December 8th, 2011
It is Christmas time and everyone is wondering how to buy gifts on a super tight budget. We would all like to give gifts to all those that make our lives a little bit easier, provide good service or teach our children but the reality is we have must carefully pick and choose who will receive.
There is no better time than the holidays to buy gift cards and other incentives than now. Many restaurants, grocery stores and retailers are going out of their way to provide you with an incentive to buy more gift cards. Most restaurants are offering 1 $10.00 gift card when you purchase a $20.00. Although some think that gift cards do not provide the “ah” factor as a beautifully wrapped present with a gift inside, it does have longer lasting effect. A few days or even months later when your friends and relatives go to use their clothes, food or cocktails it is always reminds them of you or your business once again. You see a gift card is not just a gift providing the recipient with their choice of gift or incentive to do business with you, it is a long lasting incentive that often includes sharing who presented them with the gift card over dinning. If you are a business owner you realize the importance of word of mouth advertising, the best type of advertising in the world!
One thing to note, if you are mailing gift cards be sure to place it in a box so that it can not be felt in a Christmas Card and stolen. Also, select a retailer or restaurant who insures the card in case of theft or lost.
Other Ways to Maximize Your Gift Card Purchases:
1) Combine purchases with friends for a bigger incentive.
2) Look for coupons online or swap coupons you need with friends.
3) The incentive to buying online is saving money on taxes and get free shipping.
5) Purchase at smaller retailer who are willing to bargain for your business.
6) Ask friends on Social Nets works where the deals are on gift cards and other cool things.
Even if you are finished with your Christmas shopping, take advantage of gift card incentives on groceries and other items saving you even more money. Hurry deals end when the Christmas season is over.
Give
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Tags: corporate incentives, customer incentives, donor incentives, employee incentive programs, gift cards, gift incentives, incentive, incentives
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September 9th, 2011
Do you walk into your office asking yourself what happened to the energy of your once vibrant sales staff? There is hope, you just have to give everyone their red balloon back. No matter what the age of the individual on your team, everyone still has a kid inside. A child lives inside of all of us whether rich or poor, educated or not, young or old. We all yearn for wonder, excitement and fulfillment, our red balloon.
When I was a little girl my grade school teacher announced that we were all going to sit Indian style on the floor and watch a French movie. We all thought, “Wow, a movie all the way from France at our school just for us!” What could it be about? As the teacher began to set things up for our movie, we were all so excited. It took her several minutes to get us situated and sitting quietly on the floor. She then told us the movie’s title ”The Red Balloon”. We all laughed with excitement because after all, what kid does not love a balloon? What a fun title I thought! It seemed so perfect to me that I quickly sat quietly with anticipation of this French movie. When the projector went on, I remember hearing the movie reel go around and around as it began to show the movie on the pull down screen in front of the chalk board. Thinking back to moment, it was really amazing how a 1/2 hour story about a red balloon befriending only one little boy could ignite a fever of excitement and motivation amongst 20 children that lasted the rest of the week.
“What is in it for me”, the question heard throughout every organization at literally every level. Whether those that do business with you are your employees, clients or donors, they all want to know the answer. Give them their choice of incentive. Either provide them year long discounts to theme parks, dinning or their choice of vacation.
Those that manage sales teams have opportunities to give their teams red balloons providing them with incentives that bring out their energetic inner child. Whether their inner child responds to incentives they can share with their families, experience with their buddies or fun from a new electronic toy, their “red balloon” is one that will not soon be forgotten. Like most kids we all share fun stories about experiences or prizes we have won. An incentive is usually shared imediately with others via email, text or photographs providing you with added advertising and sales. The best advertising of all is of course, the word of mouth.
Our red balloon provides us with an incentive to reach and stretch for our goals. It may seem that it is out of reach at first but as we continue to keep the incentive in our minds eye, we find ways to make that final jump grapping the string tightly holding it with pride and joy. We have reached success and have the red balloon for all to see.
