New Case Study: Manufacturer Uses Incentive-Based Marketing Campaign to Increase Mobile App Adoption by 205.9%

When people think about incentive programs, most people think about using them to increase sales, build customer retention, or to recognize valuable employees. But using incentive-based marketing to drive adoption for a mobile app? It’s not the most common use-case. But like using e-commerce incentives to motivate customers to shop online, this is a use-case that will become increasingly important in coming years, which is why releasing this case study was so important.

Incentive-Based Marking Campaign Case Study Breakdown

You can find a .pdf of the case study below, but keep reading to learn why and how this global lift truck manufacturers was able to use incentive-based marketing to boost adoption of their dealer incentive program mobile app by 205.9% over the course of a sixteen-week campaign.

Download the case study!

Client Profile: Staying Ahead in the Channel

This lift truck manufacturer has big plans for growth and the long-standing reputation to back it up. With strong reliability and a low cost of ownership, this lift truck manufacturer offers a strong value proposition to customers around the globe. However, like many manufacturers, they rely on a network of channel partners to educate and influence the purchasing decisions of end-users.

The manufacturer operates a dealer incentive program to keep their brand top of mind with their dealers and to motivate dealers to prioritize selling their lift trucks over their competitors’. This past year, the lift truck manufacturer integrated a mobile app with their incentive program. Their dealer incentive mobile app gives the manufacturer several important advantages:

• Improves the convenience and accessibility of their rewards program.
• Provides a platform to provide more connected communication.
• Differentiates their rewards program from the programs their competitors offer.
• Allows dealers to track progress toward their goals in real-time.
• Creates additional opportunities for engagement and gamification.
• Offers easy-to-use sales claim submission and verification tools for a cleaner, more complete data exchange.
• Positions their dealer incentive program to match the interests and lifestyle of the modern B2B buyer, making their program a future proof sales and marketing solution.

The Problem: Why Won’t Dealers Download Our App?

While all of that sounds great on paper, there was one small problem: the dealers simply weren’t downloading the mobile app. The value proposition of the dealer incentive mobile app went unnoticed and all those potential benefits went unrealized. The lift truck manufacturer turned to their trusted advisor in Incentive Solutions for help. Together, we analyzed their channel and designed an incentive-based marketing campaign to educate dealers and incentivize them to download the app.

Promotion Goals: Identifying Goals for Our Marketing Campaign

Prior to launching the incentive-based marketing campaign, we identified two goals:

• Goal 1: Use incentive-based marketing to accelerate adoption of the dealer incentive mobile app.
• Goal 2: Use limited-time point bonuses to encourage dealers to submit sales claims from the mobile app.

Setting attainable, measurable incentive program goals is an essential part of incentive marketing success.

What Is Incentive-Based Marketing?

So how is incentive-based marketing different from regular marketing? While marketing promotes the buying and selling of a product by raising awareness and educating customers or channel partners, incentive-based marketing takes things one step further. Incentive-based marketing rewards customers for taking desired actions, which helps to guide them through the buyer’s journey and provides motivation for them to follow through on call to actions (CTAs).

Our Recommendation: Designing a Campaign

Working with the client, our Communications Specialists designed a multi-touchpoint, multi-channel incentive-based marketing campaign. The campaign included:

• 3 Custom Emails – Three custom emails were sent to target dealers over the course of sixteen weeks, promoting the mobile app and providing download links.
• 2 Direct Mailers – Two direct mailers were sent in conjunction with the first two mailers to drive additional awareness. Direct mail has a 4% response rate, compared to a 0.12% response rate for emails.
• 3 Push Notifications – Once dealers downloaded the mobile app, they were sent push notifications to motivate them to use the mobile sales claim submission feature and encourage them to share feedback about the program.
• Exclusive Limited-Time Bonus Point Promotions – Throughout every stage of the funnel, dealers were offered the chance to earn bonus reward points to give them a reason to complete each CTA.

The Results: Before and After the Incentive-Based Marketing Campaign

The campaign was a success. Across sixteen weeks, the incentive-based marketing campaign achieved the following:

• Total mobile app adoption increased by 205.9%.
• 543 sales claim submissions were submitted through the mobile app from 22.3% of total app users.
• Email open rates for the campaign were 48.3% (143.7% higher than manufacturer email benchmarks). Click through rates outperformed industry benchmarks by 419.7%. The numbers, though high, are in line with the metrics we’ve achieve with targeted reward-related emails.

So how do these metrics actually benefit our client? To quote the case study:

By inspiring dealers to download their dealer incentive program mobile app, the lift truck manufacturer was able to get them enrolled and invested into a loyalty marketing funnel that they will be able to use to capture mindshare and create brand preference. The easy-to-use sales claim submission feature will improve the data quality their dealers provide and differentiate their rewards programs from their competitors’.

Currently, the lift truck manufacturer has plans to expand their dealer incentive program with us, and we’re planning additional incentive-based marketing campaigns. Read the PR!

Why Is Incentive-Based Marketing So Important for Manufacturers?

Earlier we touched on why incentive marketing works to increase the effectiveness of a campaign by giving customers a compelling reason to engage with marketing material. But this type of strategy is especially important for manufacturers. Here are a few of the reasons why:

• Manufacturers are competing with other companies for the attention of dealers, distributors, and other channel partners. Incentive-based marketing helps them stand out above the noise.
• Educating channel partners on the differentiators of your product can be time-consuming and content-heavy. Rewards, on the other hand, are an easily-communicated value proposition.
• Manufacturer brand engagements tend to be a little impersonal. Incentive rewards create an emotional impact that feels personalized and exciting to channel partners.
• B2B buyer expectations have been impacted by B2C experiences and digital transformation. Incentive-based marketing give manufacturers the ability to provide digital platforms for communication, engagement, and gamification.
• Incentive marketing platforms can be used to gather valuable data that manufacturers can use to inform their sales and marketing efforts and to provide timely channel enablement to their partners.

Most importantly, incentive marketing helps manufacturers become more than a commodity supplier and gain market share in their channel.