If you want to strengthen your customers’ brand loyalty, look no further than the value connected to offers and rebates.
Some offers and rebates promotions include Gift with Purchase and digital coupons, which are customizable solutions that help you achieve various marketing objectives such as:
- Increasing purchase size and purchase frequency
- Motivating bundled purchases
- Activating retail programs and partnerships
Gift with Purchase incentives can increase sales through guaranteed rewards, cash or charitable donations. These engagement tactics incentivize purchases because you’re giving your customers something of value.
Digital coupons give you redemption flexibility and security and can be distributed across your digital marketing channels.
Let’s learn how to create successful rebate and offer programs, set proper goals and create brand-specific programs.
How to Create Successful Rebate and Offer Programs
There are four key things to do to create a successful rebate and offer program.
Make it customer-centric: Give customers choices with how they submit and how they’re rewarded, while making it easy for them to participate, earn and redeem offers.
Be clear: Don’t make customers guess along the way. Clearly state dates and communicate with them throughout the entire rebate and offer process.
Offer peace of mind: Collect customer data in legally compliant ways and leverage that data responsibly to drive communications, mitigate fraud and motivate the next purchase.
Leverage gamification: Gamify the submission process using incentivized engagements and encourage early redemption to drive sales for the next purchase.
Consider these rebate guidelines as well:
- Planning KPIs: Identify program objectives and how to effectively measure them. Program length should, ideally, be less than one year to drive urgency and purchase frequency.
- Costs: On the administrative side, consider manual or automated submission and fulfillment. For rebate value, consider item price to determine the optimal reward amount and account for slippage/breakage.
- Positioning: The purchase reward is not a discount because the customer needs to perform an action to be rewarded. Brand the award to create a positive association and drive reward redemption.
- Optimization: Test different thresholds, product mixes and timeframes. Leverage surveys, sweepstakes and gamification to add fun and collect additional insights.
- Regulation: Align with FTC rules and regulations. Make sure CCPA and GDPR guidelines are followed.
Rebate & Offer Goals
Pre-order product: After pre-ordering a new Galaxy phone, Samsung customers registered in-app for Samsung digital coupon codes or checks based on their level of spend.
Upgrade product: Samsung customers who upgraded their kitchens and purchased qualifying Chef Selection products were eligible for a living room upgrade for a new TV fulfilled as a Samsung.com TV code.
Drive Product & Service Trial: In this dishwasher installation offer, Samsung offered its customers $125 VISA Gift Codes that could be used for installation services after purchasing a new dishwasher.
Motivate bundled services: In this “Spring for Something New” promotion, Samsung customers who bought two appliances received a $200 VISA Gift card.
Promote key selling seasons: In this “Black Friday Kitchen Package Offer” Samsung customers who bought four or more appliances were eligible for 10% of the pre-tax purchase price redeemed in the form of a VISA gift card.
Example: Aviation Gin executed a rebate program and the goal was to encourage consumers to celebrate National Aviation Day by visiting local bars and restaurants to receive a free Aviation Gin drink.
After purchasing an Aviation Gin drink at a local bar, each participant visited the promotional site to upload their receipts and received $7 reimbursements to cover their drinks.
Key Statistic: Seventy percent of consumers take advantage of a rebate over a year.
Related Content: 6 Types of Quick-to-Market Promotions to Engage Customers (That You Can Launch Fast).
Create Brand-Specific Programs
Acquire and retain loyalty program members: Consider Samsung’s promotion titled, “New Year. New Samsung. Free Rewards.”
Samsung Rewards members who made a qualifying purchase of a Samsung wearable in the New Year were eligible for 20,000 Samsung Rewards points to be used toward fitness services.
Samsung & T-Mobile Tuesdays teamed up for, “1 Year of Netflix on Us,” where T-Mobile Tuesday members who logged into the app on Tuesday could claim one year of Netflix streaming services for purchasing a qualifying Samsung Galaxy device.
Activate partnerships: In this partnership with Samsung and Fandango titled, “Squad Up with Galaxy Tablets,” if Samsung customers made a qualifying Galaxy tablet purchase at Best Buy, they earned two tickets to see “Suicide Squad” while non-Best Buy stores offered tickets and a Batman vs. Superman movie download.
Give customers choice: For every Samsung Galaxy device that was purchased, enterprise customers were eligible for their choice of a Gear360 Camera or a 128 GB memory card and fast wireless charging station.
Also, to qualify for free Galaxy Buds, Samsung customers had to pre-order a Galaxy device. Besides the earbuds, customers also received unlimited Spotify services and Fortnite digital content.
Rebates Work for You and Your Customers in Various Ways
Rebates drive purchases by competing on price without compromising your premium brand perception. And here are some ways rebates can do that for your brand:
- Drive sales in price-competitive categories
- Motivate product or service trial
- Cross-sell portfolio products
- Pre-order products
- Increase purchase size and/or frequency
- Create retailer-specific programs
- Motivate bundled purchases
- Promote key selling seasons
- Activate partnerships
Offers and rebates are flexible solutions and can be customized to achieve your company’s marketing goals and elevate brand loyalty.
If you need help with any rebates or offers or would like to talk about your customer engagement efforts, feel free to reach out to our experts here any time.
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ebbo helps brands achieve their customer loyalty goals with full-service, end-to-end solutions and also creates original educational content straight from the experts to help loyalty marketers stay on the cutting edge of customer engagement.