How can customer incentives help your firm?

Using customer incentives can achieve a variety of ends, from drawing in new business and boosting sales to improving client retention. To find out more about the various schemes available, read our guide.

Whether your goal is to increase your sales figures, improve client acquisition rates or make sure your best customers keep using your products or services, rewards schemes can focus on a number of areas.

These can broadly be divided into initiatives targeted at consumers themselves, and those focused on improving elements such as staff morale in order to achieve your various business aims.

Falling into the former category, gift vouchers can be used to boost customer acquisition. Such incentives can be harnessed to bring new clients on board, differentiate your company from your competitors and increase brand awareness.

Similarly, vouchers and gift cards can be used to promote new products or services – something that can be particularly tricky in a competitive marketplace or during difficult economic periods.

Meanwhile, consumers may also be incentivised through vouchers and similar rewards to take part in market research. Indeed, finding the right number of participants for research drives can be difficult, and the richer results you receive in consequence of finding more interviewees can more than mitigate the cost of rewards.

Of course, targeting consumers directly is not the only way to reach your business goals. Using staff incentives to boost performance internally and among external distributors can also prove an immensely worthwhile exercise.

Sales incentives can be used to encourage your team to meet certain deadlines or targets, or simply to maintain good performance. You are also able to implement such schemes to motivate external distributors – something that can often prove difficult to do.

Client referrals are another area that can be boosted with incentive schemes. Using rewards, you are able to encourage your customer base to refer your services on to another company; however, you should ascertain exactly what you need from them before deciding on what will merit a reward – and what this should be.

Whichever area you would like to focus on, you will find rewards such as multi-option gift vouchers, pre-paid cards and online points schemes all offer real value to customers and staff alike. Due to this perceived value, they provide real incentives to take the action of your choosing, whether this is making a purchase, reaching a target or referring your company to another.