Tags: blood donor incentives, customer incentives, donor incentives, employee rewards, motivate, motivate employees, sales
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July 14th, 2011
Everything that any of us do during the day has a purpose, of course; otherwise most of us would probably be couch potatoes watching Netflix all day. Luckily, everyone has something they need to do, whether it is grocery shopping, doing homework, or going to work. People, and the motivations behind their actions, are what make our world go round; Incentives.
Our motivations responsible for our actions are visible from the very beginning. Even from the first few times that we began to converse with our parents, every action we did had an incentive behind it. Take the average 3 years old. As a parent it is an unspoken law that we must make our children eat vegetables. “If you eat your yams, you can have ice cream for dessert!” Sound familiar? Incentives are responsible for everything we do; they are unavoidable. Take parties for example. If you don’t invite people at least one month before the actual party, hopefully your five finger friends can save the party and round up some last minute invitees. People don’t respond to R.S.V.P.’s for a reason; they are simply waiting to see if a better offer will come up in the time being, one with a greater incentive. Let’s say your party has “party people”, you live in a higher middle class home, and your social status is on the higher side. You will probably have more guests than your friend, who lives in the average sized home and is a little lower on the social totem pole. People will go to your party instead because your guests are assumed to have better business and social connections. Not saying that your friend’s guests don’t have the same qualities to offer, but having to choose between the two is night and day. People are magnetized towards money and social butterflies because the opportunities that are at your party offer a greater incentive than your friend’s party. Incentives transfer over to every business, everywhere. Our salary is what drives each and every one of us at work to perform better, be on time to that 7:00 am meeting, and even stay that extra 10 minutes late to impress our bosses. Most of us would only perform the minimum each day at work if there wasn’t an incentive keeping us hooked on the line. Would you go on that business trip to China for two weeks if there wasn’t something in it for you? Without incentives many people would be left unmotivated and would never continue to climb the ladder at their companies, because there wouldn’t be anything to strive for. Incentives motivate everyone, whether it is an aspiring chef hoping to open a restaurant, your average college student longing to be the editor for a newspaper, or the ten year old down the street hoping to have a paper route in order to buy that new video game. So, we ask why we do the things we do. The answer: incentives
Tags: corporate incentives, customer incentives, donor incentives, employee rewards, incentive, incentive programs
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May 6th, 2011
Donors are coming out of a long dry spell carefully looking for organizations to donate to in 2011. Attract the one time, annual and generational donors with an incentive that will answer their “What’s in it for me” question.
Taxes deductions and t-shirts are terrific but what about a reward that gives back to them over and over again? Incentives geared toward levels of commitment and motivating one level to move to a higher level. To find the perfect incentive program require some homework regardng the culture of your organization and type of donor. Annual surveys help to determine the reward that your donors are looking for and the use of an Incentives Broker. An effective survey is one that includes the following:
- How many potential donors are in the household?
- What is their reason for giving?
- What other charities are of interest to them?
- What types of physical activities does the family enjoy on the weekends?
- What is their favorite entertainment venue?
- Favorite food?
- Would they donate more often if they could select their own incentive?
- Are they interested in providing a testimonial?
- Would they be interested in donating their time calling others to donate?
One California Incentive Broker believes that their choice, is their motivation when it comes to incentive programs. When donors hear that they can select their incentive that includes their family, they are immediately driven to donate more reguarly and usually tell a friend.
Once you begin to design your donor incentive program, don’t forget your Blood Donor Schedulers, Call Center Representatives and Marketing Staff who create donor drives. Employees can select from over 70 Total Benefits & Incentives to Choose From to Create Your Own Customized Discounts. Health Provider Discounts include Aetna Dental, Lab & Imaging, Vision, Fitness, Tele-Doc, Medical Equipment and more. Their family will love the discounts to nationwide restaurants, golf courses, hotels, legal services and theme parks, plus additional services and fun!
