Incentive marketing is one of the best and most used tools to create a strong loyalty relationship with clients and avoid churns. Gift cards are the most effective way to do it. Whether you want to strengthen your bond with your clients or your employee, giving gifts and appreciation is essential. A loyal employee is going to work harder and better, a loyal customer is going to spend more money for a longer period. For this reason, it is fundamental to know the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and invest in making sure that you are always improving it and taking care of the bond with your clients. Let’s understand how loyalty programs work and which is the best way to reach customer satisfaction and Return On Investment.
Why Gift Card
Studies show that gift cards are the most chosen item when people want to achieve maximum happiness when giving gifts. The reasons why gift cards work so well are due to their extreme flexibility and their ease of delivery. Gift cards allow reaching customers’ and employees’ satisfaction while spending less time and effort than they would for any other type of reward, and are therefore the best choice for an incentive program. They are easy to obtain and distribute and allow the users to get what they truly want and need: it is a win-win solution for both the issuer and the receivers. We talk about incentive marketing when a business decides to invest money into rewards to get clients’ and employees’ loyalty.
How a traditional loyalty campaign works
Let’s say that a company decides to invest 1 million euros in incentive marketing. They thus need to choose a vendor that will provide them with the vouchers (Amazon, Decathlon, Uber, etc.) and arrange the contract: they will have to go through the legal process and negotiate discounts and conditions. This is time-consuming and requires high effort. Once everything has been mutually agreed upon, the company pays the entire fee in advance and gets their vouchers, which need to be integrated with the Business Process. Then only then physical cards can be shipped the physical cards to the customer. The company must engage with every single voucher vendor, struggling to reach minimum volumes. On top of internal workers, there are many problems with this type of processes, such as fraud, legal specifics, deals, and thousands of euros worth of CVS going back and forth.
What happens to these vouchers?
On average, at least 30% of the vouchers will not be used. this means that you wasted a huge percentage of your money, thus the business spent capital and did not get any benefits from it.
Let’s talk about numbers.
The global gift card business is enormous: around 615 billion dollars annually. This means that 184 billion dollars (30%!) are wasted every year on unclaimed promotions and do not provide a return on investment. Such an amount of money could be shifted and invested towards other projects.
- 615$ Billion Business
- 30% Waste
- 184$ Billion Lost
Despite clear evidence of this loss, companies keep on investing in incentive programs, and that is because they are still believed to be the most effective way to strengthen the loyalty bond with their customers. In other words, having a strong loyal client base is worth more than the money spent on the investment, and companies are willing to with losing that 30%.
Do we have a solution?
Yes, Digital Rewards
You can have a more efficient loyalty campaign while paying less: you only need to start working with a gifting platform and rewarding your clients and employees with digital vouchers. Roiward has advanced technology that allows you to save money and time: we take care of everything! We look after every detail of your incentive program and value your investment. This is why we are unique: you will not have to deal with vendors and follow the legal aspects, since we already have contracts and agreements with them and will manage any issue that may arise.
We take on the time-consuming task of finding the best strategy and customizing it for each business’s needs, with our experience and technology we can build the best loyalty based on your company’s data and demographic information.
Roiward and our business partners know that a digital loyalty program that uses online vouchers and gift cards it’s easier to build and more effective. First of all, it gives companies the chance to see how their investment is progressing and how many vouchers are being used. Moreover, it simplifies, even more, the ease of delivery, since all you need is an attractive gift idea, and your clients receive their gift cards in their email.
The digital world counts for a wide number of digital scams, we always keep an eye on the risk of fraud and scams that comes with an incentive program. It is thus essential to use automated platforms it is built to avoid fraud and errors.
As a final step to the puzzle, we make sure that your audience is encouraged to use the vouchers you provided them, making the most out of your investment. Finally, we are the only ones who provide the unique service of giving you back part of the money from the non-spent vouchers. This way, you get ROI, and they get rewards.
Perks of Digital Gift Cards
As we said, it is incredibly easy to deliver online vouchers and gift cards, buying thousands of them with one click, but that is not the only perk of choosing to go digital. Online platforms offer an incredible amount of range and variety to choose from, truly allowing every company to customize their incentive programs based on their goals. You can have an easy-to-use platform, the strategic consulting of an experienced team, and the greatest Return On Investment.
Why ROIWARD is the best platform
Roiward’s platform is technologically advanced and its team is made up of experienced professionals. Our technology itself is what makes us a leading company in the market since we are the only ones to offer part of the money back from the unredeemed vouchers.
We also aim at allowing our clients to customize their campaigns as much as they want. For this reason, we offer the greatest variety of catalogs and reward ideas. We are the only one to offer the chance to customize your campaign with physical products: you can create an Amazon catalog connected via API, in addition to more than 700 gift cards to choose from.
Book a Demo!
Are you ready to begin your journey in incentive marketing or to drastically improve the system you are already using? Book a Demo and let’s talk about it!
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Sources
Austin, L. Huang; First Choice? Last resort? Social risks and gift card selection; «Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice», Vol. 20, No. 3, 2012; pp. 293-305.
