Seriously, a social media platform has surpassed the OG King of search engines as the number 1 search engine. If that doesn’t tell signify the growing importance of properly utilizing social media, we’re not sure what will.

A social media sweepstakes is a proven tactic for your brand to increase engagement, gain new followers, drive traffic, and much more. Not only that, but a social media sweepstakes allows your brand to meet your target audience where they already are, building stronger relationships with them increasing the likelihood of conversion. 

Naturally, similar to many marketing initiatives, social media sweepstakes come with a multitude of intricacies and factors to keep in consideration. One mistake here or there can result in costly fines, legal penalties, and have negative effects on your brand’s image. 

Our team of dedicated sweepstakes administrators has nearly 30 years of experience helping brands get the most out of their promotional campaigns while protecting their image. In that time, we’ve perfected and refined our process of social media sweepstakes administration. We provide a high-level outline of it below. 

Social Media Sweepstakes Legal Administration

Before we ever launch a social media sweepstakes or giveaway, our team’s first task is to consider any applicable laws and regulations. Yes, there are laws regulating sweepstakes and giveaways. Believe it or not, there are even more laws and regulations specific to social media sweepstakes administration. 

Social media campaigns must also beware of the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines as well. The FTC regulates social media advertisements and promotions very closely. In short, the FTC mandates that all “endorsements must be honest and not misleading.”

Social Media Sweepstakes Administration Rules Writing

With that in mind, our team starts by writing your social media sweepstakes’ official and abbreviated rules. Consider these the “rules of the road” for your social media sweepstakes. 

To begin, we first determine which social media platform your sweepstakes will be run or shared on. While this may seem like a no-brainer, our team never overlooks this step. Different social media platforms have different rules and regulations when it comes to social media sweepstakes administration, making it critical to first define which platforms will be utilized. 

After that, our team is sure that any campaign we administer on social media abides by the following regulations:

• Adequate Disclosures- A social media sweepstakes must state that it’s a sponsored giveaway. Hashtags like “#sweepstakes” or “#contest” will do the trick here. 
• Use of Proper Vocabulary- You may not refer to your social media giveaway as a “lottery”
• No Copyrighted Content- Your campaign (and all of its submissions) must NOT use any copyrighted content, including music. 

From there, your social media sweepstakes official rules will generally vary from campaign to campaign. Social media sweepstakes rules must be tailored to your specific campaign, which is why we always suggest hiring a trusted sweepstakes administrator to ensure total compliance. 

Sweepstakes Data Privacy Protection

Data privacy is crucial in any context where personal information is collected, stored, or shared. In the case of a social media sweepstakes, it is particularly important because participants are likely to share sensitive information such as their name, email address, phone number, and even their location. Depending on the nature of your campaign, they may even share deeper, more personal information. 

As we continue to spend more and more of our time online, consumers are, naturally, more and more concerned with the privacy and safety of their personal information. As a social media sweepstakes sponsor, it’s your responsibility to handle the data you collect both legally and with care.

Participants have a right to know how their personal information will be used, who will have access to it, and how it will be protected. If their data is mishandled or misused, your brand may face hefty legal fines and penalties. 

Eligibility, Prize Values, and Winner Selection

A final critical element of social media sweepstakes legal administration is to determine and clearly state eligibility, prize value, and winner selection and verification details. 

These elements will be included in your giveaway’s official rules, but we feel they’re important enough to call out on their own for the sake of this article. 

Prior to launch, our team will always ensure that we have clearly and in plain language laid out the “terms” of the giveaway. Just as important as making sure your users understand these details is making sure they can find them.

Our team always outlines what is a valid entry to a social media sweepstakes, as well as what is not a valid entry. Can your users enter by sharing your post or do they need to create an original post of their own to enter?

On top of this, we also carefully define what makes an eligible winner. Sponsors may determine winner eligibility based on several factors including age and location of the entrant. However, there are certain criteria for which you may not disqualify an eligible winner. These include:

• Race, gender, religion, or other protected characteristics: You may not disqualify a winner based on their race, gender, religion, or any other protected characteristics.
• Political beliefs: You may not disqualify a winner based on their political beliefs.
• Personal biases or preferences: You may not disqualify a winner based on personal biases or preferences.

 Launching a Social Media Sweepstakes

Now that it’s time for launch, our team’s social media sweepstakes administration doesn’t end. Instead, our team continually monitors the progression of a campaign, ready to make adjustments to any necessary elements. 

Social Media Scraping and Winner Verification

One hugely important element of our team’s ongoing social media sweepstakes administration is monitoring and tracking the entries through the process of ‘social media scraping.” Social media scraping is simply the process of using tools, usually automated, to help you collect particular data from social platforms. 

With an average of about 829,094,400 tweets per day, you’ll want to rely on social scraping to narrow your view and only collect the data that you’re looking for. In this case, sweepstakes entries. 

Further, our team cross-references the data we extract with the sweepstakes’ pre-determined eligibility criteria. As part of our winner verification process, this relieves brands of the tedious task of having to verify winners on their own. 

*It’s important to note that social media scraping may be subject to legal and ethical considerations, including data privacy laws and terms of service agreements with social media platforms.*

Social Media Giveaway Customer Service

Where there’s smoke, there’s a fire, and where there’s a sweepstakes, there’s a billion questions and consumer needs to meet. Over the last nearly 30 years, our team has responded to millions of customer service inquiries related to the campaigns we administer. 

No matter how detail-oriented or prepared you are, something will always arise. Inevitably, eager participants will flood your brand’s DMs and inbox with any number of questions or requests related to your social media sweepstakes. 

Our dedicated team of promotional marketers handles each of these incoming requests with ease. As experts on the program, we’ll know the ins and outs of your campaign and provide your consumers with any additional information or support they’ll need throughout the life of the campaign. 

Post Campaign Social Media Sweepstakes Administration 

After we’ve completed the duration of the campaign, it’s time to complete the last steps of our social media sweepstakes administration process. 

In our opinion, the effort we put in after the campaign has finished is just as, if not more important than the rest of the campaign itself. 

Sweepstakes Data Collection and Sharing

Immediately after the campaign ends, our team begins analyzing all of the data we’ve collected for your brand. We identify any important patterns or anomalies and use this information to make suggestions and improvements for your next campaign. 

In a continuous effort to best serve our clients, our team shares a proprietary real-time data dashboard to ensure adequate collection of critical campaign data throughout the program. Oftentimes, we look for things like:

• Pageviews– both total and unique pageviews
• Time spent on site
• Region of visitors
• Demographic information– age, gender, device, browser, etc. 

Sweepstakes Winner Notification and Prize Fulfillment

Finally, at the conclusion of any campaign, our team takes on the responsibility of notifying the eligible winners and fulfilling whatever prizes or rewards need to be fulfilled. 

Once eligibility has been confirmed, our team notifies the proper winners. This may be done via email, phone, or postal mail, depending on the contact information provided by the entrant. If we can’t reach the winners immediately, we’ll exhaust all options (including a few creative ones) trying to reach out to them. If, after a pre-determined amount of time (typically 24 hours) we still cannot make contact with the winners, we’ll move on to the next alternate winner. 

Depending on the value of the prize and the specific requirements of the sweepstakes, the winner may be required to complete additional paperwork. For example, prizes over $600 require a completed W-9 form. Additionally, if the prize involves travel or other unique experiences, additional paperwork and legal agreements may be necessary to ensure that the winner is aware of any restrictions, liabilities, or other conditions associated with the prize.

Your Brand’s Social Media Sweepstakes Administration

As you can see, administering an engaging social media sweepstakes requires careful planning and attention to detail. From selecting the right platform and creating compelling content to ensuring compliance with legal regulations and fulfilling prizes, there are many factors to consider when running a sweepstakes on social media.

However, with the right strategies and tools in place, social media sweepstakes can be an effective way to engage with your audience, increase brand awareness, and grow your online presence. By following the best practices outlined in this blog, you can maximize the impact of your sweepstakes and create a positive and memorable experience for your followers.

No matter where you are in the process of planning your own social media sweepstakes, get in touch with our team to ensure you get the most out of your campaign.

The post Social Media Sweepstakes Administration: Our Process for Running a Successful and Engaging Campaign appeared first on MRi.

We’ve enjoyed relatively unregulated access to our consumers’ online behavior over the last decade or so with third-party cookies. Able to monitor and track one’s behavior across the web, brands and agencies alike have had a clear view of where we spend our time online and what we do. With such a treasure trove of data to explore, brands can better understand their consumers, segment their audience, and personalize their outreach, all of which help make their marketing more effective. All made possible by these powerful little third-party cookies. Until now. 