We do what we do every day because we are motivated forone reason or another to do so. We go to work to pay for our homes and go on vacations. We brush are teeth to keep them healthy for life. If we find answer to their “What’s in it for me” question, our donors will help us motivate others sharing their incentive experience increasing the number of those who give.
Tags: blood donation incentives, blood donor incentives, donor incentives, donor incentives program, employee rewards, motivate, reward
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May 2nd, 2011
Having an effective reward program in place can help solve many of your HR issues.
Every compnay needs a strategic reward system for employees that addresses these four areas: compensation, benefits, recognition and appreciation. The problem with reward systems in many businesses today is twofold: They’re missing one or more of these elements (usually recognition and/or appreciation), and the elements that are addressed aren’t properly aligned with the company’s other corporate strategies.
A winning system should recognize and reward two types of employee activity-performance and behavior. Performance is the easiest to address because of the direct link between the initial goals you set for your employees and the final outcomes that result. For example, you could implement an incentive plan or recognize your top salespeople for attaining periodic goals.
Rewarding specific behaviors that made a difference to your company is more challenging than rewarding performance, but you can overcome that obstacle by asking, “What am I compensating my employees for?” and “What are the behaviors I want to reward?” For example, are you compensating employees for coming in as early as possible and staying late, or for coming up with new ideas on how to complete their work more efficiently and effectively? In other words, are you compensating someone for innovation or for the amount of time they’re sitting at a desk? There’s obviously a big difference between the two.
The first step, of course, is to identify the behaviors that are important to your company. Those activities might include enhancing customer relationships, fine-tuning critical processes or helping employees expand their managerial skills.
When business owners think of reward systems, they typically put compensation at the top of the list. There’s nothing wrong with that, since few people are willing or able to work for free. But the right strategy should also include an incentive compensation plan that’s directly linked to the goals of your company for that period. You might want to include some type of longer-term rewards for key individuals in your organization. Historically, this has often included some form of equity ownership.
Benefits are another type of reward in a strategic reward system, and your employees are definitely going to notice the types of benefits you provide. Companies that don’t match or exceed the benefit levels of their competitors will have difficulty attracting and retaining top workers. This is one reason an increasing number of businesses are turning to professional employer organizations like Administaff to gain access to a broader array of company benefits.
However, you can’t diminish the importance of recognition and appreciation as integral components of a winning strategic reward system. These two elements rarely receive the attention they deserve from business owners, which is amazing because they’re the low-cost/high-return ingredients. Employees like to know whether they’re doing good, bad or average, so it’s important that you tell them.
Recognition means acknowledging someone before their peers for specific accomplishments achieved, actions taken or attitudes exemplified through their behavior. Appreciation, meanwhile, centers on expressing gratitude to someone for his or her actions. Showing appreciation to your employees by acknowledging excellent performance and the kind of behavior you want to encourage is best done through simple expressions and statements. For example, you might send a personal note or stop by the employee’s desk to convey your appreciation. Another approach is to combine recognition and appreciation in the form of a public statement of thanks in front of the employee’s co-workers or team, citing specific examples of what they’ve done that has positively impacted the organization.
Now that you know what it should include, it’s time to review your strategic reward system. Does it address compensation, benefits, recognition and appreciation? Is it aligned with your remaining business strategies? Is it driving the right behaviors for your company, as well as your performance goals? If it needs fixing, don’t wait. It can mean the difference between your business’ success and failure.
Tags: customer incentives, donor incentives, loyalty programs, recognition programs, reward programs
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April 13th, 2011
Our donors and customers usually think about us when we think about them. We touch base with phone calls, Christmas Cards and emails but if we did not do any of those things how often would they think about us? Do they think of us every time they need a product or service? When they receive a call from your competition? When a new store opens in the area or they come across a website?
How can we move our companies to the forefront of our donors and customer’s mind and get them become our biggest fans, increasing our referral business:
- Provide an added benefit educating the customer with each contact, be their Subject Matter Expert distingushing us from the competition.
