Shop & Earn programs – where members earn rewards when they shop - are a great way to offer your customers additional value, boost loyalty & retention, and drive incremental revenue. However, there are a wide variety of factors that can impact the success of your Shop & Earn program. If you simply “build it,” users won’t magically materialize or continue to return over time.
When the benefits of these programs aren’t realized by your target audience, there are typically two culprits – lack of customer awareness that the program exists, and the persistent marketing of offers to drive shopping. Both are critical for success.
Like any successful long-term product, a Shop & Earn program requires a thoughtful go-to-market (GTM) strategy as well as ongoing promotion and optimization to maximize its impact. Then, in order to thrive, the Shop & Earn program requires a thoughtful strategy and execution when it comes to user acquisition, activation, revenue generation, and retention.
This post will review some of the essentials for launching and maintaining a successful Shop & Earn program.
Awareness & Acquisition
The first step is to build awareness of and drive prospects to the rewards program. Here are the top priorities for generating momentum:
Evergreen Links
Evergreen links are essentially the permanent links in your site and apps where new users will discover your rewards program and existing users will easily access it going forward. If the optimal locations are leveraged, evergreen links will be the primary workhorses for both acquisition and retention volume as they’re available 24/7.
Email Marketing
One of the bigger levers most companies wield to drive awareness and acquisition is their existing email list. Consistent educational emails touting program benefits, as well as email sub-features that highlight recognizable brands, are very effective ways to expose new people to your Shop & Earn program.
Offline Marketing
Existing offline channels should be leveraged to promote your program. Airport signage, statement inserts, direct mail, in-branch or in-store displays, in-flight magazine and mall kiosks are just a few examples of channels that complement online promotions and drive incremental awareness.
Program Education
The value of your brand and your Shop & Earn program go hand-in-hand. The two should be tightly integrated to boost awareness, reduce friction, increase user satisfaction, and maximize total customer value.
Even though cashback and rewards programs have been around for decades, many consumers are still skeptical of the promise of “free” money or rewards for something they’re already doing (i.e., shopping). Educating them on where the rewards come from and how the process works can make them comfortable enough to engage.
Activation, Retention, & Revenue
Now that prospects are at the door, it’s time to convert them into first-time buyers, repeat shoppers, and generators of recurring revenue. Here are some of the most impactful strategies for doing so:
Onboarding
A combination of personalized and targeted content, offers, and communications ensures that new users are directed down the appropriate path to maximize lifetime value (LTV).
Browser Extension
According to customer feedback we’ve collected, one of the most common reasons people stop using a Shop & Earn program is because they forget about it. Another common complaint is that it’s too hard to remember login information or site links.
Browser extensions solve both these issues (and many more). Extensions understand when a user visits a participating merchant’s site and will provide a quick reminder for them to activate their rewards.
Once a user authenticates their extension, they not only get relevant rewards reminders, they also can bypass login, automatically apply coupon codes, and compare prices.
The browser extension is an essential component for maximizing both retention and LTV.
Email Marketing
Along with the browser extension, a robust seasonal email marketing calendar is an essential tool for keeping your program top-of-mind and driving retention and LTV. With hundreds of retail moments to market, layer in personalization and targeting to make offers relevant to various audiences.
Favorite Store Selection
It’s important to allow users to find and save their favorite stores. Then, on future visits, users can quickly access and shop their favorites, which provides a faster, more effective experience.
More importantly, users can opt-in to favorites emails and SMS alerts. Personalized alerts are then sent when their selected stores offer higher reward rates. This boosts both new shopper conversion and ongoing retention rates.
Browsable Offers (Window Shopping)
Browsable offers, also known as window shopping, will drive stronger results overall. One key benefit of window shopping is significantly less friction (especially when email is leveraged for acquisition) for unauthenticated users to browse and understand the program.
The second key benefit of window shopping is (free) organic search engine traffic. When pages are gated behind a login, search engines (i.e., Google) can’t crawl or index them. Therefore, as you build the awareness that typically drives users to search engines, it becomes significantly more difficult for users (both new and repeat) to find the program and convert.
Partner with Cartera to Maximize Your Shop & Earn Program
If you’re ready to add a Shop & Earn program, or to re-boot or expand an existing program, Cartera can help you strategize, build, and customize ongoing management strategies to drive your desired results. We’ve launched and actively manage Shop & Earn programs for some of the largest airlines and financial institutions in the world.
Cartera’s team of expert marketers can help you design (and execute) a GTM strategy, as well as an ongoing and comprehensive marketing plan that drives member acquisition, revenue, and retention.
With our integrated, omni-channel approach, we’ll ensure that your email, online, and offline campaigns all work in conjunction to maximize effectiveness. Through continuous testing and optimization, Cartera has developed a new user onboarding experience that quickly activates prospects.
Our dedicated team of communications specialists will consult with you and provide full end-to-end email marketing capabilities for your program, including campaign & promotion strategy, creative development, personalization, subject line & content optimization, event-based triggers, CAN-SPAM & compliance guidance, performance reporting, and more.
Cartera will work with your team to share expertise in a variety of areas, including creative design, subject line & preheader optimization, send day/time strategy, personalization, and conversion tracking.
We will also work with you to build trust with your users via How It Works videos, custom landing pages, and welcome email triggers with educational content and FAQs.
Cartera’s “favoriting” product is an off-the-shelf solution that powers favoriting and personalized alerts. Cartera’s button product is top in its class, with five-star reviews and additional engagement features, like coupon magic, that surpass the competition.
CONTACT US! We’d love to chat and see if we’re the right fit for your brand.