Loyalty Program

15 Sales Promotion Ideas & What You Should Understand About Them

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

1. Discount Coupons

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

2. Flash Sales

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

3. Rebates

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

4. Gift Vouchers

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

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

5. Free Samples & Trials

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

6. Bundles

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

7. BOGO Deals

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

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

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

9. Referral Discounts

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

10. Seasonal Sales

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

11. Social Media Giveaways

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

12. Sweepstakes

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

13. Same-Day Delivery

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

14. Free Shipping & Returns

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

15. Birthday Discounts

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

Gamify Your Sales Promotion Program with RewardPort

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

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

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

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

1. Experienced Team

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

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

2. Multiple Rewards & Redemption Options

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

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

3. Seamless Execution

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

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

4. Easy-To-Use Reward Programs

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

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

5. Customer Services

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

Boost Employee Retention at Your Organization with RewardPort

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

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

15 Customer Incentive Programs & How to Boost Their Results

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

1. Cashback Programs

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

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

2. Discount-Based Programs

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

3. Loyalty Points

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

4. Store Credit

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

5. Tiered Reward Programs

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

6. Charity-Based Reward Programs

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

7. Choice-Centred Loyalty Programs

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

8. Gamified Reward Programs

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

9. Subscription-Based Programs

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

10. Spend-Based Rewards

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

11. Rewards for Top Spenders

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

12. Referral Rewards Program

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

13. Early Access to Sales

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

14. Community-Based Programs

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

15. Free Perks Programs

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

Run Your Loyalty Incentive Program With RewardPort

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

12 Effective Employee Rewards Programs that Cost Almost Nothing

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

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

1. Celebrating Personal Occassions

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

2. Peer-to-Peer Appreciation

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

3. Social Media Shoutouts

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

4. Personalized Thank-You Notes

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

5. Creative Tailor-made Rewards

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

6. Monetary Incentives

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

7. Learning & Development Rewards

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

8. Organizing Lunch with Top Performers

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

9. Include Gamification

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

10. Monthly Awards and Recognition

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

11. Gift of Flexible Timing

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

12. Award for Punctuality

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

Build Your Employee Rewards Program With RewardPort

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

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

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

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

1. Generating New Leads

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

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

2. Clearing Out Old Stock

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

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

3. Introducing New Products in the Market

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

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

4. Boosting Loyalty in Current Customers

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

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

5. Boost Sales and Revenue

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

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

Run Effective Consumer Sales Promotions With RewardPort

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

5 Consumer Loyalty Programs for Automotive Companies

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

1. Tier-Based Loyalty Programs

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

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

2. Community-Based Loyalty Programs

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

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

3. Free Maintenance Plans

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

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

4. Rewards Program for Carwash Services

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

5. Loyalty Rewards For Every Customer Action

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

Run an Effective Loyalty Program with RewardPort

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

5 Gamification Ideas for Sales & How To Implement The Rewards

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

Best Gamification Ideas to Boost Sales

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

1. ‘Spin To Win’ Contests

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

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

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

2. Scavenger Hunts

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

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

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

3. Top Spender Leaderboards and Prizes

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

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

4. Tiered Reward Programs

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

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

5. Referral Contests

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

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

Include Gamification in Your Sales Promotions with RewardPort

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

5 B2B Rewards Programs for Consumer Products Businesses

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

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

How Are B2B Loyalty Programs Different From B2C Loyalty Programs?

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

5 Effective B2B Loyalty Program Ideas

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

1. Offer Transaction Based Discounts

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

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

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

2. Run a Rewards-Based Loyalty Program

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

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

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

3. Use Tiered Incentives

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

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

4. Stimulate Co-Marketing and Support Activities

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

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

5. Offer Referral Incentives

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

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

Run the Best B2B Loyalty Program With RewardPort

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

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.