GiftCard Partners Blog

Whether it’s an academic study or a commercial focus group, it's critical to recruit and maintain the right audience to ensure statistical significance to support a hypothesis or represent a buying group. The most straightforward way to recruit and maintain that audience is through incentives.  

Motivating your sales team is an essential component of your organization’s overall success. A highly motivated sales team is more engaged, experiences lower levels of absenteeism, and is better equipped to acquire and maintain loyal clients. However, motivation isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach; it requires a combination of recognition and appreciation tailored to the unique preferences of each salesperson.

On October 29^th GiftCard Partners Co-CEO Deborah Merkin joined Vicki Ravenel, VP of Business Development at Ultimate Choice and Bill Bradley, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Omega Management Group to discuss the impact employee recognition has on your consumer experience. The webcast, Employee Recognition Programs that Enrich the Customer Experience, talked to the importance of consistency, reward type and management support in building successful employee recognition. In addition, it reviewed:

It's the ultimate question that marketers would love to have the answer to, how can retailers deliver winning strategies for their own loyalty programs?  Loyalty drives sales, today, tomorrow and in the future, but how does a retailer keep loyalty fresh? Currently, U.S. households participate in over 20 loyalty programs, but less than 10% are actively using their accounts. Retailers need to produce winning strategies to have a successful loyalty program.  Based on the existing loyal customer base, 37% of retailers believe that customer retention will be the #1 contributor to growth in the next 3 years.  This customer retention correlates to same-store sales. 73% of smartphone users would like to connect their loyalty programs directly to their mobile devices. Recognition and rewards need to be differentiated. There is no one size fits all with rewards. In fact, lack of differentiation hinders program adoption. 69% of loyalty program members want to receive personalized discounts. Tracking technology allows retailers to gather shopper purchase history, spend, and browsing behaviors, allowing for retailers to offer personalized discounts. Lastly, well-planned implementation for loyalty programs is critical; the first 6 months of the launch being the most critical time for a loyalty program.  Almost 30% of retailers rank store loyalty as a top 5 technology-related challenge in their industry.
Read the infographic “How Sweet It Is: The Satisfaction of a Successful Loyalty Program” here!

In
Monday’s blog we discussed the #10 trend taken from Incentive Research Foundation’s
2014 Trends in Engagement, Incentives, and Recognition report, the popularity of non-cash rewards as sales incentives. Today we want to focus on another trend taken from the study, the shift in employee engagement and how businesses are shouting, “Show me the
results!” These
results include things like brand authenticity, effective change management and efficient cross-company collaboration. The report goes on to explain, “Engagement as an aspiration measure is shifting focus and becoming a way to drive better outcomes.” Those direct outcomes are not only being recognized and measured, but strategically rewarded in an effort to secure a successful program for the long haul. Check out more on this trend and the other 9 topping the list for
2014 here.