- Demonstrate appreciation each and every time when in contact with a donor or customer. They are investing their time and most importantly, their money. After living through this tough economy we will all become better shoppers looking for an incentive before we spend our money.
- Send coupons but not too frequently to get customers to buy. We us one major retailer as an example, they seems to have sales every other day which unfortunately creates no urgency and incentive. Coupons that are sent too often also may create a thought that perhaps pricing on products may be too high to begin with causing buyers to react negatively. Constant sales may also reduce respect for companies.
- Announce surprise sales as if it were the Fourth of July on emails and on your website that last for only 2 to 3 hours to build excitement. Add an incentives for those that buy the first hour and share the sale with others.
- Remember the Nordstrom promise customer service, customer service, CUSTOMER SERVICE! If something goes wrong or your customers have a concern do not view the situation negatively, this is one of the best opportunities to build loyalty.
- Survey your customers. Know how your customers think, are they Logical, pictorial, visceral thinkers? Tailor your marketing to each type of customer separately customizing sales to each type.
- Energetically launch a point reward program building momentum with each purchase and referral.
- Use benefits and incentives that will provide dental, vision, roadside assistance, discounts to theme parks and restaurants all in one incentive!
The Value of Vacation Incentives, Do Your Customers Think About You this Often?
1) When they receive their vacation incentive passport.
2) When they are selecting their destination with their family.
3) When they receive their vacation confirmation.
4) When their toes hit the sand.
5) Each time they share pictures and adventures with friends and family.
It really is all about their choice, their motivation. Get them thinking about your more often.
Tags: blood donor incentives, customer incentives, donor incentives, incentive, incentive programs, marketing incentives
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April 1st, 2011
With signs of the recovery popping up here and there it is now time for an emotional recovery. Time to let those who are important to your business know that you have appreciated their stick- to- ofness and their loyalty. You may not be able to order that expensive new software program for your company yet but it is time for you to demonstrate appreciation to your customers and employees who have helped you retain business over the past two years.
Start the next quarter with all eyes ahead stimulating energy, creativity and growth. Act now to help you speed ahead of your competition and gain more market share. Those all around you will welcome the breath of fresh air and excitement. Treat your campaign as if it were a grand opening. Recruit your liveliest employees and customers to help you launch you incentive program for best results.
Here are Some Ideas to Help You Charge the Atmosphere:
- Bring out the kid in your employees at every level
- Host meetings in the beautiful spring weather as everyone sips lemonade
- Create Friday Fun Days with contests for production pushes or Craziest T-Shirt Day
- Another idea with a wonderfully positive response is the “Un-Meeting”. Invite all to a meeting surprising all with candy, music and fun welcoming the weekend
- Customer Appreciation Day with rewards and incentives following the theme of your campaign
- SMS Text coupon codes sent to customers and employees giving them free movie tickets
- Scratch off tickets for prizes
- Extend Monday lunch hour
- Enhance your benefits with Pharmacy, theme park, dinning and other discounts all in one terrific incentive
Focus on the future separating the negativity of the past making way for all the posibilities of tomorrow.
Tags: blood donor incentives, donor incentives, employee rewards, gift incentives, incentive, incentive programs, motivate
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March 8th, 2011
It seems that we are nearing more positive times and there is finally sunlight peeking out around the bend. How do we now influence our donors to give while our economy mends? We do so by mildly reaching out and appreciating every opportunity to make contact with potential donors because if they cannot donate they might one day soon. We need to be sincere, passionate and resilient because those are the qualities that foster success.
To begin let’s reasses ourselves and our approach. It is not the climate that we experienced last year nor unfortunately, the climate of 2005 when everyone was enjoying positive equity and businesses were in living in Fat City. Below are a few steps to consider:
- Manage Your Profile and Image - What message and image do you now want to portray?
- Socialize Yourself and Network Again - Use the new one page business card that places all social networks you are in on one convenient electronic card. Visit www.myonepage.com
- Join in One Discussions – Join other charitable organizations with an incentive to help others increase donations.
