Rewards

Give back to your clients and customers - Reward them for things like bringing their friends on-board your mailing list, buying Instant Gift Certificates, or even just spreading the word about how awesome you are.

Before You Begin with Rewards

Think about your strategy - because you are potentially awarding things of real value to you, back to your clients, make sure the rewards program fits your business goals and doesn't break the bank!

The best way to approach this is decide WHAT behavior you want to reward the most - is it bringing customers back over and over again? Or, do you value your current clients when they bring a friend in who also makes a purchase? You could also be looking to grow your email marketing list quickly - rewarding for sign-ups that come from a referral is a great way to encourage that.

For more details, these (external) articles are a nice summary of the business strategies and research behind loyalty/reward programs:

We have a few ideas for some specific reward point tiers below, too - keep reading!

Rewards Configuration

To enable Rewards, click on Rewards in the side column, then click on "Go":

You'll see the default rewards program we have set up for you to get started (you can change this, of course):

To change the name, just edit the field and click "Save" or "Update".

Next, decide how much you'd like to reward your customers and how much you'd like each Reward Point to be worth. For some businesses, equating 10 Reward Points to 1 dollar of value is easy. Your customers will rack up points quickly which makes it almost a game.

Clients will normally earn points by purchasing Gift Certificates or signing up for your Newsletter, but you can tailor your numbers to highly reward Services rather than dollar GCs, or you can put a bounty on clients that use Share-With-a-Friend to send you new referrals.

Redemption

There are two redemption methods: manual (the default) and automatic. We highly recommend that you turn on the checkbox labeled "Automatically redeem rewards?" - it makes the system easy and nearly maintenance-free.

Once turned on, you'll see that our default settings are for a $40 Gift Certificate when the client reaches 1000 points. Customize this any way you'd like, and choose the gift certificate design that appeals to you. When any client reaches 1000 points, a GC will automatically be created and emailed to them with the message you've specified - no work required!

If using manual redemption, you can see each client's points level in your GCs Tab (they are awarded as "Rewards GCs" but are not dollar value GCs until you act). Let's say you have a client with 700 points and they're in your business right now. You can note this and say, "I see you're a good client - we can redeem your points today for a gift of your choosing, or a dollar GC for $X amount." At that point, find their points balance and "redeem" the appropriate amount with a note indicating what they received. (See how much easier the automatic redemption is???)

Rewards Description

This section allows you to customize the default text that will show in emails and on GC purchase screens to indicate your client's points activity. When finalizing a GC purchase, for example, the text will show at the bottom indicating how many points they've earned with that transaction. It will also be in their purchase receipt email.

Reward Scenarios

1. Let's say you place a huge value on follow-through with referrals. Leave the default points for "Share with a friend" to 0 (that way you will not be rewarding for one of your clients essentially sending out spam to their friends or random email recipients), but then set "Shared friend signup" to a large number - perhaps 100. That means you're effectively granting a $10 gift to your new referred customers - not a bad deal for them and an effective way for you to grow your clientele.

2. Rewarding the Services clients: to pamper the clients who purchase Services, set your Points level for the Services purchases to higher than that of dollar GCs or Deals. Easy!