Sounds enticing, right? As a business, you are always on the lookout for fresh ways to acquire and retain new customers, or to keep your current ones happy and coming back for more. One method to help draw in and connect with customers in 2016 is to utilize a relatively new strategy--status tests--which tap into customers' competitive sides.

The Overachievers
With status tests, customers actively prove their loyalty to businesses, and businesses reward these customers for it. While this may sound like just another "loyalty rewards program" tactic, it goes deeper than that. Loyalty rewards programs usually reward customers based on how much money they have spent. "Buy 10, get 1 free" and point accumulation based on money spent are the norm. Status tests, on the other hand, reward overachievers with exclusivity. A status test is its own separate entity from a business' ongoing loyalty rewards program, and is usually structured on a tier system. It's like a party that not everyone can get into. Customers often seek status, and what better way for a business to make customers feel privileged than by enabling them to reach the highest tier? In order to achieve the exclusivity status test campaigns provide, customers have to engage with products and work for their rewards. The rewards can't be bought. As a business, there's a certain "drive" or competitiveness that keeps your company striving for more. The status test strategy works because customers possess that same drive.

Status tests can also be used as contests in which a winner is eventually declared--thus boosting one lucky participant's status. Using popular dating app, Tinder, a speakeasy bar in Milan, 1930, used a status test to vet over 4,000 participants. The participants were whittled down based on subtle tests they needed to pass to make it to the next level. Out of the 4,000 participants, only 800 correctly passed the first hurdle, then 300, until eventually just one remained. The one worthy participant was then awarded entrance into the ultra-exclusive bar.

Finding new ways to reward your customers is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only will your current customers who have consistently supported your business continue to show their support, but word will pass on to other potential customers who want to get in on the action, as well. Customers love and appreciate feeling important, but if you tap into their competitive sides, you'll see a whole new crop of customers waiting to prove their worth to your business.

Sincerely,

Mona Graham