The budgeting season isn’t fun for anyone. Between trying to predict your team’s needs, manage leadership expectations, and crunch the numbers, it’s a headache. And when you’re trying to add a customer incentives program into the mix, the math gets even more difficult.
Whether you’re in marketing, sales, or service, using customer incentives can be a key part of your strategy. However, figuring out how much to allot for those programs isn’t easy. Here are three factors to take into account.
READ MORE: Protect Your Reward Incentives Budget With These 4 Tips
Customer incentives can boost many of your programs, but unless you have unlimited budget (wouldn’t that be nice?), you must prioritize where those reward dollars can have the most impact. Consider goals for the company as a whole, as well as the sales, marketing, and service teams. Is there a big push for case studies and online reviews? Budget for an advocacy program. Will it be all about conversion rates and closed deals? Then arm your salespeople so they can create extra value for prospects.
Here are some more strategies that can incorporate digital rewards to help you reach your goals:
Based on how you’ll be using rewards and the numbers you’re trying to hit for the program, the next budget question is about quantity. How many customer incentives will you expect to send? And at what value? A small company hoping to entice a handful of top clients to participate in case studies will need a much different incentives budget than a multimillion-dollar enterprise looking to use digital rewards to appease customers and increase retention.
When you can estimate how many rewards you’ll be managing, you need to figure out how much time that will take and how much manpower you have to devote to the program. Many companies are still facing tight budgets and team members who are stretched thin, so adding “juggle rewards spreadsheets” to someone’s workload probably isn’t a good idea. Hiring a new administrative team member just to handle incentives would solve the problem, but increasing headcount may not be possible, and if it is, you can likely those extra hands elsewhere. So what does every company do in this situation? Look to technology for a solution! For the fraction of the cost of an extra employee, you can use a rewards management platform to streamline and even automate much of your customer incentives program.
Not sure what to look for in a customer incentives management tool? Download our Buyer’s Guide to learn everything you need to know!
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
