To keep people coming back for more, there is nothing more powerful than saying “thank you”. Here are 4 new ways to reward your loyal customers for visiting your stores, purchasing your products, engaging with your content or creating content for you.

Reward User-Generated Content

What could be more genuine than the marketing your fans create for you?

More than 8 in 10 people say user-generated content from people they don’t know serves as an indicator of brand quality and influences their purchase decision. Surprisingly, 51% say opinions from strangers are more important than opinions from friends and family.

Surely, there is a lot to be gained from loosening the reigns around your brand and creating a space for the people to speak for you.

Ratings and Reviews

Including a ratings and reviews section on your website or Facebook page conveys a willingness to be transparent that assures your audience of the quality of your offering. Set up ways to respond publicly to ratings and reviews to further indicate your responsiveness and caring.

Photos and Videos

Who doesn’t want to be e-famous? Set up a section on your website, promotional microsite, or Facebook page to highlight photo and video submissions from customers. Compose tweets or status updates to call out new entries to your social media audiences. Take inspiration from Oreo’s Facebook profile picture, that the company uses to feature a different Oreo fan every week.

Tweets and Comments

Why not reward your fans for clever tweets and comments around your branded properties? Create lists like “10 Best Responses to #twitterheist Campaign” to highlight text-based fan contributions and compile them into blog posts or company newsletters.

Most of all, keep it genuine. Show people you want to listen, you want to respond, you want to put them in the spotlight to thank them for being a part of your brand.

To keep people coming back for more, there is nothing more powerful than saying “thank you”. Here are four new ways to reward your loyal customers for visiting your stores, purchasing your products, engaging with your content or creating content for you.

2. Reward Gaming

As “gamification” becomes the hottest marketing buzzword, companies are increasingly gravitating toward games as the format of choice for branded experiences. The benefit of a game versus a static marketing piece is plain to see – a more engaging experience that necessitates repeat visits, creating a strong community of regulars around your marketing.

“[Traditional marketing] is failing because people today are seeking more reward and more engagement from experiences than ever before,” argues Gabe Zichermann, author of Game-Based Marketing. To this end, developing gaming mechanics that stimulate initial plays and repeat visits is key.

Points:

The most commonly used form of game mechanics, points allow you to measure achievements in a linear and limitless way. This creates an environment of competitiveness in the form of scoreboards, or, to use the gaming term…

Leaderboards:

Leaderboards encourage users to become power players to the end of seeing their name reach top rankings. To maximize competitiveness, create a universal leaderboard and one that compares a user’s points with those of their friends.

Levels:

Levels make a game more “sticky” by giving users an accomplishment to work toward, similar to…

Badges:

Like levels, badges provide an incentive to keep users playing in order to unlock symbols of virtual accomplishments. Badges also become part of the user’s identity, as they can be featured on a gamer’s page within a type of “digital trophy case”.

Prizing:

Of course, none of these mechanics should exist in a vacuum. Gaming initiatives work most effectively when players can exchange their digital achievements for real world prizes. This can range from company merchandise, to company products, to larger prizes that do not necessarily utilize your product but speak to your brand – like an exotic vacation for a company that makes travel backpacks.

Social:

The final step to ensuring your game creates maximized impact is to integrate a social layer in the rewarding dynamic. Compensate users for sharing interactions with your game to their audiences on Facebook and Twitter. There are mechanisms for prompting users to post such updates, even going so far as suggesting the content of the update to enhance fluidity between playing and posting. At the very least, posts that get rewarded with points should include @-mentions (or tags, in the case of Facebook) of your company. This maximizes exposure of your company to your user’s audiences, who can click-through on their friends post to your company’s page, and gives you a way to tabulate company mentions resulting from game play. For increased impact, ask users to recognize the promotion name in the form of a hashtag (Twitter) or event link (Facebook).

Other Posts in This Series
Reward In-Store Interactions
Reward Social Participation
Reward User Generated Content