With third-party cookies phasing out within the year due to privacy concerns and increased regulations, marketers must adapt and find new ways to collect valuable zero-party data and create engaging, targeted marketing campaigns. 

Enter the retail media network.

What is a Retail Media Network?

In short, a retail media network is a platform that connects retailers and brands to provide targeted advertising to their consumers. But, of course, it wouldn’t be marketing if it were truly that simple. So, let’s get into the details. 

Behind most retail media networks are what’s called an SSP and a DSP. An SSP, a supply-side platform, is an advertising platform designed to organize and publish a supplier’s “ad inventory,” which, in this case, is their digital ad space. A DSP, a demand-side platform, allows an advertiser to buy that digital ad space and manage advertising campaigns.

Through retail media networks, advertisers (like your brand) can place programmatic ads. 

Programmatic advertising refers to the use of software to automate the buying, placement, and optimization of online advertising. This process eliminates the need for manual negotiations, manual insertion orders, and manual ad trafficking

Retail media networks are typically managed by the retailers themselves. For example, several major retailers have already created their own networks, like Walmart, CVS, and Ulta. The retailers then take advantage of the extensive zero-party data they are able to collect on their consumers through their own sites to create advertising experiences that are relevant, personalized, and valuable to both the consumer and the brand.

The Importance of Retail Media Networks in Today’s Digital Age

One of the greatest factors impacting the rise of the retail media network is the impending loss of third-party cookies. We mentioned above that third-party cookies are being phased out within the next year, leaving marketers in all industries without a constant influx of valuable consumer data. 

Retail media networks, on the other hand, allow brands and retailers to partner with one another and exchange the data they have. For example, consider retail giant Walmart, which, as mentioned above, already has its own retail media network platform. Across its app, website, and of course, retail locations, Walmart directly collects billions of data points on its consumers. They monitor things like website behavior, purchase history, and ad engagement, just to name a few. 

This information is gold to other brands with similar target audiences. What marketers just lost through the deprecation of third-party cookies, they gain through access to robust retail media networks. 

The Shift to Retail Media Networks from Traditional Advertising

The ad industry continues to evolve in tandem with technological advancements and consumer sentiment. Recently, the use of third-party cookies has raised alarms among consumers who consider the tracking to be increasingly invasive. On top of that, the lack of regulation has resulted in a level of secrecy and consumers aren’t even sure what data is being collected about them. As a result, ​regulators and browsers have started to take action to restrict the use of third-party cookies.

The online marketplace continues to grow year over year, with about 20% of all retail transactions taking place online. With over 2.3 billion online shoppers each year, no brand can afford to ignore the digital marketplace.

So, publishers and advertisers are able to adapt and shift to retail media networks. On the rise, retail media network spend is expected to hit $51.4 billion this year. That’s an increase of 26% year over year, according to AdAge.  According to Forbes, retail media networks are “the fastest growing ad-supported digital media channel.”

What are the Benefits of a Retail Media Network?

Retail media networks provide several benefits to both advertisers and publishers.

Increased Reach and Brand Awareness

One clear benefit of running programmatic ads through a retail media network is the immediate boost to your ad’s reach and therefore, brand awareness. With this, you know exactly where your ads appear online, and can in turn use that to your advantage to get the most relevant impressions you possibly can. 

Some more traditional methods of advertising limit your ability to place ads where you want. However, with a retail media network, you can tap into the enormous potential of a retailer’s distinct audience. 

Better Targeting

Similarly, retail media networks empower brands and agencies with more accurate and specific targeting. 

As mentioned above, advertisers can now choose exactly where their digital ads appear online. Savvy marketers prioritize only the most relevant networks that offer them the highest chance of converting a retailer’s audience into their own consumers. 

For example, consider a CPG brand that sells snacks and beverages on the go. Previously, this brand would have to employ more of a “spray and pray” advertising strategy, hoping the digital ads they placed would just show up where their consumers spent time online. 

Of course, it wasn’t the dark ages and advertisers could employ some level of targeting, retail media networks simply cut out the middle man and give advertisers direct access to the platforms they want to appear on.

Improved Engagement

With increased accuracy and better targeting comes improved consumer engagement. 

Retail media networks create a more personalized shopping experience, showing your consumers products and services they actually want when they’re ready to buy. These programmatic ads use the wealth of consumer data retailers have, and match segments of consumers with only the most relevant ads. 

Retail media networks often use native advertising to seamlessly integrate ads into the shopping experience. This type of advertising is designed to look and feel like the surrounding content, making it less intrusive and more engaging for customers.

Not only that, but ​​retail media networks use data to optimize their ad campaigns in real time. This helps to ensure that ads are delivered to the right people at the right time and that they are as effective as possible.

Access to Valuable Data

Of course, the main benefit we’ve been talking about this entire time is the access to valuable data supplied by retail media networks. Advertisers gain access to a retailer’s first-party data when using a retail media network. 

Not only are you able to tap into a tremendous amount of data that’s already been collected, but you can also improve the accuracy of future data collection as well. 

For example, with programmatic advertising, brands can now more accurately link their ads to conversions. They’re able to know exactly which ads on exactly what app or website resulted in a consumer’s purchase. 

This access to richer data unlocks a world of knowledge and possibilities for brands. This insight informs all other aspects of a brand’s marketing strategy, including ad placements, bidding, and design. 

Your Brand’s Retail Media Network Strategy

However you look at it, digital advertising is constantly evolving. As a marketer, it’s up to you to stay on top of important shifts in regulations and consumer sentiment. 

As you can see, retail media networks provide brands and publishers a leg up in the oversaturated, competitive marketplace. By leveraging data and insights, they provide a personalized and relevant shopping experience that can lead to increased ad engagement and better results. 

If your brand wants to take advantage of the benefits of retail media networks, contact us today. 

The post The Rise of the Retail Media Network appeared first on MRi.

While it may not be used nearly as often for personal communication, everybody still gets mail every day. We’re willing to bet that most of the mail you receive is promotional in nature. Direct mail is tangible, effective marketing that still influences millions of consumers each year. In fact, according to PostGrid, 92% of millennials report being influenced by direct mail. 

Because of its effectiveness, we’ve seen countless brands and partners utilize direct mail to promote their sweepstakes and contests. Who wouldn’t? Direct mail is an excellent way to bring awareness to your promotional campaign when done correctly. But, when done incorrectly, using direct mail in conjunction with your giveaway can land your brand in some serious legal trouble. 

When utilizing direct mail sent via the United States Postal Service, you must be aware of the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act (DMPEA) passed in 1999. While this law turns 24 this year, it’s relatively unknown. 

What is the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act

The DMPEA is a section of law passed by congress in 1999 focussed solely on “mail solicitations” by non-government entities. 

In short, it sets the rules and regulations for how brands and agencies may (and may not) utilize direct mail and the United States Postal Service to promote their sweepstakes, contests, or giveaways. The law applies to any “sweepstakes mailings, skill contests, and facsimile checks” that use the United States Postal Service.

An amendment to longstanding, less severe penalties, the DMPEA was passed in the late ’90s to give the USPS greater authority over “false advertising” and allowed the agency to inflict harsher penalties on brands and agencies that participated in deceptive practices. 

What Does the DMPEA Require?

Like most laws, the DMPEA’s official language is long and quite confusing. It’s no wonder so many people have never heard of it before, it’s not exactly “light reading.”

Thankfully, our team of legal experts and promotional marketers have dissected the law and break it down into digestible sections for your convenience. However, we caution you to consider hiring a promotional administrator to handle the complexities of your brand’s sweepstakes legal administration. With the risk of steep penalties and legal action, the stakes are simply too high for most brands to risk. 

The DMPEA and Official Rules

First and foremost, the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act requires brands to disclose the following information “conspicuously” in any solicitation materials, the entry form, and in the official rules. In this case, “conspicuously” means that this information must be clear, in understandable language, and printed in a legible font.

• A statement that “no purchase is necessary to enter”
• The Alternate Method of Entry (AMOE) details
• A statement that “a purchase will not improve an individual’s chances of winning”
• Prizing details including what the prize is and its retail value
• The schedule of any payments that will be made over time
• The campaign sponsor
• The location where entrants can view the full official rules
• That the sweepstakes is subject to the complete official rules

Beyond that, the DMPEA has further regulations designed to protect consumers from false advertising that your brand must follow when promoting your sweepstakes or giveaway. 

The DMPEA and False Representation

Another key element of the DMPEA to be aware of is its emphasis on the prohibition of false representation. This is the bulk of the “deceptive” part of the law. 

Scattered throughout the language of the law is the fact that any sweepstakes or contests sponsors (or really anyone sending mail via the USPS) may not falsely represent themselves as any government agency. 

