ overall purchasing behavior. Data from customer panels may also be more representative than data from loyalty card members. Furthermore, customers may be offended if they are uncomfortable sharing sensitive information to receive the program’s incentives.
However, this point on the list of the benefits and drawbacks of loyalty programs can be addressed by incentivizing customers to share their other purchase data by rewarding them for submitting third-party receipts to you. You can gather this information to reward them for their purchases of your goods while also processing the receipts for additional information, whether they do so by scanning physical receipts or forwarding e-receipts.
Conclusion
Nobody can deny the value of loyal customers. The point of contention is the loyalty program’s ability to generate more loyal customers. This is because not all loyalty programs are successful. Some have failed due to their undifferentiated appeal, while others have failed due to poor implementation. Some have also failed because of incorrect value propositions.
Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of loyalty programs will aid in avoiding such errors.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Customer retention is boosted by loyalty programs, which can help businesses generate revenue, increase referrals, and achieve overall growth. Most businesses generate the majority of their revenue from existing customers, which requires less overhead than revenue from new customers.
Successful loyalty programs increase customer retention, lifetime duration, and customer SOW; their overall goal is to change customer repeat behavior by encouraging product or service usage and retain clients by increasing switching costs.
Many people join loyalty programs in order to receive freebies. Customers, on the other hand, want exclusivity and first-rate service. According to surveys, customers want exclusive access to sales, higher priority service, and elevated status in addition to free products and discounts.

How Gamification Improves Customer Engagement and Retention
Many different components of a business, such as customers, users, workers, and technology, one of the most difficult challenges for organizations today is customer engagement. It is critical to employ effective consumer interaction strategies. Customer engagement methods have a direct impact on the company’s overall profitability and ability to generate money because they affect apps and other digital products.
If a company’s users are highly engaged, it can increase brand awareness and loyalty while lowering customer acquisition costs and improving customer satisfaction and retention. As a result, employing the best customer engagement techniques will reduce a company’s churn rate, increase the number of active users and time spent using your app, and promote user growth via recommendations and word-of-mouth.
A Successful Strategy for Marketing
Gamification can be used in marketing by providing interactive and satisfying solutions that can be integrated into your website, app, or email campaigns. Gamification instils a sense of competitiveness in customers, motivating them to strive for goals and rewards.
Relational Interaction
To increase client acquisition and retention, gamification can be used. Gamification should give users the chance to share their rewards, accomplishments, and “plots” with friends or other users. A company will have more opportunity to attract new consumers and incur reduced customer acquisition costs if it has social connections with its customers.
Use games to teach your audience
For instance, John Findlay, cofounder of Launch fire, says, “Imagine you’re a bank that’s wanting to gain new customers.” “Develop a [free] online game that pushes users to build a financial empire by making wise investment decisions, rather than providing commercials that boast about how your bank [or financial service business] is different.”
“Nest branded messaging and pertinent advice within the game so players learn more about your offerings as they play” is a strategy to increase engagement. Offer some sort of “prize,” such as free checking for a year or a $100 savings bond for “winning” the game, to further boost interest and persuade players to register an account.
Using an entertaining, educational game, advertise a new good or service
Cite the example of a sports retailer using a racing-style game to advertise new running shoes. “In the game, they might give suggestions on the best footwear for long distance running. Then, players might use the instruction to “run faster,” score more points, and win the game.
Comprehensive business planning
If you only take into account one component of your organization, it is quite difficult to build a meaningful engagement through gamification. Using data on consumer traffic patterns and purchasing patterns to integrate behavioral economics into website or mobile app testing would enable businesses to take a comprehensive approach to company planning and will benefit businesses in the long term.

