What you should know about digital rewards

When you want to recognize your top employees, attract new customers, or thank current users for high-quality referrals, you need to offer something of value as a way to show appreciation. For decades, businesses of all sizes have been doing this through digital reward programs of all kinds. 

Within the last few decades, the popularity of e-gift cards as the reward of choice has grown. With it, a full marketplace of options has grown options for providing those rewards digitally.

Digital rewards are typically gift cards or credits recipients can get right in their email inbox or through a text message. They are specific, and a highly desirable touchpoint for marketers looking to make a positive impact with their audience. 

Externally, digital rewards can be a powerful way to remind customers of your appreciation for longtime service. Internally, rewards programs can be used to recognize the efforts and brand loyalty of your staff members.

Types of digital rewards programs for every department

Every department in your company can find a way to use digital rewards to improve their brand loyalty, team rapport, and performance metrics. Here are a few of the ways large corporations are using digital rewards such as gift cards and credits to achieve their business objectives:

Referral Programs

Referrals are one of the easiest and most powerful ways to scale your business. The social proof of having a current customer recommend you to a new customer can’t be replicated, and its market value cannot be overstated. Current consumers are more likely to recommend services to a friend or family member if they are incentivized through some valuable consideration. The instant gratification and delight factor of gift cards make them an excellent option for administering digital rewards for referral programs.

Employee recognition programs

Improving retention metrics and team morale require personal touches throughout the year and at major milestones. Using digital rewards as part of your recognition program can greatly improve employee engagement and create feelings of goodwill and connectedness with your teams. While employees are always happy to receive recognition of any kind, many report that gift cards are especially welcome as they provide a world of reward choice for selecting a recognition reward.

Points-based loyalty programs

Points-based reward systems reinforce behavior in customers, drive recurring revenue, and allow brands to continually reward users with valuable “earned” gifts such as a digital gift card. One of the best examples of a reward point program: credit cards that offer point values for every dollar spent. Through these programs, customers are incentivized to purchase their everyday items and big-ticket items through a specific card. They can then redeem points for either cash back, discounts on things like travel and airfare, or to purchase gift cards with points earned through the program. 

Customer engagement programs

Your repeat customers are the heart of your revenue stability. Rewarding them for their brand loyalty with good customer retention programs is an excellent way of ensuring that they stay a loyal customer now and in the future. Implementing a customer loyalty program with digital incentives is a streamlined way of showing your appreciation to the customers that matter most.

Five things the best digital rewards platforms have in common

There are many options for administering your programs, but the best digital rewards platforms will have these features in common:

Seamless delivery

If you're going to administer a program with hundreds or thousands of cards, you need to be able to purchase and deliver your cards with ease. Using a robust platform allows you to easily plan and send campaigns across all departments - without a lot of manual processing or assistance from the tech department. 

Wide reward variety

Look for a digital rewards platform that offers a variety of options both domestically and internationally. With a platform that offers thousands of card options, you'll be ready to meet your customer or employee wherever they are and delight them with highly personalized offerings that make a scalable gifting solution feel like a one-to-one interaction.

Customizable settings

Every digital rewards program runs a little differently. For that reason, you will want a highly customizable platform that allows you to generate a number of different campaigns tailored to different business outcomes. With a robust platform, you can send thousands of cards from a single brand, or offer a credit balance that lets your recipient take control and choose the brands that matter most to them. Using this option, recipients can even spread their balance across several different cards of their choosing.

Robust integrations

Your digital rewards program touches every department and most of the major systems in your organization. For that reason, you want a system that can talk to every other vital tool in your text deck. Look for an option that has both API and engineered  Integrations into some of the major marketing, accounting, finance, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools. This will allow you to transfer data easily between systems, and improve your budgeting and analysis for your marketing campaigns.

Easy-to-use platform

While APIs are a useful tool for experienced marketers to implement digital gift card deliveries through their integrated systems, many small-business users and “department of one” marketers need something simpler in order to ship cards effectively. Look for an easy-to-use platform with an intuitive user interface. This will allow anyone in your company to successfully craft and launched a campaign with no technical expertise required. 

Choosing Runa for your digital rewards platform

If you are looking for a platform that meets all of the above criteria while offering excellent customer support and a world of choice for your curation catalogs, look no further than Runa. We have designed our platform and integrations with simplicity in mind, allowing businesses of any size and stage to take advantage of the power of digital rewards to move your company forward.

If you are ready to create more effective gifting programs, we invite you to take a demo of our product and learn more about the next stage in your company's incentive marketing journey.