While this may seem like a no-brainer, it’s important to note that your giveaway cannot “contain a seal, insignia, trade or brand name which could reasonably be construed as implying any Federal Government connection or endorsement.” This is both fraudulent and illegal, and is a surefire way to catch the wrong type of attention from law enforcement agencies. 

On top of that, giveaway sponsors are prohibited from suggesting that their campaign will have any impact on a participant’s federal government “benefits or services.” For example, you cannot state that a failure to enter your giveaway will result in a loss of government-provided health insurance or funding. 

Remove Contacts From Mailing Lists

Finally, the DMPEA requires sweepstakes and game sponsors to allow their audience to opt out of receiving sweepstakes-related mailings. 

Simply put, consumers have the right to remove themselves from promotional mailing lists. The DMPEA puts the burden on the campaign sponsor  to “establish and maintain a notification system that provides for an individual or other duly authorized person to notify the system of the individual’s election to have his or her name and address excluded from all lists of names and addresses used by that promoter to mail such material.” Basically, if someone doesn’t want to get promotional mail from you anymore, it’s on your brand or agency to record that and honor it. 

You’ll want to make sure that whatever notification system you have in place is 100% accurate. The DMPEA empowers consumers to sue for failure to remove their names from sweepstakes mailing lists, opening your brand up to a number of lawsuits if you make a mistake here. 

What Are the DMPEA Penalties?

The DMPEA defines a number of different scenarios for which a giveaway sponsor may be found in violation of the law. With each violation, the DMPEA empowers the USPS to levy various penalties and fines. 

We’ve outlined them below. 

Civil Penalties

Regulated by the United States Postal Service, the DMPEA  amends the civil penalties section of the postal code. 

It allows the USPS to fine offenders up to $1 million for the first offense, depending on the volume of mail. 

• Up to $25,000 based on small quantities of up to 50,000 pieces 
• $50,000 for each mailing from 50,000 to 100,000 pieces
•  An additional $5,000 for each additional 10,000 pieces above 100,000, not to exceed $1 million. 

DMPEA and Stop Order Penalties

Whenever the USPS believes an advertiser is practicing deceptive marketing tactics through the mail, they’ll issue what’s called a “Mail Stop Order.” Which, as you probably guessed, prohibits them from continuing that particular practice. 

Before the DMPEA, the USPS could simply demand a stop order, but not impose any penalties. Now, the DMPEA allows for a $1 million penalty to accompany the stop order and allows for even steeper penalties of up to $2 million for sponsors who violate the stop order.

‘Do Not Mail’ List Penalties

We mentioned above that the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act allows consumers to sue for a failure to remove their name from your mailing list. 

The DMPEA outlines significant penalties of up to $2 million per violation for sponsors who continue to mail to “do not mail” lists for commercial purposes. 

MRi Ensures DMPEA Compliancy for Your Brand

A full-service promotional administrator, we have 30 years of experience helping brands navigate the laws regulating sweepstakes and contests, We literally pre-date the Deceptive Mail Protection and Enforcement Act, and have a perfect track record of compliance in the thousands of campaigns we’ve administered. 

No matter where your brand is in the development of your sweepstakes or contest, our team is ready to help you.

The post How the DMPEA Impacts Sweepstakes and Contests appeared first on MRi.

In a time when we’re seeing historic inflation levels, reduced consumer confidence and spending, and increased pressure on almost every other indicator of economic health, satisfying your customers and maintaining loyalty is more important than ever. According to the Wall Street Journal, “many customers have less patience for businesses than before.”

Our team of consumer engagement and loyalty experts put their heads together and shares everything you need to know about how to build and maintain customer loyalty during an economic recession (and why it even matters in the first place).

Are We In a Recession? Are We Entering One?

First, let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. The economy, of course. For the sake of clarity, when we say “the economy” we’re referring to the United States economy primarily, but it’s important to recognize the global economy and the different variables impacting it as well. The pandemic, a war, logistics nightmares, and political red tape, to list just a few.

Eight times a year, members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meet to set the federal interest rate, based on the health of the economy. This is done in an attempt to stay ahead of any impending economic crises, and to always monitor the general health of the US economy.

In general, raising the interest rates cools down the economy by making borrowing money less affordable. This contracts the economy and tends to raise unemployment. On the other hand, lowering interest rates jumpstarts the economy. Money is easier to borrow and as such, consumers spend more.

This February, the Federal Reserve opted to raise interest rates by just .25 percent, a much less aggressive increase than what we’ve seen throughout most of 2022 when rate increases were regularly .75 percent. This indicates a strengthening economy that requires less intervention from outside forces to remain stable.

While this slow-down in interest rate increases is surely a signal of positivity, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell cautions that there is more to come, remarking that “We’re talking about a couple more rate hikes.”

So, all of that is to say that while we are experiencing some positive gains in the economy right now, we are by no means “in the clear” and a recession, unfortunately, certainly still looms.

Why Building Loyalty During a Recession Matters

We are probably the thousandth blog or agency telling you this but, customer loyalty matters. We all know that selling to loyal customers is easier than selling to new customers. Loyal customers are more likely to evangelize and convert their friends and family into loyal customers as well. And, on top of all of that, loyal customers tend to spend more per transaction than non-loyal customers.

In an economic recession, however, maintaining customer loyalty becomes even more important and offers brands a lifeline to help them get through the storm. In general, during uncertain economic times, consumers across the board set stricter priorities for what they consider to be “essential,” “nice-to-have,” and “able to do without.” They’ll also, in general, try to find “more valuable” alternatives to some of their products or services. Because of this, your brand needs to work even harder and prioritize being the “go-to” brand for your customers, or else you may lose them forever.

Understanding Unique Consumer Needs to Build and Maintain Loyalty in a Recession

As we alluded to above, consumers have a unique set of needs specific to times of economic uncertainty. As if satisfying your customers on an average day isn’t difficult enough, your brand needs to work overtime during a recession in order to maintain the status quo.

We get into the nitty-gritty details of how consumer behavior evolves during a recession in our guide, Marketing During a Recession, so we’ll stick to a higher-level overview here.

Basically, economists agree that in order for someone to make a purchase during a recession (besides life-sustaining essentials), they must first have confidence; in the economy at large, themselves, and the brand they’re purchasing from. Because of this, it’s up to your brand to reassure your customers and help instill the necessary confidence in them.

Needless to say, the consumer response to our current economic climate has been a reduction in spending. A recent report from Reuters notes “Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, dropped 0.2%” in December 2022. That’s on the heels of a 0.1% decrease reported in November.

Consumers are worried. Business owners are worried. Even leaders and economists are feeling the pain of this economic downturn. However, as a brand hoping to steer the ship through this storm, it’s your job to look like you aren’t worried.

Armed with this knowledge, your brand can use a number of different tactics to engage with your consumers in a meaningful way, promoting and maintaining customer loyalty. Below, our team shares our 3 best practices and tips for how to encourage customer loyalty during an economic downturn.

1. Offer Transactionless Rewards

One specific tactic, recommended by our team is continuing to offer the ability to earn loyalty points (or rewards points, digital coupons, whatever type of reward your customers are used to receiving) without a transaction. This helps you accomplish a few things:

• Stay top of mind with penny-pinching consumers
• Offers the ability to upsell or convert into paying customers during redemption
• Reward consumers, giving them a reason to continue to engage with your brand
• Recognize their current needs, creating a deeper connection with them

Transactionless rewards keep your customers “bought-in” to your brand and its experiences when they can’t actually buy your product or services. Not only that, but it also signals to your audience that your brand actually does care about them, and wants to weather this storm by their side.

When you stand by your consumers during a recession, they’ll continue to stand by you when it passes.

2. Reduce Consumer Friction

Friction is anything that creates hesitation, slows, or disrupts your customer experience. AKA, bad news for your consumers and your brand.

We already mentioned above that in general, consumers have less patience for the brands or companies they choose to engage with or buy from. Consumers are inundated with an unlimited number of options or similar alternatives across the internet and on store shelves, they simply don’t need to be as forgiving as they used to be.

Avoid turning customers away (because you never know if they’ll come back) and ease the path to conversion to help build and maintain loyalty during a recession. This can look like a few different things:

• Offering in-app purchases
• Including relevant links in communications to encourage consumers to keep engaging
• Reducing the number of steps it takes to complete a transaction or conversion event
• Optimize your digital assets (website or app)

The easier you make it for your consumers to convert, the more likely they are to convert again and again.

