Loyalty & Rewards3 Ways to Win the Hearts of your Consumers & Employees with Cause

By Kate Olsen

eGuide

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Win the Loyalty GameDelight consumers and employees with charity rewards

Charitable rewards are an increasingly effective and popular way to build loyalty among your consumers and employees. Thanking people by supporting their favorite charities is a compelling way to demonstrate that your company cares about what your consumers and employees care about and seeks to better understand their needs, wants, preferences and passions. What better way to invite consumers and employees into a conversation than to engage them about social impact and their favorite causes?

This guide will illuminate what’s at stake in the loyalty game and how your company can win the hearts of your consumers and employees with charitable rewards, including pre-paid donations in the form of charity gift cards, ‘dollars for doers’ volunteer incentives and matching grants.

3 ways to drive loyalty with cause:

1. Say thank you

2. Incentivize participation

3. Mark a milestone

“Cisco loves to reward employees with The Good Card®. Network for Good makes it so easy to design a custom program, and their choice in charity means that each employee can give to an organization that matters to them.” – Cisco Systems, Inc. Program Manager

What’s at Stake in the Loyalty Game

It’s no small feat to design timely, relevant and personalized touch points – and more importantly, invitations to deeper conversation – to each and every consumer and employee. But that’s what your audience craves: that human touch from the brands they love. When done right, this approach to building long-term loyalty will differentiate your company amid a cacophony of marketing messages and brand promises.

Most companies haven’t discovered their secret loyalty sauce yet, and the lack of deep engagement is taking its toll.

Consumer loyalty is driven by marketers’ abilities to understand consumers better and deliver more relevant and valued offers via their preferred channels (email, social, etc.). According to recent research from the CMO Councili, 54% of consumers surveyed are considering leaving brands due to “the barrage of irrelevant messages, low value rewards, and impersonal engagements.”

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Employee loyalty, a component of employee engagement, is based on employees’ perceptions about whether their employer is looking out for their best interests, paying attention to their professional development and giving them opportunities to improve their well-being. According to MetLife’s 10th Annual Study of Employee Benefit Trendsii released in March 2012, employee loyalty is at a seven-year low.

It’s time to make sure your company’s loyalty approach doesn’t fall victim to these trends. Charity rewards give your consumers and employees meaningful, personal perks and allow your company to gain better insights into their interests to drive even deeper engagement over time.

Why Cause is the Key to Engagement

According to several studies profiled in the Washington Postiii, a bonus you spend on someone else is more motivating than a bonus you spend on yourself. Here are three reasons helping your consumers and employees ‘pay it forward’ with charity rewards will engender their loyalty to your company.

• Social ProofActions and behaviors you incentivize and reward publicly inform your company’s brand promise and workplace culture. Adding a socially responsible dimension to your brand allows your company to prioritize social good commitments and actions. This addition gives you space to then publically acknowledge social impact milestones. In other words, you can thank consumers and reward employees with a gift of charity to reinforce your brand promise and culture in a very visible way. Giving your customers opportunities to engage with causes through your brand experience will attract what BBMGiv calls ‘conscious consumers’ - the 70 million Americans who care about creating shared value with their favorite brands. Social proof of community impact will also attract the type of employee who wants to work in an environment that values social responsibility.

• ‘Helper’s High’Doing good creates a chemical reaction in the brain, a feeling of euphoria known as the ‘Helper’s High’. When you enable that feeling in your consumers and employees, they associate your company with their passion for doing good. That link can be a powerful loyalty driver, especially if you allow individuals to share their stories about why they care for particular causes. Through meaningful touch points to thank consumers and employees for their generosity, you can communicate the collective social impact your company is fostering. Whenever possible, help consumers and employees recapture that ‘Helper’s High’.

• Individual SpiritPart of what is so compelling about spending a bonus on someone else, is that the act is an expression of individualism and personal values. One person may wish to support a local food bank, while another may be passionate about preventing malaria deaths in Africa. When you give consumers and employees choice in charity, your company demonstrates that you respect them as individuals, and seek to help them give back in a way that is personally meaningful and rewarding.

