Rewards Program - Need Tips & Best Practices

[piaf]

I have put off starting up the rewards program until I got a better feel for running our 3dCart store. We've now had the store open for about 8 months so I thought I'd revisit this feature and I'm looking for advice....

Can anyone share tips, things to definitely do, things I shouldn't do, workarounds or any other "best practices" for using the rewards program? I'm sure there are some pitfalls and I would really like to avoid them because our customers are not "technologically savvy", but because we have quite a bit of repeat business, I really want to offer this program. So any and all thoughts, ideas, and things you've found that work or don't work would be most appreciated. :)

[elightbox]

The one thing you'd definetly want to do is put in these disclaimers:

No cash value
Rules may change at any time
unused points for xx years may be canceled (not that it is easy to find these, but maybe 3dcart will rollout a rewards management console at some point)

[Go Live]

To avoid confusion
Customer registration is a must to advertise and use this feature.
Else those that order thinking they earned points will have you chasing past orders to credit them points.

[piaf]

elightbox, thanks for those tips. Is there some sort of boilerplate template for the reward program rules? I guess it would be kind of hard to figure out what the rules are when you're not really confident on how it all works.

Go Live, ALL our customers are required to register to make a purchase, so that wouldn't be an issue for us. Ever since we opened our store 8 years ago, we've required registration, so that's nothing new for us. :)

[Go Live]

Great then you are ready to move forward. You will need a link to explain the rewards program. On your WW site you will need to put back the points earned for buying said product on the detail page.
You will need to make some products redeemable to choose from within my account. You may also want to include gift certificate as redeemable, that way a customer can virtually choose anything on your site.

Then you can make the rewards notice on the detail page clickable to the rewards program description or do a image ad in the column.

BTW: a canceled order will - points. a edited order will not affect points but you can do so manually. (points never expire, "you earned them there yours")

[elightbox]

you earned them there yours")

my worry is of an open ended liability to customers that might shop once and never ever come back. There has to be an expiration clause in my opinion.
Good point about making sure to let customers know that they need to be signed in.
Also, make sure to make it clear when the start date for earning rewards are. I have had some customers call asking for points for old orders from our old shopping cart.

I think the rules should be simple bullet points that are easy to read. You can revise them as you go (hence, Reward rules may be changed at any time!)
We only have a $10 Gift certificate redeemable, but @Go Live's comment re: other products is making me thinking about using this as way to get rid of old product :)

[rburton34]

FWIW I stopped using the program after 6 weeks or so. Some customers were not getting their gift certificates. They would trade them in, their points would be deducted but a GC was not being created. Support couldnt figure it out so I closed the program.

[Go Live]

Now and past all are worried about owing a customer for points. (no cash value, redeemable for products)
At 1 point per dollar. In general most other sites have this set to 5%.
If you sell on Amazon you gladly forfeit 20% to make the sale.

The concern is not getting ripped off.
You need to concentrate on repeat business. That is what this plan was created for in the first place, to help you get repeat business and achieve Customer Loyalty when if comes to your product offerings, at a very small price, If you get 300% markup you are out $2 for $100 in sales. I fail to see the complaint when others give $20 to Amazon for the same $100 sale)

FYI: many will earn points and never shop you again (so is that considered a gain)

Now if you don't have a warehouse and dropship (in short) this may not be for you.

[Go Live]

There are some sites that let you gain points for 90 days then have a redemption period for 30 days. then points expire. I understand the urgency thing and all But not the program I would want to administer (download your entire customer database and set points to zero every four months) or feel good about taking the points away, surly not a good way to show appreciation.
There are other ways to create urgency to place another order.

[piaf]

FWIW I stopped using the program after 6 weeks or so. Some customers were not getting their gift certificates. They would trade them in, their points would be deducted but a GC was not being created. Support couldnt figure it out so I closed the program.

To the 3dC people... any info on this issue?

GC's have always been somewhat of a pain anyway because you can't see the email address that it's being sent to (if it's being sent to someone other than the purchaser), just in case you need the email address to manually resend the GC code number. But rburton34's problem worries me if it's an even bigger problem with the rewards program.

[Go Live]

If I remember correctly The problem was if you click redeem for a certificate instead of clicking on the title or picture of the certificate. You were never given the opportunity to select to whom the cert was for.

This may have been fixed

Give yourself some points and do a check.

[elightbox]

I just tested this and both work fine.

My only problem is because the customer starts at the secure https account page, the gift certificate also shows up in https, and they are shopping from then on in secure mode. This should not be and I would assume is a bug.