3. Offer Value in New and Useful Ways

Ok, we admit it, this tip is definitely easier said than done, but it’s important enough that we’d be remiss not to mention it. Your customers crave value during a recession. One surefire way to keep and attract loyal customers is to offer them more value in unique ways.

Take industry leader and global brand (and MRi client!) Pepsi, for example. Understanding that their consumers had less money to spend but still wanted to indulge in their favorite soda, Pepsi responded by adjusting the prices and quantity of soda they sold, selling just slightly smaller, more affordable quantities. While still offering its staple large cases, Pepsi adjusted its offer to satisfy a whole segment of customers that other beverage brands simply lost.

Taking small actions like minor adjustments to price and sizing go a very long way in letting your customer know you understand them, further cementing your relationship with them. Don’t feel like changing your price? No problem, check out these other ways you can continually offer value to your consumers.

• Offer an exchange program- trade in your old product for a new one at a discount
• Offer samples or freebies- break your service or offering into smaller pieces, offer the first few for free to encourage consumers to purchase the rest
• Prioritize quality- use better materials or make slight improvements
• Lean into your strengths- prioritize whatever product or service your consumers love most

However you attempt to create new value for your consumers during a recession, just be thoughtful. Making a bunch of changes to your messaging, pricing, or offerings when your consumers don’t really want them will have the exact opposite effect and instead turn them away. At the end of the day, your consumers just want to feel seen and understood.

How Starbucks Offers New Value to Build Loyalty During a Recession

While consumer spending has been decreasing in general, coffee giant Starbucks has enjoyed growing sales and an increase in the size of the average ticket over the last few months. At a time when consumers are being more cautious with how they spend their money, Starbucks loyalists continue to spend more each time they visit a cafe.

Starbucks’ successes during this period of economic volatility are not just a fluke or a stroke of luck, and they’re not solely attributable to their coffee alone. Although, we must admit, their pistachio lattes are life-changing. So, how has Starbucks built and maintained loyalty during this time?

They’ve offered their consumers value in a new and unique way, giving them something most chain coffee retailers don’t. Fully customized drinks. Starbucks identified that their customers crave “modifiers,” they want oat milk instead of whole, a shot of blonde espresso instead of dark, light whipped cream instead of a mountain of it. You get the idea.

Through their effort to make modified drinks the norm, Starbucks has seen “modifier sales rise 28 percent in Q1, year-over-year, in U.S. company-run stores.” They’ve achieved this through efforts to improve their mobile app experience and make ordering a custom drink as convenient as possible.

As you can see, offering new products or services that your consumers, you know, actually want, goes an incredibly long way in building consumer loyalty during a recession.

4. Maintain Loyalty During a Recession with Personalized Connections

Another tactic that’s sure to have a positive impact on your customer loyalty during a recession is personalized connections. We’ve reported that more than 71% of consumers expect personalized experiences from the brands they interact with.

Now more than ever, personalized consumer outreach can be the difference between a lost customer and a converted one. We’ll show you how.

Imagine you’re a penny-pinching consumer right now. You’re not spending as much as you used to, and you’re being much more cautious about saving. But, you’ll still treat yourself every once in a while, so long as you feel like you’ve received a good value.

You’ve also just received two emails from two popular shoe brands you shop with regularly. A bit of a sneakerhead, you think to yourself “yeah, I do need a new pair,” so you check the deals.

Brand A sent you an email with a few discounts for shoes that you already own and an invite to an event a few states away. Meh, that wasn’t very convincing or exciting. Do you even need a pair of shoes right now anyway? You might as well check Brand B.

Brand B sends you an email and actually addresses you by name. A nice touch. Then, you see they’re offering a discount on a pair of shoes you looked at a few days ago. After that, they suggest a snazzy pair of joggers that go well with the shoes, also at a discount. Two products you specifically want, at an affordable price, and you didn’t even have to look for them. You just bought both.

Using your consumer data to truly understand your customers and anticipate their needs is an incredibly effective way to ease their path to conversion and maintain loyalty during a recession. For even more info on how to successfully personalize your marketing campaigns, check out our full guide.

Recession Proof Your Brand with Greater Customer Loyalty

A full-service promotional administrator for over 30 years, we’ve administered countless loyalty programs and survived more than one economic recession before. Our team knows exactly what it takes to activate your consumers from casual shoppers to loyal advocates.

Explore our portfolio of award-winning work and when you’re ready, we’re here to help.

The post How to Build Customer Loyalty in a Recession appeared first on MRi.

Though they may seem simple to an outsider, behind the scenes, a social media giveaway is far more complex than you might think. Between juggling the strategy and execution of the campaign, legal administration and rules writing, and prize fulfillment (to name just a few of the steps), things can quickly get out of hand. 

A full-service promotional administrator with 30 years of experience, we’ve administered countless successful sweepstakes and contest campaigns across all platforms, including social media. In that time, our team of legal experts, front and back-end developers, project managers, and, of course, promotional marketers, has learned the ins and outs of executing social media campaigns. Together, we’re sharing our best practices and a few tips along the way. 

Define Your Social Media Giveaway’s Goals

A relatively standard first step for any successful campaign, our team suggests clearly defining your goals before anything else. Hey, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? 

When it comes to defining your goals, we recommend carefully considering exactly what your brand hopes to achieve with your social media giveaway. Depending on the structure of your campaign, it can accomplish any number of typical objectives, so start there first, and then craft your campaign accordingly. 

For example, social media giveaways are particularly great at:

• Collecting user-generated content
• Gaining new followers
• Increasing online engagement
• Driving traffic (to your site or store)
• Boosting sales

However, just because a social media promotional campaign can accomplish all of the above (and more) does not mean you should set your sights on each of them. In fact, start with one primary objective for the most targeted and effective campaign possible. Anything beyond that and you risk having a misguided, messy campaign. 

Determine What Qualifies as a Valid Method of Entry

With your social media giveaway’s primary objective in mind, our team recommends focussing on your method of entry next. You’ll want to be crystal clear as to what constitutes a “valid” entry to your brand’s campaign. On top of that, you must also consider what is not a “valid” entry, and what disqualifies an entry. 

There are a few things to keep in mind while choosing your brand’s method of entry:

• What you may legally allow as an entry
• What method will most likely help you reach your goals
• What method your users will actually use

We’ll walk you through it. 

What you may legally allow as an entry

While this is mostly a consideration for Facebook giveaways, it’s still important to note. Facebook’s vast team of lawyers, policy experts, and developers have dedicated an entire section of their terms and conditions to regulate promotional campaigns. Not only have they taken the time to define these rules and regulations, so too do they take the time to monitor and penalize anyone who violates them. 

In their terms and policies, they state valid ways to share or enter a social media promotion. One common method of entry that Facebook no longer allows: promoting your social media giveaway on a personal timeline or feed. 

In short, Facebook won’t allow you to ask users to share your brand’s page as a means of entry. You also can’t ask or incentivize users to tag others as a means of entry or part of your promotion. 

What social media giveaway method of entry will help you reach your goals

One of the many benefits of executing a promotional campaign on social media is its ease to consumers. Social media giveaways are, in general, accessible and easy to enter. Because of this, your brand must carefully designate what is and is not a valid entry. 

Remember that goal you set before you planned any other parts of your giveaway? Keep that in mind as we help you choose your method of entry. 

For example, if your brand is choosing to run a social media giveaway primarily to collect user-generated content, be sure you actually require that entrants submit the type of content your brand wants and needs. Furthermore, if your brand’s primary objective is simply to expand its reach and grow its audience, you may want to consider methods of entry that will help that, like requiring to share a post on Instagram or Twitter for a submission. 

Whatever your goal, our team can suggest the perfect social media giveaway method of entry to help meet it. 

What method of entry your users will actually use

Another critically important element to consider when selecting valid methods of entry is whether or not your users will actually want to participate. 

Consider this. You’re an emerging brand hoping to grow your audience and spread the word about your new products or services. You’ve identified through your research (you smart marketer, you) that your target market tends to be in the 55+ age bracket, mostly located in say, the Southwest. When trying to reach this particular audience, try to consider where they spend their time online, and what they prefer to do. Perhaps a Facebook campaign would make more sense than a TikTok campaign, despite TikTok’s rapid growth. 

Write Your Social Media Giveaway’s Rules

The next step in planning your social media giveaway is, according to some folks on our team, arguably the most important step of all. In fact, our team wrote an entire article on just this topic alone, how to write your social media giveaway rules. 

Social media giveaways must abide by any and all applicable state or federal laws regarding promotional campaigns. This is your relatively standard set of sweepstakes and contest laws by state (another handy guide available on our site). 

However, social media giveaways must also follow a particular set of guidelines and rules, specifically for campaigns executed or shared on a social platform. These additional rules for social media giveaways are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission or the social media platform itself. 