What should your Reward Program constitute of?
A loyal customer base is key to a stable and thriving business nowadays. A loyal customer base who purchases from you on a regular basis doesn’t just help you stabilize the business but also helps in getting the word out. Customers who come back or what we call ‘the repeating customers’ can increase sales by 47%. Customer loyalty programs are proven methods to sustain and grow profits. 5% increase in customer loyalty can increase the profits of the company by 20%. However, in the current market scenario having a traditional loyalty program is just not enough to survive let alone make profits. Brands have to incorporate the customer’s social and behavioral actions and expand loyalty rewards. But customer retention is the biggest obstacle that almost 60% of the business face.
Just having a loyalty program in place isn’t enough. It needs to be engaging, compelling, and beneficial for the business, customers, as well as the channel partners.
Here are a few benefits of having a carefully planned and the right loyalty program:
Save Money
Many companies nowadays continue to try to attract new customers but what they should be doing is retain old customers. Retaining old customers is far less expensive than acquiring new ones.
Increased revenue
The reason behind this is that the customers are already loyal to the brand and are likely to spend more hence increasing the revenue.
Make customers feel appreciated
A loyalty reward program that is personalized according to the social and behavioral actions of every individual customer, they feel appreciated and it sets an emotional connection with your brand.
Growth
A good loyalty program is never stagnant. It keeps on creating better communication with the customers, measures loyalty through engagement on a daily basis, gather valuable data from customer behavior, etc.
We certainly know what’s worse than dying loyalty is a dying loyalty program. Undying loyalty is something which is very rare and hard to maintain. So what should a basic reward program constitute of?
Here are a few key elements that every loyalty program should have:
Frictionless
Loyalty programs should be easy for customers to join and use. One thing that customers don’t want is giving out their personal details or information when they are signing out. Make sure the customers know that it’s easy and be sure to reveal the benefits of the program upfront.
Exclusivity
One thing that customers love is exclusivity and personalized rewards. If something is available to everyone, it’s usually special to no one.
Compelling
Rewards should be compelling enough to make the customers do some work too but not too much. You can’t afford to give away rewards for every other purchase, but it can’t require 20 purchases to redeem either.
Brand
At the end of the day, it’s all about building your brand and thinking about why your customers come back to you. This should be at the core of every reward you offer.
In conclusion, having a loyalty program is not enough. Keeping up with market trends and consumer behavior is also important. So start with understanding the customer base.

Role of Rewards in Driving “Value Sharing”
“I do not love rewards!”, said nobody. Rewards are always exciting and free vouchers always boost the motivation of the customers. Also, customer loyalty programs are the best way to drive value sharing in the business either by helping in buying decisions or keeping employees motivated to achieve a certain goal. The end goal of every business has to be to achieve the buyer trust and a brand name of its own which only can happen with the help of high sales and motivated employees. Both the driving forces can be kept happy with free goodies that come as a reward to them. Value Sharing is an extensive subject that includes not only building on buying decisions but also include other intangible good a customer can do to a brand in terms of helping in word of mouth or act as a repeat customer. In short, a reward will make a customer happy and a happy customer will help in adding to the value share for the business.
Here are certain points to help you understand the role of rewards in driving Value Sharing.
Satisfied Customer Base
Buying and purchasing is a daily activity a customer does but when the target audience shops he adds on to the credibility of the brand as a whole. On top of the quality products you promise, if the customer also gets a good discount or a buy one get one free option it will help in saving more and bring a purchase satisfaction to your customers. This will help you in retaining more customers.
Win Customer Trust
Winning a customer is one thing and retaining the existing customers is another. Most of the times major brands also indulge in a plan to do a lucky draw and only one winner wins which in fact makes a lot of people disappointed and sad who do not win the draw resulting in a reduction in sales and unhappy buyers. Winning customer trust is important.
Add More Customers
loyalty reward management programs in terms of discounts and sales often add on more footfall in your store or website and help in adding more customers to your database. Discounts and other rewards act as a driving force for the customers to invest more money in you than your competitor.
All in all, rewards are a win-win for both the buyers and the sellers where they gain in terms of a customer or retaining customer and the customer gets brands at reasonable prices. For more end to end reward program solutions, one can visit rewardport.in. Through research and collective expertise, we guide our clients with choices to help them motivate their people. Be its sales force, channel partners or employees. We motivate to enable people to do things differently, by developing their strengths, knowledge, and confidence. They care and focus to build a relationship with people… Forever.