- Add your Events to the Calendars of Others – Promote your upcoming seminars and events motivating donor attendance.
- Downloadable Content & Blogs – Promote downloading of white papers, inspirational stories, studies, and be sure to blog several times a week to keep your charity out there.
- Use Incentives – Whatever your budget, there is an incentive for you. Whether it be for a donation, participation in a charity event or referral say thank you frequently and often.
- Make Every Single Contact a Sincere and Personal One – Reach out to all those from the past taking interest in their lives and simply say hello. In this sell sell sell world, you will be a breath of fresh air and remembered for it.
The feel good feeling is contagious. If we give as God intended there is no other joy than helping others. Open up your heart and you will find that others will want to join you.
www.strategicconcepts-ca.com
Tags: blood donation incentives, blood donor incentives, donor incentives, incentive, incentive programs, motivate
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March 7th, 2011
What happen to the front porches? They came on to the landscape years ago in the South and later were part of American Culture throughout the United States. Either small in size or like a big beautiful ribbon wrapping around the entire front of the house they could be seen almost every where. Each porch had its own lovely character and charm.
Porches were commonly admired in the south when people walked by on a warm evening. You could hear the creaking of the old rocking chairs as they rocked back and forth. Laughter filled the air and the lemonade glistened in the setting sunlight. The porch seemed to welcome all passers by over for a conversation or at least offered a smile and a wave to all who walked by.
The neighbor porch wasn’t just a place to cool off, it offered a connection to people and nature around it. Life is busy and now our front porch is social media. Social media offers us all a far reaching front porch, reaching out around the world bringing us many passersby and an education of what is out there to see and learn about. The only question is, what is the incentive for someone to visit your Facebook Page or website out of the millions that exist? Do you have have that welcoming feel and glistening lemonade that will attract others to interact with you on the Internet?
How Do You Make that Connection and Motivate Others onto Your Front Porch?
- Does Your Visitor Feel Motivated and Confident About Your Website?
- Does it Provide Beneficial Information?
- Does Your Website Answer Their Incentive Question, the “What’s in it for Me” Question?
- Does it Prompt the Visitor to Share Their Positive Experiences with Others?
- Do You Survey Employees, Clients, Donors and Visitors About Your Website?
Combine old with the new! People are simply starving for good old fashioned service and respect. Someone that appreciates their business and does not take it for granted. Offer incentives and reguarly thank your visitors oftne. Each click and phone call is an opportunity to present your business in a positive light and demonstrate your appreciation for their contact.
Keeping Your Porch Attractive to Others
- Make regular sincere calls taking interest in on their personal lives asking about their kid’s teams, their favorite sport or charitable organizations.
- Send articles or pictures that are of interest to your client on a personal enrichment level.
- Be an advisor and not a salesperson.
- Truly invest in your client for the long haul. Make it your goals to be there for them.
- It is not only the first impression that is important, it is every single impression.
- Be yourself and be personable. Laugh and show your lighter side.
- When in doubt use the Golden Rules, you can not go wrong.
Make your passersby all feel welcome so they have an incentive to come back.
www.strategicconcepts-ca.com
Tags: customer incentives, donor incentives, incentive, marketing incentives, motivate, motivate employees, reward
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March 4th, 2011
Reward your customers — they’ll reward you with repeat business.
This article has been excerpted from The Power of Loyalty by Roger L. Brooks available from Entrepreneur Press.
The best way to motivate customer behavior is to provide an incentive or reward for that motivation. Rewarding your customers for a specific purchasing behavior s not much different than training your puppy. With enough repetition and positive reinforcement, your pup can be motivated to act upon instruction. That’s because the pup knows if he listens to your command, he’ll receive his reward.
Human nature isn’t much different. People can be motivated to take specific actions that accomplish their buying goals while also accomplishing your goals to increase their spending, frequency of visits or combination purchases (or comparative goals relevant to your line of business).