While we highly recommend you explore our full guide on the topic linked above, we’ll briefly share what we think are the most important tips for how to write your social media giveaway rules. 

• You must state that your social media giveaway is a promotional campaign
• You must include a disclosure about and disqualify copyrighted content
• Keep an eye out for Facebook’s additional rules

Of course, this is simply a high-level overview of the important social media giveaway rules your brand must abide by. Protect your brand and its image and delegate the task of writing your social media giveaway rules to an agency that’s been around longer than social media has existed. 

Develop Your Social Media Giveaway’s Supplemental Assets

No successful marketing campaign, social media giveaways included, live on an island. That is to say, your team must incorporate your giveaway into your greater marketing strategy and efforts, remaining as consistent as possible throughout the process. 

When our award-winning team works to develop a social media giveaway we take a look at the following assets, and determine which of them will support the upcoming campaign. Sometimes we use all of the items on the list below, sometimes we pick and choose. Ultimately, the opportunities for your brand are endless. 

• Graphics and videos
• A unique campaign hashtag
• An entry submission form
• A campaign landing page
• A mobile app

In our experience, the more integrated your campaign is, the higher its performance in nearly all KPIs. Of course, your giveaway may require additional assets not listed above, or maybe it only needs one or two of them. There’s no one-size-fits-all recipe for success with promotional marketing. Instead, our team leverages years of knowledge and experience running countless campaigns. 

Finalize Prize Fulfillment

One final recommendation from our team to yours is to carefully consider prize fulfillment strategies in regard to your brand’s social media giveaway. 

What type of prize will you reward? A physical gift or a digital reward? If you opt for something tangible, how will it be delivered to winners? Or, will you require winners to pick it up themselves? Furthermore, how many prizes will be awarded throughout the campaign? How will you keep track of winners and their prizes? Speaking of winners, how will you verify that a “winner” is actually eligible?

As you can see, prize fulfillment, though perhaps the most fun aspect of a campaign for your users, presents quite a challenge for your brand. Not only is selecting the right prize a challenge, but actually ensuring the right people receive it at the right time can be a nightmare. 

Depending on the size and scale of your social media giveaway, your brand may be able to get away with tracking and managing prize fulfillment in-house. However, in our experience, we’ve seen most brands turn to automation and the help of a trusted promotional administrator to manage the finer details of their social media promotional campaigns. 

Our team has seen clients, time and time again, underestimate both the cost and effort required to effectively manage their prize fulfillment. Especially as we continue to stare in the face of economic uncertainty and an impending recession, costs like shipping and handling and ensuring only eligible winners receive your prize, continue to rise. 

Your Social Media Giveaway’s Trusted Partner

Knowing how to run a social media giveaway is half the battle. Designing, executing it, and then analyzing the results presents a whole different, complex challenge for brands. While a social media giveaway is an excellent tool to build brand and product awareness, expand your reach, increase sales, and more, they require significant planning and effort to execute effectively.

Over the last 30 years, our team has helped some of the largest brands in the world reach their marketing goals through a targeted and effective social media giveaway. No matter where you are in the process, we’re here to help.

The post How to Run a Social Media Giveaway appeared first on MRi.

But, how do you meet your marketing promotion’s goals itself? After all, while they are incredibly effective tools, promotional campaigns aren’t magical. You don’t exactly press send on an email, launch a sweepstakes and watch the leads roll in (wouldn’t that be nice, though). Rather, your brand must adequately promote your promotion in order to reach its goals and impact your business’s bottom line. 

Because of this, incorporating your brand’s promotional campaign into its greater marketing strategy is critical to making the most of your investment and achieving a positive ROI. With nearly 30 years of experience helping some of the largest brands in the world execute award-winning promotional campaigns, our team has the expertise your brand needs to run an effective campaign. 

Sharing Your Promotion On Social Media

Social media offers plenty of opportunities and benefits to brands looking to run a promotional sweepstakes or contest. Not only do they make for fantastic tools for accepting entries, but they can also spread the word about your campaign and encourage even more people to participate. 

Whether or not your brand chooses to accept campaign entries on social media, you should 100% plan to share its details on social media. Keep in mind, if you do choose to accept entries, you’ll want to make sure your campaign abides by all local and national social media giveaway rules and guidelines. We outline them for your convenience. 

Make the most of your social media posts. Share at times when your target audience is most likely to be online, on the platforms they frequent, and in the media they prefer. For example, if you find that most of your target market works a 9-5 job, and engages with your brand on Instagram Reels, why would you share a text-forward post in the middle of the day on LinkedIn? You might write the best, most clever social media post ever but if you don’t optimize your strategy, it’ll never help your brand reach its goals. 

*A few very important disclaimers when it comes to social media and promotional giveaways.

1. You MUST state in your social media post that what you’re posting about is a promotional campaign. The FTC regulates social media giveaways, so avoid getting on their bad side and use a safe hashtag like #contest or #sweepstakes. 
2. You may NOT use (or allow participants to use) copyrighted content. All of those awesome, viral TikTok audios? Most of them are unavailable to your brand. However, it’s your responsibility to ensure that none of your participants use them in their submissions, either. 
3. Be careful about your vocabulary. Keeping “sweepstakes,” “contest,” and “giveaway” straight is no small task on its own. On top of that, your brand must also beware NOT to use the term “lottery.”

Promote Your Campaign Through Your Mobile App

Your brand’s mobile app, assuming you have one (if you don’t, check out all of the benefits our team provides here), is uniquely equipped to promote pretty much anything your brand wants to promote. Why not give your promotional campaign an extra boost?

Consider sending a push notification to all users who’ve downloaded your app, alerting them to the benefits of your campaign. Unlike any other form of communication, a push notification puts your brand front and center, right on your user’s home screen. That sort of brand positioning is invaluable. From there, you can maximize your contest or sweepstakes participation and accept campaign submissions via your app.

Whatever you do, make sure all of the pertinent information you need about your promotional campaign is both easily accessible and shareable within your app. The best kind of media is earned media, so make sure your brand makes it as easy as possible for your fans to share your promotion with their family and friends. 

Partner With Similar Brands or Retail Locations

When it comes to advertising your brand’s promotional campaign, the more the merrier. Identify relevant brands or retail partnerships that make sense for your brand, and boost the reach of your campaign’s messaging. 

Consider other brands that have a similar target audience, sell similar products, or that match your brand’s identity or mission in some meaningful way. For example, if your brand sells skateboards, you might find some luck partnering with a local energy drink (extreme sports and energy drinks are a match made in heaven). From there, both brands have a vested interest in the long-term success of a promotional campaign, as it serves both of their markets and benefits them each. 

Similarly, your brand can earn valuable shelf space in important retail locations and markets by developing a solid relationship with retailers. For example, a beverage and snack company may want to join forces with a convenience store chain to promote its sweepstakes or contest to a wider audience and capture the attention of all of the in-store shoppers at that store. The beverage and snack company has the opportunity to attract more customers and participants, while the convenience store has the opportunity to boost their in-store traffic (and therefore overall sales, whoever goes to a convenience store and buys one thing?). 

Our team has seen a ton of success focusing on retail partnerships for more localized campaigns. For example, if your CPG brand identifies a need to boost sales in a particular region, seek out a store unique to that region. A slightly smaller footprint and reach, regional stores (like Buc-ee’s in the Southeast) tend to illicit stronger customer loyalty. Hitch your brand to that wagon and watch your partners’ loyal customers become your loyal customers. With this, both brands experience positive rewards and successfully promote a promotional campaign. 

Be Prepared to Adapt and Respond to Needs

At the end of the day, you can arm yourself with as much strategy and as many backup plans as you’d like, but you’ll still run into some obstacles. Unfortunately, that’s life. Especially in marketing. Especially during an uncertain and historic economic situation like the one we’re facing. 

Our team’s final recommendation to you when it comes to promoting your sweepstakes or contests is to be prepared to adapt and respond to changing circumstances or needs. As we saw with the pandemic, truly anything can happen, like closing all non-essential businesses to in-store shopping, a devastating move for most. 

When something like this happens, the strongest brands have redundancies and plans in place that allow them to respond quickly to whatever life throws at them. Like a global supply chain issue. Or a war. Or an ecological crisis. Instead, brands that go all-in and lean on their other strategies in place, like a strong loyalty program, or an engaging sweepstakes, tend to weather these storms better than those who do not. 

Marketing Resources and Your Promotional

A full-service promotional marketing agency for nearly 30 years, our team knows exactly what it takes to develop and launch an effective promotional campaign. Whether your brand or clients hope to increase brand awareness, drive revenue, foster consumer loyalty, or achieve something else entirely, our team of dedicated professionals is here to help every step of the way. Let’s chat and begin developing your brand’s promotional campaign today.

