Every business knows (or should know) that market research is essential for keeping up with your customers’ changing needs. Not to mention maintaining your competitive edge. Getting the data you need to make informed decisions is critical, and that means the incentives you offer your survey and research participants are, too. Evaluating the effectiveness of your market research incentive programs should be part of your year-end planning, especially now, with artificial intelligence (AI) set to change how market researchers work. To help you finetune your market research incentive programs in 2024, we’ve rounded up what you need to know about three emerging industry trends (besides AI). Trend 1: Voice of the Customer Research Will Take Center Stage Just like it sounds, voice of the customer (VoC) research boils down to listening to what customers have to say about their needs and expectations so your business can improve its products or services. While listening to customers is nothing new, there will be a growing emphasis on tracking customer feedback across multiple channels, such as surveys, social media, and customer reviews, to gain a more cohesive picture of their opinions. Understanding how customers truly experience your brand is invaluable. To ensure your...
When you purchase gift cards to support your customer, employee, and research programs, it’s obvious that you have to budget for the value of those rewards. But you should also be budgeting for a gift card platform, which creates a much more streamlined process for managing digital rewards, in comparison to ordering directly from the retailers. How much you should budget for a gift card platform depends on many factors — and given the current economic uncertainty, cost will likely influence your purchasing decision. Here are three important questions to ask. READ MORE: Why a Gift Card Platform Belongs in Every Team’s Tech Stack 1. Is There a Subscription Fee? Different rewards tools have different pricing structures, so start by asking about upfront costs. Any subscription fees are easy to budget for, since you know exactly what they are and how often they will be billed. Make sure you’re clear on what features are included at that cost and what add-ons may be available to tailor the tool to your needs. 2. What Happens to Unclaimed Gift Cards? With any type of digital rewards program, there will always be some recipients who never redeem their reward. What happens to those...
Money talks, but it doesn’t need to come in the form of cash or checks to be heard. Sometimes, those traditional delivery methods are necessary, but for businesses, they can come with a lot of hassle, extra cost, and risk. It may be time to consider a worthy alternative: the digital prepaid card. No matter how you’re using financial rewards or compensation, digital prepaid cards like Mastercard and Visa are a more streamlined, cost-effective way to manage and distribute it. Here are 10 situations where you may be sending cash but a cash-equivalent card would be a better solution. READ MORE: What You Need to Know About Prepaid Virtual Visa and Mastercard Rewards For Research 1. Incentivizing survey responses. Since the vast majority of surveys are now done online, it’s less likely that you can just hand over a few bills to your respondents. A digital prepaid card can be delivered instantly for free, and an integrated tool can even let you automate the process. 2. Compensating participants in qualitative research and clinical studies. Many qualitative research methods moved online during the pandemic and have remained there since, eliminating the possibility of handing out cash in person to participants. Sending...
As another new year begins post-pandemic, many companies are again reevaluating — and, sometimes, even eliminating — their remote and hybrid work policies. According to research by Resume Builder, 90% of businesses will have returned to office in some capacity by the end of 2024, and only 2% say they don’t ever plan a return. But it’s no secret that most employees aren’t thrilled about it, and companies aren’t taking advantage of incentive gifts and other rewards to soften the blow. In a survey by NORC at the University of Chicago, nearly nine in 10 human resources representatives said their employers have not added any incentives to encourage employees to work in person, even though less than a third said employees are happy about the change. DOWNLOAD NOW: Learn more about what employees want in our NAPCO Employee Incentives Report How Incentive Gifts Could Help The NORC research shows that certain incentive gifts could indeed help the situation. Employees cited additional pay, commuter benefits, meals, and office amenities such as standing desks as possible options that would increase their satisfaction with working in person and encourage them to do it more often. One option for return-to-office (RTO) incentives that companies...
The budgeting season isn’t fun for anyone. Between trying to predict your team’s needs, manage leadership expectations, and crunch the numbers, it’s a headache. And when you’re trying to add a customer incentives program into the mix, the math gets even more difficult. Whether you’re in marketing, sales, or service, using customer incentives can be a key part of your strategy. However, figuring out how much to allot for those programs isn’t easy. Here are three factors to take into account. READ MORE: Protect Your Reward Incentives Budget With These 4 Tips Your Goals Customer incentives can boost many of your programs, but unless you have unlimited budget (wouldn’t that be nice?), you must prioritize where those reward dollars can have the most impact. Consider goals for the company as a whole, as well as the sales, marketing, and service teams. Is there a big push for case studies and online reviews? Budget for an advocacy program. Will it be all about conversion rates and closed deals? Then arm your salespeople so they can create extra value for prospects. Here are some more strategies that can incorporate digital rewards to help you reach your goals: Creating a B2B referral program...
