Many vendors offer special reward or incentive programs for making purchases from their company. These rewards take many forms including gift certificates, prizes, clothing, etc. When considering implementation of such a program for your business, there are things you need to consider.
Terms - Clearly indicate the terms of the program. Be transparent in the language to avoid problems on the back end. Terms such as 'one rebate per household' or 'valid through June 2013' are some such terms you may want to include.
Eligibility Requirements - If there are eligibility requirements state them clearly. Here you can state things like, "You will earn cash-back for every qualified retail purchase." Then go on to explain what those qualified retail purchases actually include or point them to the paragraph where they can read those requirements.
The following are some ideas on how to state your requirements.
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Yearly Purchases
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Rebate Reward
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$1,000 and below
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0.25%
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$1,001 - $2,000
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0.50%
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$2,001 - $3,000
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0.75%
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$3,001 and above
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1.00%
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- Your monthly statement will list your beginning rebate balance, month-to-date rebate earnings and ending rebate balance. The ending balance may include any cash-back credits.
- Qualified purchases do not include items returned.
- Adjustments will be posted to your ending rebate balance total for retail purchase returns (credits) posted to your account.
- Rebate Reward credits are neither transferable nor exchangeable.
- Your account must be maintained in a positive status during the entire program period.
- Members will automatically forfeit any earned Rebate Rewards if your account becomes two or more cycles delinquent or if your account is canceled, terminated, delinquent or otherwise not available to use for charges at the time the Rebate Reward credits are posted each year.
- (Your Company), at its own discretion, may modify suspend or cancel this Rebate Rewards program at any time without restriction or penalty.
- Cash-back credit may be forfeited due to violations of these rules. This program is void where prohibited or restricted by law.
- The member is responsible for any federal, state or local income tax or other taxes.
To make it a worry-free, traceable rebate, rewards, incentive program and to increase loyalty and traffic consider setting up a member's only section on your website where members can track their eligibility and progress towards their next goal. Many companies offer these sections and with WordPress membership sites they are easy to include and implement. If you are unfamiliar or need help implementing a membership site, there is always a WordPress Virtual Assistant close by who will help you get started.
While these are all good ways to track and sustain a rebate program, you might not want to get involved in the onset with such a complicated system. This is when and where you can offer your reward at the time of purchase. A gift certificate might fare well here. Alternatively, you can do as I do, for every referral who hires DocUmeant Publishing & Designs the referee receives a 10% (10 percent) bonus reward on first invoice. This makes it easy to track and maintain. All that is required is keeping track or knowing the referee.
If you want to give a gift certificate, you can do this digitally or physically. I highly recommend you send them a physical gift certificate and keep track of the certificate number and who it was given to in case they lose or misplace it before it expires. Yes, expiration dates are important to include as well as tracking information. An open-end expiration may be nice for the customer, but when there is no deadline, they are not motivated to use it in a timely manner. They may even set it aside and forget it altogether.
When setting up your rebate, rewards, or incentive program the knowledge of what motivates people is wise to keep in mind. According to a study done by Ran Kivetz (2006), people are more motivated as they get closer to a goal. In the study, they gave one group a frequent buyer card that had two stamps already, and the other group got an unstamped card. While both groups were required to purchase the same amount, the group that got the two pre-stamped card took a shorter time to receive their bonus. This shows that people focus on the accomplishment and not what they have already completed, according to Kivetz. Does that give you any ideas you can use when setting up your own rebate, reward, incentive program?
For rebate, reward, incentive programs to work the main thing you need to remember is that the reward must be something your specific audience wants. What does your particular audience want? Do you even know? If not, perhaps you should send out a survey to get the answer so you know what and how to set up your program.