The post Promoting Your Promotion: How to Boost Promotional Campaign Awareness and Participation appeared first on MRi.

An excellent tool at your disposal, developing a loyalty program seems like a no-brainer for most brands. However, the development and launch of your brand’s campaign is only half the battle (and no easy feat itself!). From there, managing your loyalty program and continual optimization is key to its overall success. 

With nearly 30 years of experience administering loyalty programs for some of the biggest brands in the world, our team knows precisely how to manage a program successfully. A full-service promotional administrator, our team’s expertise ranges from program development, official rules writing, and website and app development, all the way to prize fulfillment, and we’re tapping into all of it to bring you our best tips for how to best manage your loyalty program. 

What is Loyalty Program Management?

Before we dive right into the specifics, let’s cover a few fundamentals first. 

Our team defines a Loyalty Program as some sort of campaign or sequence of activities or events with the intent of encouraging long-term repeat engagement. 

Similarly, we define Loyalty Program Management as the series of events that take place behind the scenes after you’ve launched your loyalty program. These efforts should not only maintain your brand’s loyalty program, but improve it over time and continually offer new value to your members. At the end of the day, loyalty program administration ought to improve the program, making it more effective at attracting and retaining users, and collecting valuable insights for your brand. 

Loyalty program management includes several different tasks and will require the attention of multiple departments and stakeholders to remain effective. 

What’s Included in Loyalty Program Management?

Generally, loyalty program management includes:

• Program Development- Your program’s goals and the specific efforts you’ll take to reach them.
• Program Execution- Doing the work and actually building your program pre-launch.
• Rules Writing and Legal Compliance- Official Rules writing pre-launch and continually monitoring legal compliances post-launch.
• Digital Services- Technology enhancements to improve data collection and user experience. 
• Data Analysis- Real-time insight into your program’s key metrics and consumer behaviors. 
• Dedicated Client Services- The help and support you need when you need it. 

But, really, your brand’s unique program should have a truly unique loyalty program administration plan. The one thing that rings true for all aspects of loyalty program management, however, is the fact that each individual contribution must work in tandem with everything else. All of your efforts, tasks, and team members must be aligned with the same goals, hoping to achieve the same thing. 

With so many considerations and complexities, many brands opt to hire a promotional agency to manage their loyalty program administration. 

Our Loyalty Program Administration Process

Our team has refined and perfected our strategy for loyalty program administration over the last 3 decades. In that time, we’ve helped countless brands delight millions of their loyal customers and create positive brand experiences both online and offline. 

Our team, full of in-house legal experts, web and app developers, promotional marketers, and project managers, lends their expertise to outline, in our opinion, the most effective process for loyalty program administration. 

Assemble the Proper Team

As mentioned above, there’s a lot that goes into your loyalty program management. Save yourself from making the mistake of thinking that one employee can effectively handle it. In fact, your program’s administration (when done correctly) should include a number of different team members accomplishing s number of different things. 

No matter how you slice it, your loyalty program management will require exactly that: management. And quite a bit of it.

In general, your loyalty program administration team should include members with the following titles or competencies:

• Loyalty Specialist- Some companies (typically larger ones) are lucky enough to have an in-house loyalty specialist. This person focuses solely on your brand’s loyalty program and its success. Depending on where they land within your organization, they may be a higher-level, more advisory role, or a junior strategist or execution specialist. 
• Marketing Manager- Or brand ambassador, marketing specialist, or some similar role. This person’s responsibility is to ensure consistency throughout your campaign and your brand’s regular standards. They also help promote your loyalty program for maximum reach and effectiveness. 
• Data analyst- An often overlooked but critical addition to the team, your loyalty program’s data analyst is responsible for keeping a pulse on the program at all times. Collecting zero-party data and providing the necessary context to make strategic decisions moving forward. 
• Brand Partnership Manager- A dedicated liaison between your brand and other relevant brands to help promote your program. For example, a CPG brand will likely want to liaise with a large retailer to promote its loyalty program within that retailer’s locations or digital experiences. 

Keep in mind, what we’ve listed above is just a basic idea of where your team’s competencies should lie. Depending on your brand, your loyalty program, your consumers, and your goals, your team will likely have a few different folks throughout the management process. 

But, as you can see, in order to properly manage your brand’s loyalty program, your team will need to have a wide range of expertise and dedicate a fair amount of their time to the program itself. Because of this, most brands prefer to hire a third-party promotional administrator to handle their loyalty program management. 

Understand Your Consumers

Arguably one of the most important aspects of any successful marketing campaign, understanding your consumers is critical to an effective loyalty program. Consumer behavior influences every action your consumers or potential consumers take with your brand, and if you can’t anticipate their wants and needs, you can never meet them. 

The more you know about your audience, the better you can serve them. For example, if you know exactly which products a particular consumer is searching for, you can send them a correspondence (email, SMS, app notification) with a discount code for those products. Doing so dramatically increases the likelihood of conversion as opposed to say, sending them an email with a suggestion for a product they either don’t like or already own. 

Before you ever launch your loyalty program, your brand should have a solid understanding of the following (at the very least):

• Who your customers are- In general and who your “loyal” customers are. 
• What your customers want- What do they demand from your brand? What would be “nice to have?”
• Where your customers are- Are they using social media? Which platforms? How do they prefer to be contacted?
• Why your customers are loyal- What activities or rewards from your brand encourage customer loyalty?

Like we said, understanding the above is the absolute bare minimum if you hope to manage a successful loyalty program. From there, diving into more granular facts about your consumers and their preferences will only help to improve your loyalty program administration. 

Determine Your Loyalty Program’s Goals and How You Will Measure Customer Loyalty

Why are you managing a loyalty program in the first place? If the first part of this blog has impressed anything on you, it’s probably that loyalty programs require time, effort, and money. So, what does your brand seek in exchange for that investment? What constitutes “success” for your loyalty program administration?

When developing your goals, also be sure to consider just how you’ll measure customer loyalty. With several variations of actually tracking customer loyalty available to your brand, pick one (or two or three) that make sense for your goals. 

Scale Your Loyalty Program Accordingly

As part of your brand’s loyalty program administration, you must continually refine your program in order to offer long-term value to your users. 

If your program stays exactly the same and only offers the same rewards when users complete the same activities, it’ll grow stale and boring. Your users might lose interest and even abandon the program entirely. Nobody wants that. 

However, you also can’t come right out of the gates, guns blazing offering the most detailed and complex loyalty program you can think of. Doing that might confuse new users, frustrating them and, you guessed it, leading them to abandon the program and perhaps your brand altogether. 

Instead, our team suggests scaling the program according to what’s realistic for your brand, and what will still motivate your consumers. As your loyalty program management progresses, you can then “release” new features or rewards, or expand upon the existing ones. 

When determining how the program will scale, our team cautions brands and agencies to be mindful of their loyalty program’s redemption plan. If your program offers some sort of points or rewards system, you’ll have to account for this in your company’s financial strategy. 

You’ll want to be aware of the total value of the points or rewards that are currently active, but not yet redeemed. Customers who earn points in a loyalty program may save them and use them at any time. Your brand must be prepared to fulfill those requests for redemption whenever they arise. 

Continually Monitor Your Loyalty Program Administration

As your program progresses, you will inevitably run into things that do work well and things that do not work well. Your brand must stay acutely aware of all of the successful (and not-so-successful) elements of your loyalty program in order to optimize it over time and keep your users engaged. 

Your loyalty program’s data analyst will do most of their work here, checking your program’s metrics and making suggestions to improve the program over time. To maintain your program’s appeal and retain your customers, your brand must offer a steady dose of new deals and other benefits available through your loyalty scheme. 

Pay close attention to the metrics that matter the most to your brand, and invest in the efforts that drive your bottom line. Ditch the efforts that don’t seem to make a positive impact on your loyalty program. For example, if consumers continually redeem their loyalty program points when a certain type of reward is offered, that indicates that they find those benefits highly attractive. On the other hand, if your brand offers a discount via its loyalty program and a much smaller percentage of users redeem it, it may be time to consider a different reward scheme. 

Managing Your Brand’s Loyalty Program

The case for implementing and managing a customer loyalty program is clear. Your consumers enjoy rewards and benefits, while your brand is able to collect insight into consumer behavior and encourage long-term customer engagement. However, loyalty program management requires plenty of time, effort, and precision to run (and continue to run) effectively. 

