What is an incentive campaign?

An incentive campaign is a sales or marketing tactic that’s used to influence behaviours, usually over a set period of time. They tend to be used to motivate employees and/or customers. Quite often they are highly targeted to a specific group of people, to achieve a specific objective like growth or retention.

There are four main different types of incentives:

• Financial Incentive
• Like bonuses or paid leave, usually used to meet targets and improve staff performance.
• Non-financial Incentive
• Such as unpaid leave or more flexible working hours for employees, usually to reward staff. With customers it could be the access to upgraded services, early access to products or other ‘money can’t buy’ experiences.
• Individual Incentive
• An individual reward which allows you to tailor targets or goals to the individual’s wants, needs and ability.
• Group Incentive
• This could be an experience or a day out to enjoy as a group. Some rewards may only be practical when a group of people can take part, e.g. chartering a plane for a golfing weekend in Portugal.

The incentive(s) that you would use depend on your business, your customers and what you’re trying to achieve.

Are incentive campaigns worth it?

Incentive campaigns can be really successful, providing if it’s the right thing to do and for what the objective is at that time.

They tend to be time bound, e.g. 1^st June to 30^th September, which can help with building hype and engagement, with the definitive end meaning you can understand your exposure to a greater extent than with Loyalty programs.

It’s also key to structure them in the right way, so that you aren’t necessarily giving out rewards for something that would happen anyway.

Is there anything I need to avoid?

Ambiguity. If you aren’t clear with the qualification criteria, you can create a world of pain for yourself.

Be clear about what is expected of people and what they will get in return.

Also be aware of what else is going on in your organisation so that you don’t end up with conflicting activity at some point in the future. You want to avoid situations where you double up on incentives or remove all of your margin on products due to promotional activity that has only been created in isolation.

Ok, that’s great. What do I need to create one?

You might already have one and that’s a good start but there are some things you should think about:

• What are your goals for the campaign?
• Do you want to retain your customers and employees? Do you have a particular campaign in mind to use it alongside? Set clear objectives.

• Do you know what you could or want to include?
• Motivational techniques like gamification, competitions, special offers and other promotions are a great way to create boosts of engagement.

• Have you considered how you’ll communicate?
• Will you send an email? Advertise it on posters or flyers? Send it to them directly? Or simply tell them? Communication is key.

If you’ve got a rough idea of how you want your incentive campaign to look, give us a call on 01536 609637 and we can talk about it in more detail and determine if it’s the right thing for you.

You’ve read this don’t have a clue where to even start, have a look at our campaign builder to give you a better idea or give us a call.