I did a search and could not find anything in the forums, but has anyone have a shop set up with a rewards program, that allows someone to purchase items or use rewards points towards a purchase, instead of using cash ?

Hiya David,

It's funny you should ask that as I just got done adding one to my site and was about to ask if people would please tell me what they thought.

So.... tell me what you think? Link's in the signature and then of course on the menu of the Home page

HI Jo Ann,

you have certainly put a lot of work into that Referral Program!

I'm just wondering if 200 points is achievable though. That is 20 referrals who agree to be on your email list and stay active for 30 days or more or 100 purchases by the referred people.

I wonder if a lower goal might inspire more referrals?

Hi Jo Ann,

Yeah I kinda do the same thing now with my site still as I use e-Mals codes...till the pro comes out (yeah I know...Are we there yet??? ), but I have seen some carts that incorporate a loyalty points system to use, directly, gives the points automatically for purchase and customer can login and use the points to purchase, well maybe a future idea for pro eh??.

Yeah, I gave the points value a lot of thought Tassie, and after thinking about it this was my reasoning (no matter how strange it is LOL):

My prices are very low on my items (targetting the average spender rather than the high end and big money spenders) so I needed to be realistic on what can be purchased and how fast. I've been in a lot of reward programs over the years and some of them I can earn $100 - $200 in a years time (not much really when you think about it) and some only $20 in 6 months time. Most of these are email reward programs with the same purpose of either advertising companies they want you to visit sites for, or they give you points for referrals.
The companies that advertise in one of them, Mypoints if anyone is familiar with it, pay at least $5000.00 to advertise. That's the minimum package that Mypoints has available. These are pretty big companies which have a lot of money to advertise with, and therefore Mypoints can afford to give out a bit more points to allow you to earn a couple hundred bux in a year.

I'm just starting out and very small business, so if someone were to earn enough to turn in 200 points in 2 to 4 months, it's more than they were getting before right?

Another major factor I tried to consider in these things, is the scammer/spammer/etc. that has 500 email addresses they are privvy to and can earn these points in a matter of weeks. I guess it is just a matter of trying to balance it to keep those types of people unable to take advantage of it too much. To me 20 people isn't really that much for the normal online person that usually has anywhere from 20 to 200 email addresses in their contact list. Add that to all the new social networks that people are able to get involved and it could go quite quickly.

Granted, this is all in my mind too lol, and I may be entirely wrong in thinking this way, hence why I'm asking for opinions

@David: Not sure if SCC Pro will do something like this or not, sure would be nice, but I have a feeling it's more involved than CC is planning for it. Never the less, it's a good suggestion

Jo Ann, sounds a bit complicated. How do you plan to track reward points for each customer?

The concept of rewards is an interesting one, although I do have doubts about the validity of it for smaller enterprises. For regular repeat visit businesses like supermarkets it works very well. They want you to spend your weekly shopping budget with them, rather than store B, so it is well worth the investment to run such a scheme as you are likely to spend a substantive part of your disposable income with them over a year.

Contrast that with a different type of venture though, where you make infrequent visits, Amazon is a good example. I personally buy between one and three books through Amazon over the course of a year. As a valued customer they choose to innundate me with around 80 sales emails a year, all of which are to their benefit, rather than my own. Even if they were to offer some sort of practical rewards program, my infrequent purchases would not make it workable and yet I am probably a typical customer of Amazon as regards sales volumes.

Rewards points are only ever going to be viable where the product you are selling has a high level of regular repeat sales. As regards its deployment on web sites, unless a customer is likely to definitely purchase several times during the course of a year, whether that be through the course of buying for their business, or having a strong hobby/leisure interest, I truly have doubts about its commercial viability.

Well over the course of two years I have issued 18 - $25 reward vouchers for my customers obtaining 30 Paw Points, of which 8 where issued in 2008 and yet to be "cashed", most of my customers have said, "They would rather pay for the products" kinda strange but, nevertheless they still have the vouchers to redeem whenever they want. Out of the 18 issued only three people have actually used theirs. So its kinda wierd to have it but, at the same time its an incentive to purchase at my site.

To obtain 30 points they get a point for every $5.50 spent, and double bonus points every 2nd monday of the month, seems low but it works. I just use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of my points system. But, if there was an easier automated way, I am all for that

Yeah Excel is where I keep track of it also, pretty simple, its not like I get swamped with so many that I can't do it manually for now.

Shouldn't be too complicated since Excel allows you to order things according to any column you like so it should be pretty easy to keep track of. Basically just keeping track of the person that is the Referring person and who they are credited for refering with both email address and points earned for referrals and purchases, not much needed and you can put calculations in to do all the math for you so it's a simple situation, not complicated at all

Since my rewards are based more off of Email Address Referrals for the Newsletter than they are on purchases, I'm hoping that the incentive will take off more than if it were based off of purchases since they don't "have" to spend anything to earn them, and that they earn them when their referrals purchase is just a bonus incentive is all.

I don't know about US based spam law, but is there perhaps a risk there that someone could make a legitimate claim that they had been sent unsolicited email? I know some of the big ISP's are taking a more active stance on spam now, as their servers often get overwhelmed with it. Perhaps something to review?