At Marketing Resources Inc., we got our start in loyalty programs nearly 30 years ago. Since then, our team has cemented itself as the most reliable and trusted loyalty program administrator. No matter what your brand’s goals are, we can help you manage a truly successful customer loyalty program. Contact us today to get started.

The post Loyalty Program Administration: Our Recipe for Long-Term Engagement appeared first on MRi.

Mobile apps have become an integral part of curating your brand’s overall experience. Fail to provide a fun, user-friendly experience and you run the risk of alienating a large portion of your target audience. 

How Consumers Use Apps 

Simply put, mobile apps equip your brand with one central hub to serve your target audience no matter where they are. Beyond your brand’s website, a mobile app creates an integrated home right on their phone screens for your consumers to return to again and again. With an app, you have the unique opportunity to “show up” for your consumers almost every time they check their phones. 

Not only that, but using a mobile app is considered “the norm” for most consumers across most industries. In fact, the average smartphone user has 80 apps downloaded and spends around 3 hours a day using them. All of that time spent swiping (up, down, left, or right, there’s an app for that), checking news feeds, and playing games accounts for over 90% of the time Americans spend on their phones each day. 

Ever since smartphones became ubiquitous about a decade ago, app downloads and usage have been on the rise. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, especially anyone who works in marketing. What is surprising, however, is that in the last few years in particular, app usage has skyrocketed. 

For example, just 5 years ago, only around 140 billion apps were downloaded in a 12-month period. This year, that number grew to well over 230 billion. On top of that, we’re seeing even stronger growth in branded apps in the QSR and CPG industries, as well. According to QSR magazine, restaurant-specific app downloads have increased by nearly 20% in the last year. 

Of course, you’re probably looking for a reason better than just “it’s the status quo,” aren’t you? So, why should your brand really develop a mobile app? We asked our team of experts, including our senior vice president of client services, Tim Hobbs, for their insights on mobile apps and why they matter. 

Why You Should Create a Mobile App For Your Brand

For the sake of clarity, when we say “brand app” we’re referring to an app created specifically for a brand (like a CPG, QSR, or even a bank) or company. We are NOT referring to most games (like Angry Birds or Candy Crush, for example), productivity apps (while your calendar app is a lifesaver, we’re not talking about those), or social media apps. 

The steady growth in app downloads and engagement over the last few years indicates not only a growing reliance on mobile experiences, but also suggests that consumers continue to extract value from the mobile apps they use. But, what is that value?

In our opinion, the best brand mobile apps serve 3 main consumer needs or desires. The need for information, the need for entertainment, and of course, the need (or desire) to complete a transaction. Depending on your particular brand and its goals, your app may or may not do all of these things. 

With those three main motivations for engaging with an app in mind, take some time to explore how your brand can develop an app that meets your consumer’s needs. To help guide you in this process, ask yourself the following questions:

• What do my consumers value the most from my brand? What specific benefit or solution do we provide them?
• Are there any consumer needs we don’t currently meet?
• How do my customers prefer to be contacted by my brand? 
• How often do they want to hear from us?

As you can see, mobile apps should provide tangible benefits and value to your consumers. Remember, your users have about 79 other apps downloaded on their phones (and the infinite world of the internet at their fingertips, too). You must offer your consumers genuine value and give them a reason to continue to open your app day after day. 

Having a mobile app “just to have one” is a surefire way to create an uninspired, downloaded and quickly forgotten-about app. But, when you keep your consumer’s desires and needs in mind, you can create a truly valuable digital experience for all. 

How to Encourage Downloads and App Engagement

Your brand’s mobile app is an extension of your brand itself, so be sure to remain consistent with what your consumers expect from your brand. For example, choose the same app header image that you have on your website, keep the colors and flow of the app similar to other online experiences you offer, and as always, keep your voice consistent. 

Beyond that, consider how your brand’s mobile app will serve its users. Research shows that two thirds of app users will continue to use an app “frequently” when it “simplifies” their life. So, how will your app do that?

With around 2 million apps available to consumers, your brand must break through a ton of noise and a mountain of competition to go from the app store to the home screen. 

Once you’ve created an app for your brand, your job has only just begun. ​​71% of app users churn within the first 90 days of downloading an app, meaning you must continually up the ante and offer new types of value to your users. 

Senior vice president of client services, Tim Hobbs, offers his expertise and tips for how to encourage app downloads and engagement below. In the 15 years that Tim has served MRi’s clients, he’s helped numerous clients develop fun, engaging, and even award-winning apps. 

Offering a Transactional Giveaway

Offering a transactional giveaway in exchange for an app download is, according to Tim, a “ good tactic within a larger strategy.” Essentially, it can help you encourage some quick app downloads, but should not stand alone.

Rather, go into this with the thinking that you’re hoping to get a handful of new customers to try and experience your brand. You can have these new customers sample different or new products, engage with your brand, visit your retail location, or complete some other desired action. For example, Panera Bread recently offered a free month of its coffee subscription in exchange for an app download. This of course resulted in a huge increase in the number of people who downloaded Panera Bread’s mobile app. 

But, keep in mind, Tim warns “there will inevitably be churn or drop-off at the end of the giveaway.” From there, your brand must continue to offer value to your consumers and engage with them in new ways in order to keep them coming back. 

Track Consumer Behavior to Maintain App Engagement

Now, maintaining engagement is the next step. Tim suggests starting with the basics. Like any athlete or master of their craft, you’ll find success in perfecting the fundamentals. 

Start to look at customer behavior within your app, and figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Continue to invest in what works and ditch what doesn’t. 

A few things to consider when tracking your app’s success:

• Of your target audience, who engages with your app the most? 
• Which features of your app get used the most?
• What days or times get the most app engagement?
• What other channels send traffic to your app and vice versa?

From there, you can refine your marketing strategy across multiple different platforms to better serve your consumers and maintain app engagement. For example, if you notice that app engagement increases when you share about its features on social media, continue to share those types of posts on social media. 

Use Deep Links For Greater Relevance

You can offer more personalized suggestions and give users exactly what they’re looking for simply through the use of deep links. 

A deep link is a destination URL that brings users to a specific page or screen within your mobile app. It eliminates the initial navigation required to bring users where they want, increasing conversions and reducing bounce rates. 

Strategically placing deep links within your brand’s content; social posts, blogs, and emails improves the user experience for your app visitors. Plus, sharing a deep link to your brand’s mobile app widely will likely cause an increase in app downloads as well. A win-win for you. 

Building Your Brand’s Mobile App

A full-service promotional marketing agency for nearly 30 years, our team knows exactly what it takes to create a valuable and engaging app for your consumers. Working hand in hand with your team, our in-house developers offer everything your brand needs to launch.

Contact us to begin developing your brand’s mobile app today.

The post Mobile App Development to Encourage Repeat Engagement appeared first on MRi.

Somewhere, some marketer spent their time crafting the very emails and subject lines you’re looking at right now. Surely, they put some time and effort into researching email best practices. On top of that, they almost certainly read somewhere on the internet (in nearly any article about effective marketing), that adding personalization to their marketing campaigns will increase their effectiveness. 

We’ve all seen it. But, what exactly is personalization in marketing? And what separates “good” personalization from “ineffective” personalization (or just down-right “bad” personalization)?

What is Personalization in Marketing?

Personalization has made its rounds in the marketing world for decades now. In that time, it’s evolved to keep up with the latest trends and best practices for marketing and sales. Not only that, but it’s also a concept or strategy that’s been studied and re-studied by marketing professionals and educators for years. 

Because of that, you’ll likely find about a dozen different definitions for personalization. Don’t worry, our team has combed through most of them, and with a little help from our experts, we’re sharing everything you need to know about personalization in marketing. 

To begin, in the context of marketing and sales, “personalization” is the ability of a brand or agency to offer unique, contextual experiences to its audience. Tailored on a one-to-one basis, personalization in marketing takes an individual’s wants and needs into account and makes suggestions based on them.

On the other hand, consumers define personalization in marketing as well. Consumers define personalization as “positive experiences of being made to feel special.” Hold on to that definition. If you only take away one thing from this blog, it’s that consumers want to be made to feel special.

How Has Personalization in Marketing Changed Over the Years?

Remember just a few paragraphs above when we mentioned that personalization in marketing has been around for decades? We weren’t kidding. 

Personalizing marketing campaigns really took off in the late 1990s. Obviously, since then, marketing as a whole has changed quite a bit. With the advent of new technologies and channels, marketing in general, including marketing personalization, has evolved. 

For example, in the early days of implementing personalized campaigns, physical mailers reigned supreme to email marketing, nobody had a social media account, and the internet had one speed: slow. 