The question then is how do you motivate behavior? Below are five ideas that will get you thinking.
- Offer soft benefits that provide value such as special access limited only to members.
- Offer relevant promotions through various lines of communication, for example: e-mail, SMS text, receipt messages, statement inserts, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- Up-sell complimentary products or services at the associate level.
- Offer sweepstakes, random rewards or special offers for a limited time frame, keep your strategy fresh and exciting:
- Strategically place messages (via signage, web banners, etc.) that will trigger motivating actions.
Motivate, But Don’t Mislead
Once you decide how you’ll motivate, always do so in an honorable way. Your customers won’t want to be misled into thinking they are receiving something greater in value that what they’ll actually receive as the reward.
Abraham Lincoln put it best when he said, “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
Of course, the statement was made some 150 years ago and the President was referring to politicians attempting to fool their constituents; however, the quote resonates with me every time I see a program that offers empty loyalty. Such programs offer an elaborate program on the outside when, indeed, it’s only a facade to increase business. In time, savvy customers will see through the facade. Your promotional strategy to motivate behavior must be phony proof. Once your customers lift the hood and kick the tires, the promotions must stand on their own and offer real value, not empty promises.
Remember, whatever you do, don’t try to fool the customer! Loyal customers will catch on if the loyalty program does not have true value. This can also backfire and cause disloyalty amongst your customers and defeat the entire purpose of implementing your strategy in the first place.
There are two reasons why your rewards offerings should be upstanding:
- Loyal customers have earned the right to receive a valid reward. If they weren’t enrolled in your program, they may have taken their business elsewhere.
- Customers can see through transparent rewards.
If you want to be in the loyalty game, you have to offer attractive redemption items that are achievable for your customers to earn. If customers are willing to change their purchasing behavior and provide you with their loyalty, they will expect the same in return from you in the form of a relevant reward.
It’s the Little Things That Matter Most
If you put on your consumer hat, you’ll understand that it’s the little things that matter most. One component you should incorporate is providing feel-good loyalty. Feel-good loyalty is just what it sounds like, providing something that the customer will feel good about. Offering feel-good-loyalty incentives should be part of your overall strategy and will require some clever and creative thinking. Some companies offer free Wi-Fi, others offer free shipping. Whatever you decide, brainstorm hard, even hold an employee contest. but find your niche and add feel-good loyalty to the mix.
Photofiddle.com is an Internet company that offers a service to turn your photographs into art. Simply upload a photo and you can instantly transform that image into pop art, impasto, a black and white sketch and even more. Once you create your personal masterpiece you then have many options for the type of surface the image is printed on (glossy photo paper, canvas, etc.). Finally, you can choose from a number of print sizes and framing choices.
Although Photofiddle doesn’t have a recognizable rewards program they do provide various levels of feel-good loyalty. Upon opening your order, customers see each piece is carefully packaged and accompanied with a pair of white cotton gloves. The label attached to the gloves reads, “All fine artwork should be handled with care. Please use white cotton gloves. Oils from your hands and fingers can leave finger prints. Jewelry on your fingers and wrist can leave markings.”
That’s a personal touch and that’s feel-good-loyalty. It’s doing the little things that matter most with customers. It’s thinking outside the box so that your brand motivates your customers and resonates in their mind. Providing the white cotton gloves with each order sends both a literal message and subliminal message. It reinforces the need to treat your artwork with care and that they treat all of their customers with care.
Roger L. Brooks is a respected loyalty strategist with more than 15 years of experience in developing, supporting, and implementing customer loyalty and rewards programs. He has worked with esteemed companies such as Verizon, Sam’s Club, and Chase Universal MasterCard, and he currently serves as the vice president of loyalty marketing for ValueCentric Marketing Group, Inc., managing growth for new and existing clients including GE Capital, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bank of Montreal.
Tags: blood donation incentives, corporate incentives, customer incentives, donor incentives, incentive, point rewards, reward, reward programs
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