How to Inspire Loyalty with Charity Rewards

Research from Cone, Inc.v demonstrates that your consumers and employees are hungry for more connection to your company’s social responsibility commitment. They also want to feel personally invited to a conversation with your brand. Further, they even want to help you co-create that brand’s identity. A powerful way to fulfill those two desires is to make cause central to your brand promise. When you insert charity into your consumer and employee engagement approach, you open the door to a rich conversation about what matters – to your company, to your consumers, to your employees, to your community – that can only help you build relationships (not just fans) and enhance loyalty.

Here are three ways to add cause to your rewards portfolio:

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1. Say Thank YouInstead of offering consumers another generic coupon, sending clients another fruit basket or acknowledging employees with another plaque, why not let them select a reward with personal meaning? Charity gift cards are pre-paid donations that consumers, clients and employees can spend as a donation to their favorite charities - anything from local PTAs and animal shelters to a charity working to provide clean water in Africa to a national nonprofit striving to cure cancer. They are the ultimate personalized perk.

Clinique provided consumers a charity gift card with purchase of a ‘Happy’ fragrance product:

2. Incentivize ParticipationTrying to get more consumers to try your new product? Want employees to show up for a volunteer project? Instead of offering trinkets or springing for embroidered t-shirts that will get limited use post-event, give consumers and employees a pre-paid donation to allocate to a cause close to their hearts. The benefit of ‘paying it’ forward will motivate them to try something new.

Many companies offer ‘dollars for doers’ incentives to drive participation in employee volunteer programs. In fact, CECP’s Giving in Numbers reportvi, proclaims ‘dollars for doer’s as among the most successful of employee volunteer programs. These rewards allow employees to accrue matching grant funds for their pet causes in exchange for volunteer hours.

But charity incentives aren’t just for employees. Many market researchers are discovering they can increase survey participation by rewarding consumers with pre-paid donations. Big consumer brands are also engaging their consumers through cause contests that allow individuals to help allocate philanthropic dollars to their local communities through crowdsourced voting and nomination processes. The possibilities are endless!

Liquidnet, a financial marketplace, rewards employee generosity with charity gift cards through its ‘Double Down’ program:

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3. Mark a MilestoneAn award or certificate is nice to receive, but then sits on a shelf collecting dust. Why not celebrate brand milestones, employee service anniversaries and other big events with the gift of charity instead? A big billboard or website homepage banner builds awareness for a big milestone, but doesn’t help your consumers and employees internalize the joy of the occasion. Provide an experience that translates that joy in a way that is meaningful to each individual. This way, you’re helping your consumers and employees mark the occasion by supporting something they care about. The milestone will feel twice as nice.

HBO paid it forward with charity gift cards for the premiere of the documentary ‘A Small Act’:

Win the hearts of your consumers & employees.Contact us to transform your loyalty programs.

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Ready to get started?Network for Good is here to help. Our gift card for charity – The Good Card®vii – is an ideal (and customizable) way to thank customers, vendors or clients, implement a ‘dollars for doers’ program for employees, or incentivize participation in events or online programs. We also have digital solutions to power a rewards program embedded on your platform, and we will work with you to find just the right way to say ‘thank you’ and drive loyalty.

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About Network for Good

network for good is a social enterprise that empowers corporate partners and nonprofits to unleash generosity and advance good causes. Network for Good works with companies to help refine a cause strategy perfectly suited to business and philanthropic goals and implement effective cause initiatives powered by our proven donation platform. we also help nonprofits raise funds for their missions through simple, affordable and effective online fundraising services and offer free training through our online learning center, interactive online community, and nonprofit911 webinar series.

network for good has processed more than $800 million in donations for more than 80,000 nonprofits since our 2001 founding by aoL, Cisco and Yahoo!.

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Published October 2012

i http://www.cmocouncil.org/cat_details.php?fid=154ii https://www.metlife.com/business/insights-and-tools/industry-knowledge/employee-benefits-trends-study/index.html?WT.mc_id=vu1479#highlightsiii http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jena-mcgregor-on-leadership-motivated-by-a-reward-for-others/2011/08/22/gIQAhyxgjJ_print.htmliv http://www.bbmg.com/how/the-new-consumer/v http://www.coneinc.com/research/vi http://www.corporatephilanthropy.org/research/benchmarking-reports/giving-in-numbers.htmlvii http://www.networkforgood.org/customgoodcard

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