Channel incentive programs can increase attention to your company, improve your loyalty stats and drive revenue increases year over year. One of the biggest indicators of a healthy program is the amount of engagement it gets. In the incentive industry, engagement encompasses a variety of elements, like:
- participant activity trends
- performance tracking platform visits
- email and click through open rates for participants and internal teams
- interactions with the sponsoring company
- reward redemptions
- survey responses
- training module completions
The higher the engagement, the more successful a program is. When engagement metrics start to fall, it’s a big red flag that program outcomes will also take a dive. In our 40-year history as a leading performance improvement agency, our experts at Motivation Excellence know how best to keep engagement high.
Here are three areas we recommend focusing on:
1. Internal Drivers
You can design an amazing incentive program, but if your own people don’t buy in, you’ll have a hard time getting adoption from your participants. Executives and sales teams must be engaged from the start and carry a level of enthusiasm that positively infects the channel partners participating.
- Executive team – make sure they know the goals and benefits, and have a working knowledge of the “why” and “how” of the program. Having access to this level at your company can be a selling point to your channel partners, especially ones who are already showing loyalty to your products.
- Sales team – an incentive program is a great tool for this group to use to strengthen connections with current customers and introduce your company to prospects. If you don’t have engagement with this group, you’ve lost your most direct pipeline to your participants. Including them in your reward structure is one way to increase their vested interest.
- If you’re running a group travel incentive program for your channel partners, reserve spots for the sales team members whose customers are bringing in the best performance.
- If it’s a reward points program, award a percentage of participants’ point earnings to their sales representative.
2. Channel Partner Players
Obviously, this is the group that needs to be the most engaged. How to grab and keep their attention is multi-faceted. Everyone likes to receive information in slightly different ways, so we always recommend using a variety of elements in an incentive program communications campaign. Regardless of how you get out the information, we suggest a regular cadence, using a consistent voice.
- Emails – this is a standard part of any engagement campaign. Some people love ‘em, others don’t read ‘em, but it’s the easiest way to communicate and track delivery stats. We use sophisticated software to increase effectiveness from A/B testing that helps determine the best time to send an email and also generates robust engagement metrics.
- Less is more when it comes to words
- Give a personal performance update (percent to goal, accumulated reward points, leaderboard position)
- Highlight the destination for a travel incentive, or a creative redemption idea for reward point programs
- Mail to the home – a postcard, flyer or brochure to the home introduces the incentive to the whole family. Suddenly your participant has a cheering section at home!
- Beautiful photos and varnish techniques are eye candy
- Print pieces are seeing a resurgence because people have email fatigue
- Add a small, useful gift item that keeps your logo in view daily
- Videos – there are people who prefer to hear and see, over read. This is particularly effective to give a program overview, a tour of the performance platform or a sneak peek at a destination.
- Keep it short – less than 2-minutes is ideal
- Use your executive team – a message from the CEO garners attention
- Product training is a great topic
- Performance Tracking Platform – it’s a one-stop-shop for everything related to a program and an instant way to get a glimpse into how a participant is tracking toward goal.
- House everything from program rules to all the communication elements listed above
- Personalize for each participant
3. Help with Marketing
All of our clients have internal marketing teams who are great at what they do.
All of our clients have internal marketing teams who are great at what they do. Many marketing departments have a lot on their plate day to day, though. Adding incentive channel marketing to the mix can sometimes get overwhelming, and we’ve seen it fall through the cracks, or lose effectiveness because messaging isn’t quite on point for an incentive, or lacks a tiered, targeted approach. A silent program does not live long, so it’s critical to have consistent messaging to keep everyone engaged.
We are often an extension of our clients’ marketing team. Our creative department has vast experience in creating content and executing an engagement campaign so that the messaging is motivational, the timing is exact, and relevant data is collected to ensure consistent delivery. Graphics we create follow brand guidelines and our marketing contact always has final say on what goes out. Whether we are used to create a program logo or an entire performance tracking website, we ebb and flow based on what’s needed.
All the Moving Parts
There are so many crucial elements to building a successful channel incentive program in addition to engagement. Important areas include rules, reward offerings and data updates, which can range from daily to monthly. Even if you get all of these pieces to fit nicely, if you don’t find the engagement piece, you’re left with an unfinished puzzle, which is frustrating at best.
Partnering with an experienced company may be the most important element of all. The payoff for running a well-designed channel partner incentive program can lead to increased sales and loyalty for years into the future. It’s truly an investment in your company’s overall success. Connect with us to learn more about how we can help you design a program you and your channel partners will be excited about from day one!