No matter what business you’re in, dealing with an unhappy customer is the hardest part of the job for many support reps. Emotions are running high, and not every problem is easily solved. But customer service isn’t just about solving problems. It’s also about empathizing, making the customer feel as though you value their business, and showing your commitment to doing better. That’s why it’s so important to empower frontline agents with the right appeasement strategies. READ MORE: 10 Stats to Show Why Your Service Reps Need Customer Rewards When Offering a Discount Isn’t Helpful Unfortunately, one of the most common strategies — giving a discount on a future purchase — doesn’t always send the right message. For instance, when someone complains about the food at a restaurant, and the manager offers a coupon for a free meal, it feels like the concerns are falling on deaf ears. When a customer calls a cleaning service or contractor because they’re not satisfied with the work as it was performed, and you offer to send the team back for half-price, you imply that the complaint isn’t true or isn’t your fault. A discount is also not an effective appeasement strategy when you’re...
Just about any salesperson will tell you that cold outreach is their least favorite part of the job. It takes a lot of effort to engage prospects enough times to turn them into sales qualified leads. Warming up prospects with an email is preferred by B2B reps, with 43% saying that email is the most effective sales channel, according to HubSpot. Even so, Gartner reports that only 23.9% of all sales emails are opened, while another survey reveals that only 8.5% of cold emails receive a response. Of course, it takes more than an email to close a sale. On average, it takes eight touches to generate a conversion, although top performers may need only five. So how do these top performers turn prospects into sales qualified leads in fewer touches? For starters, they offer clear value propositions that incentivize prospects to take action throughout the sales journey. Making digital rewards part of your value proposition can help your cold outreach warm up prospects faster. Here are the best ways to weave attractive incentives into your sales strategy. DOWNLOAD OUR SALES PLAYBOOK: Using Rewards for Prospects and Customers Make Your Emails Get Noticed Chances are, your prospect’s inbox is...
It’s common to lump employee rewards and recognition into the same category. After all, both help companies reduce turnover, boost productivity, and motivate performance, right? But to ensure your employee rewards and recognition program is working as effectively as possible, there are a few key differences between the two parts that you must consider. For starters, rewards are always transactional, while recognition is almost entirely relational. When one of your employees meets a goal or hits a milestone, for example, you give them a reward — a tangible gift such as a digital gift card, cash, or travel. Managers typically give employee rewards for things like finishing a big project, exceeding a sales quota, or completing five years of service with the company. READ MORE: The Impact of Reward Systems on Employee Performance in 7 Statistics With employee recognition, on the other hand, you’re giving something more abstract — written or verbal praise. Employee recognition doesn’t necessarily need to correspond with meeting a certain goal. Instead, it’s more about letting an employee know you appreciate what they bring to the table: a can-do attitude, diligent work ethic, or positive attitude. There are a few other key differences between employee rewards...
You thought you had done everything right. You incorporated incentive rewards into your survey, research, or marketing program to thank participants for their time and contribution. Your results improved, but now there’s a puzzling issue that you didn’t anticipate: Recipients don’t seem to be using their incentive rewards. So why wouldn’t someone claim a free gift? Check out these four reasons that a recipient may not redeem their reward, jeopardizing the effectiveness of your program. READ MORE: Why Should I Want High Claim Rates for My Digital Rewards? They Don’t Want It The very first step to making sure your recipients use their incentive rewards is to offer something that they actually want. This is also important because the reward has to be compelling enough to persuade them to take whatever action you want them to take, whether it’s completing a survey, attending a webinar or demo, submitting a referral, or something else. The solution: Research shows that gift cards are more popular than ever because recipients like the flexibility to choose what they buy. Even better, offer them even more flexibility by letting them select what kind of gift card they want. And gift cards aren’t just a great...
For sales reps, every meeting no-show is a block of time wasted. In fact, simply getting prospects to attend a scheduled demo or presentation — in person or virtually — is often a big part of the battle to close a deal. While you’ll never be able to avoid no-shows completely, doing everything you can to minimize them can give your bottom line a significant boost. Most experts say sales teams should aim for a no-show rate of less than 20%. Here are five tips to help you get there. READ MORE: Weave Reaches 125% of MQL Goal Using Rewards for Demos 1. Do Your Research Before you ever start composing an email or picking up the phone to invite a prospect to a meeting, you need to arm yourself with the right information. Thanks to sites like LinkedIn and ZoomInfo, it takes just a few minutes to get a general idea of the target’s background and experience. Peruse their company’s website to understand the basics about what they do and what challenges they may have. You may even find that this particular prospect isn’t the right audience for your offerings — and that’s a meeting no-show just waiting to...
