GiftCard Partners Blog

Small business incentive programs are growing rapidly. According to a recent article from Incentive Magazine, research conducted by the Incentive Federation revealed that a substantial amount of small businesses are now using rewards and recognition programs. The study asked businesses with at least $1 million in annual revenue about their goals, programs, awards they use, and how they measure whether or not their incentives are successful.  Most of the smaller firms that responded to the survey spend less than $50K annually on sales incentive programs, whereas firms with revenue of over $10 million spend significantly more annually on their incentive programs. When it comes to the type of reward, electronics came in as the most requested merchandise reward, followed by food and beverage and apparel. Other popular choices were sporting goods, luggage, watches, and home decor.  

Ever wondered what employee rewards your staff really want? While you know they may appreciate the sentiment of the reward, and even find the rewards fun, have you ever wondered, if they could pick anything, what the general employee response would be? In a recent study done by The Voucher Shop these hard-to-come-by desires are revealed. Even though these are results from across the pond, there's a lot to be gleaned applicable for American employees and households as well. Here are the top categories employees want to see in rewards from their employers:

According to a new survey from the Retail Gift Card Association, up to 70% of consumers will buy gift cards for friends and family by the end of the summer. This is an important finding for B2B gift card programs as well. Why's that? Because the survey also revealed that 95% of consumers are hoping to
receive gift cards this spring and summer. While this directly applies to celebrations like birthdays, graduations and weddings, the popularity of gift cards can also segue to employees recognition programs, health and wellness programs and employees rewards. Here are key findings from the study:

Employees who engage with wellness programs earlier respond more favorably and are healthier in the long term than employees who engage with wellness programs later. Biometric screenings provide gateway to early engagement, and provide an important opportunity to use incentives as carrot rewards for plan participation and healthier readings. Of the participants who received program incentives before their screenings,

The better the choice, the more apt the person is to be active in the loyalty or incentive program, pursuing the desired behavior in order to earn the reward. Loyalty program participation is a problem for many companies. According to the Colloquy Loyalty Consensus released in February 2015, the average household is “involved” in 29 programs, but active in only 12.1.