A Guide to the Ultimate Loyalty Program
What is a customer loyalty program? It is a full-fledged marketing plan to retain a brand’s loyal customer base. A company which uses customer loyalty programs benefits more at any point of time than a company which doesn’t use it. Moreover, it is likely to cost a brand more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one.
Did you know? Your existing customers spend about 70% more than the new customers.
It is time you incorporate success-driven customer loyalty programs in your brand’s marketing plan.
Today we have an impressive list of technologies to get customer attention and direct them in buying a product or service. Nowadays, customer loyalty programs have become increasingly important and gain a bigger potential to retain existing customers. Chances are some of them become active members.
Customer loyalty programs should be included in all companies that value its buyer base. Buyers who stay true and loyal to the brand help spread the word and encourage their families, friends and others to know more about the brand. This, in turn, increases free referrals.
If you are running a company and looking to maximize your customer base, the following inputs will make the process smoother.
How to make a customer stay with your brand?
- Analyze your target audience with their expectations and tastes. Then, work on a strategy that helps you achieve your customer acquisition goal
- It is important to maintain consistency in your product quality while you try different ways to promote the same
- Whenever and wherever it is required, attend to your customer feedback and reviews
- Always keep a tab on your sales performance and listen to what your buyer says
- Your loyalty program should be designed in a way that gives the maximum value to your customers
A detailed and customized loyalty program will make your buyers feel valued and important for the business that you do. This excites them to be a part of your brand today and in the future. Appreciate your customers by including fun and surprise elements whenever they make a purchase.
By learning what they like and see in your product//service, you will be in a better position to evaluate your plan and make necessary adjustments which will then increase their brand loyalty. They would love coming back to you. Use the present opportunity to learn about your customer touch points. How often do you meet your customers to interact with them? Learn more ways to improve your customer loyalty both online and offline. Research about the key metrics that help determine your customer value. Chart out plans for reward points and recognition. Find out different methods to motivate them. These will guide you to design the ultimate customer loyalty program for your brand’s success.

Avoid these 5 common mistakes in 2019 if you want to run a successful loyalty program
2019 has just arrived and every brand or organization is already prepped up to create and build loyalty programs that are not just interesting but engaging and utilitarian in nature. Times have changed and are likely to keep changing at a fast pace and all you need to do as a brand is to get with it! Old-school ways have ought to go and newer ways and strategies must be embraced to cater to the evolved set of customers you have.
Here are the top 5 common mistakes that you must avoid if you wish to run a very successful loyalty program:
1. Cut the complications
2019 should be all about being apt and adept. The basic rule to this is to do away with any kind of complicated rules. The simpler, the better. It is one thing to create exciting offers and incentive programs and it’s another to complicate it through multiple tiers and rules. The point is to be straightforward and prominent. The reason you need to keep the complicated rules to the bare minimum is that you want to gain your customer’s attention by offering them valuable loyalty programs and not have them occupied in figuring out or calculating their gains.
For instance, if your loyalty program need points to be converted into monetary value then make the who process simpler by denoting each point to a certain value of money. Eg: 10 points = 10 Rupees
2. Being generous with the validity
This is a must-have condition for any loyalty program at this point in time. If you are looking for customers to reflect their emotions and trust towards your brand for a long time, then it is necessary that you stick to your words; in this case, the rules you assign to the program. People will bestow you with their loyalty if your program offers them a large window of redemption of the loyalty program they have. Even better would be to stake out any form of validity period at all! Shorter periods for the redemption of these incentives or rewards might project your brand as a petty or cheap brand.
3. Don’t bore it
One of the main reasons why a loyalty program is offered in the first place is because you want to create loyal customers out of your target audience. If your loyalty programs offer you the straight-out-of-the-mill type of incentives then you’re clearly not doing great! Boring needs and has to go out. A BOGO offer is acceptable only if your company has five other offers that are sure to knock your customers out of the park. Creating new, interactive and creative ways to get your customer’s attention or loyalty is of utmost importance.
4. Few Amends Only
Take a loyalty program live to the public only if you have complete faith and confidence in it. Should you feel that there are bugs or smaller errors to be amended before going live, it is imperative that you make sure to get it changed prior to making it available to your audience. Frequent changes in your loyalty or incentive program can directly affect the faith of your customers on your products and services. It also tends to distract them easily.
5. One-tier rewards are a No-no
As it is earlier mentioned, it is important to create reward programs that make your customers want to stick with your brand for longer. To initiate such long-term behavior, it is important that you develop loyalty programs that are manifold and offer more in each segment and not be static in any way. Multi-tiered reward systems engage your customers and encourage them subtly to get back to you in the hopes of getting onto the next tier of the program.
With such simple yet significant changes, you are sure to make the most of 2019 with your loyalty programs. Remember to gauge your audience at all times and work around their expectations to reduce discouraged behaviour from your customers. If you can let go of these 5 major mistakes while structuring your loyalty programs, then your program is set to be a hit!

