Undertaking a reward or incentive marketing campaign isn’t something you’ll embark on lightly, not least because of the cost. Making sure you have the right gifts, the right software and the right set-up doesn’t come cheap.
But some approaches are more costly than others.
Some approaches might see you wasting money on stock, storage and fulfilment, while others could see you investing in just one piece of software that transforms the incentive marketing experience for both your customers and staff.
Is there really such a big difference between manual and digital incentive marketing campaigns? We weigh up the costs.
The Costs of Manual Incentive Marketing
Running any kind of incentive, reward or loyalty programme manually means a lot of work and a lot of expense. There are many different areas you’ll need to take care of, all of which have up front costs.
These include:
Stock
If you’re running your rewards and incentives manually, you’ll need to start by building up your stock so gifts can be claimed instantly. That means buying in bulk, making sure you have enough stock to meet your customers demands.
It also means a big investment, as you’ll have to purchase all that stock before you start your incentive marketing. And if you want to offer different types of rewards – you’ll have to order lots of different stock in advance. That’s costly.
And it’s also a risk. What if you order too much stock, and some rewards go unclaimed? You’ll have wasted your budget.
Or what if you don’t order enough and your customers can’t redeem the incentive they want? It’s a delicate balancing act that can easily result in you overspending or disappointing customers.
Storage
When you’ve ordered all that stock, you’ll need somewhere to store it. That means investing in some kind of warehousing space, unless you want piles of rewards stacked in office corners and stuffed under desks.
You’ll need to make sure you have enough shelf space for all your stock, and that space will need to be easily accessible so you can retrieve rewards whenever required.
Redemption process
Even though you’re managing your incentive marketing manually, you’ll still need some kind of digital setup in order to facilitate the actual redemption process.
You’ll want to invest in a microsite or updates to your current website to enable your customers to claim their incentives and share their details with you. Or you’ll need software that can verify customer rewards and share their delivery information.
Delivery
Next, you’ll need to set aside budget for the delivery of those incentives. That’s not just the actual shipping costs either, it’s all the packaging that goes with it and the management of those orders.
You’ll need to have a system to organise deliveries, you’ll need to find the right delivery partners and negotiate deals for all the orders you’ll be sending, and you’ll need to arrange for those packages to be collected.
You can’t have Sandra from reception carting bags of packages to the post office every afternoon.
Admin
That administration, the time and effort it takes to manage all orders, oversee delivery and handle any customer service is also costly.
A manual incentive marketing programme puts a lot of demands on your team, asking them to pick up extra work and taking them away from other tasks.
You may need to pay for overtime or hire extra staff to handle all the administration associated with your incentive marketing. After all, someone has to:
- Order all that stock
- Source the warehousing
- Arrange for everything to be stored appropriately
- Manage customer orders
- Pack up rewards and address to customers
- Arrange delivery
- Handle customer service
That all requires an investment in your team, because if you don’t, stress levels will rise and other areas of your business will suffer, with staff members pulled away to deal with incentive marketing issues when they should be working on other parts of the business.
That’s a costly mistake.
And it’s one you don’t need to make.
The Costs of Digital Incentive Marketing
Because when you ditch the manual processes to run a digital incentive marketing programme, you’ll make massive savings.
You won’t need to pay for stock up front
With gifting software like Gift & Go supporting your incentive marketing, you only pay for the incentives your customers redeem. They choose the gift first, then you order and pay for it, so no upfront costs and no risk of over or under-stocking.
You won’t have any storage costs
That also means you don’t need to pay for any storage either. Your organisation never holds the stock. It’s shipped straight from the distributor to your customer, minimising the cost to you.
You won’t need to worry about delivery
And because you don’t hold any stock, you don’t need to worry about fulfilment. That’s all taken care of for you, with delivery costs streamlined and savings made on the staff you no longer need to package and ship your rewards.
Your admin time will be dramatically reduced
All that adds up to a more efficient, more effective digital incentive marketing programme. Your admin is dramatically reduced with automations and easy to manage software, and your staff have more time to spend on more profitable parts of the business.
And you only have one single software cost
That digital incentive marketing programme requires just a single piece of software. One integration, one dashboard, one cost – and everything you need to manage the entire gifting and rewards process.
Using the latest gifting technology, you can:
- Choose from millions of gifts to reward prospects and customers
- Create instant redemption microsites and loyalty stores that work seamlessly with your existing sites
- Automatically deliver incentives directly to customers
All for the price of a single piece of software.
Digital incentive marketing is the most cost effective way to reward your customers.
It’s the better way to say thank you.
And all you need to get started is Gift & Go.
Book a demo of Gift & Go.