For the first time, marketers incorporated personalization into their marketing campaigns. Equipped with a new tool, email, brands were finally able to craft specific messaging to individuals. With just a little bit of code, and eventually, with just a few clicks, marketers could easily add an email recipient’s personal information into the body of their emails at scale, making it seem like this message was written specifically for them. 

“Hi, {First_Name}” turned into “Hi, Kelly” and like magic, consumers bought in. Since then, as our tools have gotten more complex, marketers have had the opportunity to implement personalization in more and more ways. Assuming, of course, they invest both the time and the money to do so effectively. 

The Future of Personalized Marketing

Looking ahead, the future isn’t the brightest for personalization. At least, not the type of personalized campaigns we’re used to seeing most often. That “magical” “Hi, {First_Name}” has lost its luster over the years, and, according to Forbes, has rarely gone beyond that. Several years later, consumers expect more from the brands they choose to engage with. 

Though marketers have the opportunity to thoughtfully and effectively craft unique and personalized campaigns, it is often difficult to do at scale, or they lack the tools or data they need to do so. 

Despite this, the benefits of personalizing your marketing efforts and clear. When done correctly, personalization activates your audience from “potential customer” to “engaged purchaser” and offers your brand a true competitive advantage in the marketplace. 

Why Personalizing Your Campaigns Matters

First and foremost, 71% of consumers expect personalized experiences from the brands they engage with. 

If that stat alone doesn’t convince you– we’ve got plenty more. 

Personalization helps you retain current customers and convert new ones. It drives campaign performance and helps your brand not only meet more consumer needs, but increases the likelihood that your consumers will convert increasing consumer loyalty and revenue all at once. 

However you look at it, investing both the time and effort it takes to craft an engaging personalized marketing campaign pays dividends. Your consumers already expect you to offer them relevant suggestions based on their personal preferences, now is the time to learn how to do so effectively. 

How to Implement a Strategic Personalization Strategy

First of all, what does a successful strategic personalization strategy look like? Well, it’s different for every company and, of course, every consumer. But, to be general, a successful application would send a consumer the right messaging, at the right time, across the right channel. Not so hard, right?

Look at YouTube, for example (and while you’re there, feel free to check our channel out). As you watch videos and engage with them, YouTube gets a more accurate picture of your likes and dislikes. Their “algorithm” suggests even more videos for you to explore. Before you know it, you’ve fallen down the infamous “YouTube Rabbit Hole,” watching videos that might not even have anything to do with what initially brought you to the site. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a very effective personalized marketing strategy. 

While we can’t guarantee that our tips will place you with the likes of a media giant like YouTube, we do know that our suggestions outline a clear and effective process for implementing your own personalized campaigns. Below, we’ve compiled a list of tips and suggestions based on over 30 years of experience executing world-class marketing campaigns for some of the most recognizable CPG, QSR, and financial services brands, and the latest research available on personalized marketing best practices. 

Identify How You’ll Collect Consumer Data

Before you can press send on your next campagin, you first need to learn how to personalize your campaigns. Understanding your consumer behavior is critical to executing a successful campaign. How can you make relevant suggestions to your target market if you don’t first know what’s relevant to them?

Through the collection of consumer data, brands can glean important insights into what their consumers want, need, and expect. However, your customer data is only as valuable as you make it. You can have dozens of spreadsheets full of information about your contact lists, but if you don’t put that data to work for your brand, it’s useless. Understanding consumer behavior and the psychology of brand loyalty are critical to launching a successful personalized marketing campaign. We recommend exploring both of those guides for a strong foundational understanding of consumer behavior. 

Now that you understand the importance of collecting consumer data, and what to do with it once you have it, you must now determine how you’ll collect it. Here, there are nearly limitless opportunities. Of course, your brand can simply ask consumers for their input, but consider sweetening the deal and rewarding them for the information they share with you. 

A promotional campaign makes for an excellent tool to not only collect valuable consumer data, but also encourages your consumers to actually want to share that data with your brand. A win-win for all. 

As part of any successful promotional marketing campaign, like a sweepstakes or a contest, consumers exchange their info in order for a chance to receive a prize or reward. With our help, a carefully crafted campaign entry form asks the right questions in the right way in order to collect the valuable consumer data your brand needs to anticipate your consumers’ needs. 

Take a Close Look At Your Customer Journey

As consumers navigate through your brand’s customer journey, their needs and expectations evolve with them. Successful brands recognize this and adapt their messaging and strategies to best reflect the exact part of the journey that any particular customer is currently in. 

For example, consider your freshest of “fresh leads.” Perhaps they just recently filled out a contact form on your website, just added something to their cart on your e-commerce site, or maybe they just ate at your fast food restaurant for the very first time. Their needs, and therefore the messaging they receive, are dramatically different than those of your brand loyal evangelists. 

Every step of the way, as a consumer engages with your brand, you should track their experience. What website pages do they visit? What problems do they have and how can your brand solve them? What questions do they ask? Any sort of insight that informs you what they expect and need is helpful here. 

Thankfully, over some time, as consumers engage with your brand multiple times, it becomes easier to anticipate their needs and meet them. The longer you know someone, the better you know them, after all. Each touchpoint with your brand throughout your customer journey represents an opportunity to learn more about your consumers, all to help you achieve your ultimate goal of launching a truly personalized marketing campaign. 

Implement Segmentation 

The next step in the process of creating your brand’s personalized marketing campaign is to create marketing segmentation. Hopefully, your marketing teams utilizes some sort of CRM tool to help automate this process, but, rest assured, you can accomplish the same thing with a simple spreadsheet. 

Customer segmentation is simply the process of separating (or, “segmenting”) your audience based on certain criteria or characteristics. For example, you may choose to separate your audience based on their location, their age, the products they purchase, the content they view on your site, whether or not they engage with your brand on social media, and much more. 

Identify which segments make the most for your brand. We suggest a mix of the following:

1. Customer Lifecycle Stage– Where they are in your customer journey
2. Proposed Solution– The top product(s) or service(s) for this customer segment
3. Level of Engagement– Are they frequent purchasers? Or, has it been a while since they’ve interacted with or bought something from your brand?

Segmentation allows your brand to provide relevant information to the right consumers at the right time. By separating your audience as granularly as possible, your brand can offer with pinpoint accuracy a product or service to your customers right when they need it most, increasing the likelihood they’ll convert. 

On the other hand, a lack of accurate segmentation leads to the dreaded “spray and pray” technique of marketing. This includes sending one broad message to one large audience, regardless of whether or not they actually need that message. Not only is this an ineffective tactic, it can also annoy consumers and turn them away from your brand! Recent data shows 62% of consumers say a brand will lose their loyalty if they deliver an unpersonalized experience, up nearly 20% from 2021.

Execute Your Personalized Campaign

Finally. With an understanding of what your audience wants, and how and when to deliver it to them, your brand can begin executing an effective personalized marketing campaign. With proper segmentation in place, the last step is simply to craft the messaging and creative your brand wants to communicate. 

A successful campaign plans for what your consumers need, want, and expect. In some cases, the most successful campaigns make these suggestions before consumers even realize they want them. Throughout this last step, you should continually refine your campaign, optimizing it every step of the way with each new insight gathered. 

For example, If over time you notice that consumers who haven’t engaged with your brand in 3 months come back and reconvert when you offer them an exclusive 15% discount, continue to offer that discount.

Test everything. The more information you collect throughout the campaign, the more knowledge you’ll have when developing your next one. 

The Era of Personalization Reigns

With the increasingly crowded marketplace, any and every differentiator available to your brand is a valuable one. As you can see, personalization offers brands an opportunity to drive revenue, increase positive associations with their brand, and meet their consumers’ needs. With an effective strategy in place, your brand can stand out and above your competitors. 

No matter where you are in your campaign development, our team of promotional marketing experts is here to help. Whether you’re looking to collect the valuable consumer data your brand needs, or want to foster greater consumer engagement (or both) contact us to start executing your personalized marketing campaigns today. 

The post Marketing Personalization: What It Is and How to Excel at It appeared first on MRi.

As the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates in an attempt to tone down this overactive economy, retailers and consumers continue to wait for the economic impact. What’s more, as noted by several experts across various financial institutions, the Fed is looking closely at the 2022 holiday shopping season in particular as they determine what actions to take in 2023.

Our team has gathered a collection of statistics and results from this year’s Black Friday weekend. Oftentimes regarded as the kickoff to the holidays, this Black Friday, not surprisingly, was historic.

Ready to Make the Most of The Holiday Season?

No matter your brand’s goals, our team of promotional marketers has the expertise and experience to help you reach them. Contact us to administer your brand’s promotional marketing campaign today.

The post Black Friday 2022 Results appeared first on MRi.