Incentive Program Strategies: Fact-finding and involvement

The first step to building an incentive program strategy is to conduct internal research on business operations, current customers, employees, and competitors. Incentive programs are always more effective if you can get input from members of your participant audience. Try and get feedback on the rules, rewards, and any other aspects of the program that will increase ownership and engagement in your research.

Set Your Objectives & Identify the Audience

Meet with departments across the organization to identify what goal/objective needs to be accomplished, such as increased sales, improved attendance, etc. While you’re setting goals, identify which individuals or teams can achieve that department’s organizational goals and objectives; those are each department’s program participants.

Program Structure & Budget

Work with management to build the foundation of the Incentive Program carefully. You will help them to understand whether they will need an open-ended or closed-ended program design and identify the organization’s fixed and variable costs. If they have current programs up and running, get a better understanding of them. Find out if you can improve on the operational efficiencies or increase engagement.

Choosing Rewards

Rewards should be consistent with your participant demographics as well as the organization’s brand. The more information you can get from your audience on the types of rewards they’ll appreciate, the more effective your incentive programs will be.

Administration and Tracking

If you have the right technology solution – the technology can help to reduce the time spent on administration. Find out which elements in the program need to be tracked and measured. Your goal is to fill gaps and enhance or build a system to meet the program needs. The administration could account for approximately 20% of their program budget.

Incentive and Reward Management Technology

Find out if current programs have technology solutions in place. Check out how company incentive technology is operating, whether it is outdated, meets individual needs, is the system secure, etc. Once you know what the current system is like, it will give you a better idea of what you need going forward

When incentivizing program participants, the more immediate the participant receives the reward, the better for the participants and the program. Technological advances allow participants to redeem rewards online, transacting in real-time. Explore how participants receive rewards with the current technology that manages the incentive payouts.

Financial Modeling

Determining the ROI of loyalty and incentive programs can be challenging. You will need to partner with your organization’s finance team to identify and build out the key metric models.

The financial models should showcase the risks and rewards of a loyalty solution Platform.

Conduct User Surveys

Using a participant survey can help you get the information you need for your program. Understanding your participants offers insight into how your program performs. Organizations need to know how their users feel about the brand and how they respond to it.

Ask participants what they care about and what they’d want from your brand’s incentive program. Share the survey to drive engagement.

The gathering of valuable foundational information and the creation of internal metrics to work towards the organization will see employee and customer behavior connect to motivations that drive the outcomes an organization to successfully meet the business objectives and goals.

To learn more about incentive program strategy, read our helpful guide here. To find out how All Digital Rewards can support your next incentive program, click here to schedule a demo or call 866-415-7703.