How to make your Loyalty program addictive
Today Loyalty programs form a major component of engagement with all the stakeholders in business. Their significance is of prime in retaining existing customers and thus reducing higher cost inputs. Similarly, improving the B2B partner relations or motivating employees is crucial and is made easy with Loyalty programs.
B2C
Giving Rewards while empowering the customers
For any business, empowering customers helps developing confidence in them about the business. Customer should be given a platform to review the products/services. This should be achieved actively by offering loyalty points to the customer for a single review that they provide for the product or service received. This eases feedback taking and incentivizes the customers to review.
Special occasion rewards
The loyalty programs can be offered at special occasions for the existing group of customers with higher discounts or amplified rewards than on the regular days. For instance, a gift card and 10% cash-back or an online shopping coupon & 100$ cash-back on minimum purchases. Reminders go a long way in keeping the customers hooked especially on the special events in their life such as birthdays or anniversaries
Bundled offerings
Businesses can bundle their products into a packaged offerings to the customers such as Amazon Prime. It offers unlimited free delivery of products coupled with free music & movie streaming on Prime Music and Prime Video respectively and numerous flash deals.
B2B
Successful businesses today rely on cordial relations with the existing trade partners/ clients. It takes a great amount of effort in building the relation and trust and even greater to maintain it. The partner loyalty program ensures that the partners are engaged in work with the businesses for long run. The best strategy to develop client relations through loyalty programs is to start organising business conferences, meet-ups or other similar events and offering VIP passes.
Once the ground of trust is laid along the way, businesses can offer their partner hotel bookings & trips to various destinations for profits realized together, as part of the Loyalty program.
Employees
Digital endorsement
This programme will make an employee feel a pat on his back by way of being endorsed online. For every achievement the employee can be given digital pat on the back. This means the employee is rewarded by the addition of credit points into his account which can be redeemed later on and any product worth those points can be obtained.
Ultimately, all stakeholders desire to get tangible rewards by getting a free service/product or a cash-back. Whether rewards are given digitally or by manual methods, the loyalty programs dispense interface has to be simple and comprehensible such as the one created by Sephora beauty brand for their customers. And lastly the terms and conditions should be part of the loyalty program which could be in the form of FAQs to make it self-explanatory for the customers.

Blockchain – Redefining the Future of Customer Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs have slowly made their presence felt across travel, retail, financial services, and other business sectors. And since technology is progressive in nature, they are seeking for some kind of disruptive innovation that would turn them more consumer-friendly. Currently, companies are trying to implement new technologies that would suit their ever-growing needs. Blockchain is the next level innovation in this aspect and according to experts, it will bring the same change to banking what internet bought to media. Blockchain has become the first native digital currency for peer-to-peer value exchange.
It acts like a redemption for consumers since it provides them a single platform to access multiple loyalty programs. For example, imagine keeping only one wallet for all loyalty points and you don’t have to hunt for different options, limitations and redemption rules. Apart from that, there are a host of benefits for which Blockchain will redefine the future of all financial transactions in near future. Let’s explore.
1. It’s fast
The decentralized approach of blockchain diminishes the complications between buyer and merchant. Many stakeholders make e-commerce transactions unnecessarily complicated by involving parties that makes the process complicated by adding additional function and bureaucratic steps. Blockchain eliminates the need of a centralized authority, so the money can travel instantly in real-time.
2. It’s cheap
Blockchain reduces a lot of costs. All kinds of loyalty and financial transactions run through a lot of complex network of vendors, banks and payment processors. Blockchain removes all unnecessary third parties by allowing cheap and timeless peer-to-peer transactions. For any online transaction, a consumer ends up paying somewhere around 7% extra which can be minimized by switching to alternative mood of payments.
3. It’s Transparent
Transparency is one of the most salient features of Blockchain. Since it follows a distributed public ledger system, it’s possible to track every bit of information of a transaction. In e-commerce, marketplaces and brands usually keeps all information by themselves and charges the trader to pass them. Blockchain solves this issue by making all data visible and allows all involved parties to access data for free.
4. It’s secured
Blockchain uses certain security system which is decentralized and immutable in nature. In case of any kind of data loss, it can be traced back easily.
5. It’s easily accessible
Blockchain is digital in nature and by implementing it, a lot of additional costs can be minimized. By nature it’s less costly and has lots of potential to divert people’s minds to purchase and participate in global economy. And since it’s decentralized, the same loyalty points can be used for various purposes.
Blockchain is almost similar to the existing loyalty and transaction programs, except that it is cheaper and faster. In a country like India, it’s still early to declare it as the ultimate redemption for the existing loyalty programs since Indian government has not completely legalized it yet. But its transparent nature is a major step towards democratizing economy and bringing the power of economy back to people.