Hope you are able to find a happy medium. There is value in having both individual and organizational rewards. They can (and should IMO) coexist. $100 for an individual reward seems excessive to me unless you are pricing it right in terms of what it takes to earn the reward, and you have budget to support. Have you considered smaller, more nominal individual rewards and maybe capping it at $100 over a defined time period and then organizational rewards that are of higher value and take more advocating to redeem for? Advocates will likely have to choose one or the other as there will be a cost for rewards they receive. While we saw advocates use earned points for gift cards, we also saw them forgo gift cards when they had a goal of getting a free conference pass or a training credit. Or maybe the smaller individual rewards trigger a larger organizational reward? Just thinking out loud here. Hopefully, it at least gives you more food for thought.
Asking my team. We used a couple of vendors for awards and branded merch/swag. Just can't remember who for the life of me. LOL. Once I have an answer, I'll repost here.
Honestly, from my experience, most swag of nominal value ends up in the trash. Hence why we leaned more into giving advocates gift cards versus swag. The exception was a small Verint Bot (robot) plushy and small Lego set of the same Verint Bot. Both of these were hits. The other exception was the holiday gifts that we did for our top 10 (more like ~12) advocates every year. For these, though, we were spending in the neighborhood of $100 each. We did things like hand warmers/portable charger, cutlery board, blanket, jacket and hat, Bluetooth speaker, etc. Some were branded and some weren't. All were always a big hit.
Hi Tracy. In terms of referral program incentives, we didn't do any sort of direct payments. We did do gift cards. We kept gift cards to a nominal value based on our conversation with / direction from legal. Gift cards were $10. We capped redemption to $50 per year. We also made it a requirement that an advocate be active (in our case earning points) for 90 consecutive days in order to redeem. This helped make sure new or very infrequent users couldn't abuse the system. Delivery was done via Tango, which enabled us to offer the gift card as a reward/incentive where the advocate could select from a variety of gift card options. We had the entire process automated with Influitive. It was a little more manual and a little harder to administer, but not impossible, after we moved to Base. We got approval from legal on the above in advance, so we then could manage all approvals/rejections on a case-by-case basis. Hope this helps. Happy to share more if you have any specific questions.
Same question as Tracy. Also, by referral do you mean customer referrals/references? We were using Influitive for our advocacy program/hub and then switched to Base. We used both for referral/reference automation. Just prior to leaving my last role, and considering future direction/plans, we had started having conversations with userevidence.
Agree with Amy. Similar to a Customer Advisory Board, the ideal spot is under CMO/marketing to enable customer advocacy to have visibility and ensure collaboration from the start. I've also seen it under Customer Success, part of a CCO’s role, which works well especially if there is already a steady cadence between CS and Advocacy. Either can also help extend advocacy across customer organizations, with the exec sponsorship program feeding the advocacy program via relationships exec sponsors build and the teams their customer counterparts are responsible for. Plus, it enables exec sponsors to stay up to speed on their customers’ advocacy participation, not to mention that these likely are (or can be nurtured to be) the very execs most ideal to support and drive more strategic, executive-level advocacy. This is why no matter what part of the org runs exec sponsorship, connection to the advocacy team and properly educating/arming exec sponsors should be a priority.
BTW, I should have mentioned that the awards dinner/celebration included not only the winners and two of their chosen colleagues but also key execs from our company, as well as key media/analyst/influencers. Outside of the recognition/celebration, it was a great for the winners to meet one another, connect and interact with our execs, and for media/analysts to hear firsthand the business outcomes our customers have achieved. Probably obvious but just in case it wasn't. 😂
Hi Liza - Our awards were part of our annual global awards program. We recognized/celebrated the winners at our annual customer conference. They received a crystal at an exclusive awards dinner at the conference. We allowed them to bring two colleagues with them to the dinner. We bent the rules here and there depending on the customer and circumstances but tried to stick to this since we always had a headcount limit. We also recognized the winners during general session the day following the dinner. We didn’t recognize them individually given time constraints. Instead, we played a short video highlighting the winners and had them join us onstage while the video played followed by some high-energy music, graphics, and audience applause. Given the above, we didn't feel it was necessary to provide additional gifts per se. However, with this said, we did provide winners with conference passes. We also included them in our “Elevated Experience” at the conference. This was a VIP experience for our top advocates. It included a number of perks, including a special gifting experience where they could shop for and select a gift onsite to take home with them. We did everything from Toms and Dif sunglasses (great for Orlando) and Toms shoes to cool bags, hats, wallets, and more. I'd have to go back and look to remember all the gifts we tried over the years. I know this might not be exactly what you were looking for but I hope it helps!
Highly recommend customer conference passes as an incentive. That was a big win for us. Often hard for customers, even your best advocates, to justify attendance because of budget constraints. Passes as an incentive/reward gave them something to work toward, so they were more inclined and excited to take part in advocacy activities, particular references, since it could help them earn a pass and, as a result, better justify attendance within their organization. Plus, when we added an incentive to cover two nights hotel at the conference, it had a huge side benefit. We saw advocates more willing to sign up for speaking at the conference, since this came with a free pass. They could then use points they earned for hotel, making it even easier to justify attendance since then they were only on tap for airfare. Plus, these were key contacts we wanted to attend, so it was a win for the advocacy team and company as well. As far as legal, we made it clear that we weren't randomly incentivizing or rewarding customers. And we weren't “paying” them to do something for us. They had the option to participate whenever and however they wanted. And it was up to them to select a reward if they chose to. It really was a reward versus an incentive. We also worked with legal to come up with specific eligibility requirements and limitations. For example, an advocate was only eligible for one conference pass a year. Gift card redemptions were limited to a max of $50 every 12 months. And nothing could be redeemed if an advocate wasn't active for 90 continuous days (regularly earning points over that timeframe). This helped us get over the hump with legal. With this said, we never were able to offer any sort of software or services discounts. Too many issues from a revenue recognition standpoint. However, I think we came to a good middle ground. Good luck!
We went back and forth on this. We ultimately settled on rewards for individuals but included ones that were of benefit/value to the organization as well. Main driver for this decision was the fact that individuals were doing us the favor/referral. Yes, in some cases, they needed organizational go ahead but, more often than not, it was their decision provided it wasn't against corporate policy or they were comfortable overlooking policy (many of our best advocates did). Plus, honestly, advocacy and reference-ability boil down to the individual. An organization can be happy/satisfied with your product/service but it won’t matter if you don't have the right person willing to share their experience and who understands the value in it even outside of incentives/rewards. So, we included incentives like gift cards (using Tango and with specific criteria/limits) that are 100% targeted to the individual referrer. We also included things like a free pass to our annual customer conference and hotel coverage at the conference. These have value to both the individual and organization. Finally, we included blocks of advice line hours and training credits. These were more targeted to the organization but, again, also held value to the individual. The interesting thing is that we added advice line hours and training credits based on advocate feedback, yet our most popular incentives/rewards by far were gift cards and conference-related perks.
We allowed public sector customers to join our program and found some great advocates in this sector. While we could have excluded rewards from them, we didn't. We found that these customers did a good job policing themselves when it came to incentives/rewards. They wouldn't redeem if they couldn't and we wouldn't perk without their permission in advance. We also found that while things like gift cards were always off the table, they could often get approval to take advantage of user conference passes.
Can't help with this one. Sorry.
