When it comes to incentive programs, some people are spenders and others are savers. And while there’s nothing wrong with saving your incentive points for big ticket items like electronics, jewelry, or travel expenses…this can cause a few problems for the company who’s sponsoring the program. This is why planning reward redemption campaigns for your incentive program can be so important.

A redemption campaign is a marketing campaign that’s designed to inspire participants in your incentive program to redeem their points for reward. At Extu, we include a multi-touchpoint reward redemption campaign for all of our clients as part of our standard communications plan, in addition to our Uniquely Yours campaign, which is designed to inspire high point earners to make custom redemptions outside of the catalog. However, that’s just a start!

We recommend regularly marketing to your participants and encouraging them to make reward redemptions, and here’s why…

What Happens When Your Participants Don’t Redeem Their Reward Points?

Like I mentioned earlier, there are several issues point hoarders can cause for your incentive program:

• It can be hard to tell the difference between point hoarding and low engagement. While you can track other engagement metrics like reward program website visits and email open rates, sometimes it can be tough to tell whether a participant is saving up their points or losing interest in your program.
• Reward point hoarding can make it tougher to budget for your program. Depending on your incentive budget structure, point saving could become a huge headache. If you pay for the value of points issued upfront, then it’s discouraging to see those points sitting there and not knowing if they are going to waste. If you pay for the value of points upon redemption, what happens if all of your participants start making huge redemptions at the same time? In fact, many of our clients set expirations on their points to avoid budgetary headaches, but it’s better to reward these participants for taking actions that help your business.
• Point hoarders are more likely to lose interest in your program. Since reward point hoarders aren’t actively redeeming for rewards, it’s tough to keep the value proposition of your incentive program top-of-mind. One of the reasons to run a redemption campaign is to really drive home the value proposition of your program and to keep point earners invested. Rewards offer trophy value and help the close the behavioral reinforcement loop that an incentive program creates.

Another Benefit of Reward Redemption Campaigns

In addition to improving your engagement metrics, budget flexibility, and ability to reinforce desired behavior, here’s one more reason to run a reward redemption campaign: it’s a chance to offer fun, engaging communications to your participants! And you can never have too much of that.

Check out this slide share for more incentive program communications best practices. And if you need help planning your incentive marketing campaigns for 2020, make sure to ask your Account Manager for Stevie Petri!