Launch an Incentive Program: 5 Drill-Down Questions From an Expert

Have you decided to start an incentive program? Incentivizing with digital rewards is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to achieve better business results.

Making the decision to incentivize an audience is easy. Deciding exactly how you’re going to incentivize can be another story.

Most of our clients have specific goals for their programs, but have questions around how best to reach them. What types of incentives will they use? How and when should they send them? And what metrics will they track to determine if their incentive program is actually working?

This is where an incentive specialist can help you figure out your next steps.

My team and I offer dedicated support for incentive programs of all types and sizes. I work daily with CEOs, marketers, HR professionals, program managers, and other specialists to help them plan and develop effective incentive programs that achieve their goals.

Let's walk through the five key questions I ask my clients to help them design effective and impactful incentive programs.

— Matthew Brossard, Director of Business Development ｜ Giftbit

In this article:

What are your business goals?
Who are you sending to?
What types of incentives should you send?
What are your sending and branding requirements?
What choice options are best?

• Web based application
• Zapier automation
• API integration

Next steps and how to get started

Question #1: What are your business goals?

If you have a standard incentive program and goal in mind, then your business goals are likely pretty standard, too. When that's the case, we can usually skip to the next question. 

A gift card platform like Giftbit is usually ‘use-case agnostic.’ In other words, it works well for lots of different types of companies and organizational objectives. The way you deliver your incentives will be the same regardless of whether your goals are to boost employee morale to improve employee retention, get out of a sales slump, increase your survey response rates, or something else.

One key question to consider: are you viewing an incentive program as a potential new revenue stream?

In cases where your business plans to offer ‘rewards as a service’ (common for use cases like referrals, hiring incentives, and job searches, for example), then you’re likely looking to turn your incentives themselves into a separate revenue stream.

If that’s the case, you’ll want to speak with someone on our team to ensure that you’re maximizing your profit and not missing any development opportunities.

Of course, Giftbit can offer this type of profit sharing to any type of program—if that’s a primary concern (typically for larger programs), always reach out.

What about research incentives?

What if you don’t really have ‘business’ goals, per se?

For example, we often work with clients in medical and academic institutions who need to provide digital payouts to their research participants. These tend to be smaller projects, and they tend to have much stricter requirements around participant anonymity.

If that’s your situation, please check out these resources:

• Reward Research Participants While Protecting Their Sensitive Data
• The Dirty Data Myth
• Maintain Survey Response Rates In Long-Term Studies

We also work with government and nonprofit organizations, often for things like commuter incentives and other green initiatives. These types of organizations often have their own questions around vendor compliance and security.

Here, too, we’re always happy to jump on a call to work out any details.

If you plan to monetize your incentives or you have specific concerns around data anonymity and compliance, email your question or book a call.

Question #2: Who are you sending to?

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The next big question—who is your audience? i.e., Who will be receiving your rewards and incentives?

Are you targeting an internal audience, such as employees and top performers, or an external audience, like customers and prospects??

If you’re in Human Resources, then you probably already know that effective employee incentive programs are incredibly important for increasing employee engagement, fostering more teamwork, boosting any workplace wellness initiatives, and reducing burnout. We know from decades of research from Gallup and countless others that engagement, employee satisfaction, and culture all matter.

Simply put, employee incentive programs work.

Of course, there can be tax and other implications associated with employee recognition programs. If you’re planning to reward employee performance, check out the following resources, and be sure to book a call with any follow-up questions:

• The Ultimate Guide To Developing An Employee Rewards Program
• Annual Bonuses, Financial Payouts, And Year-End Gifts: The Key Role Of Rewards
• Better Employee Rewards Catalogs: How To Offer Diverse And Appealing Gifts And Incentives

Now let’s assume you are rewarding an external audience. Maybe you want to send referral bonuses or simplify your corporate gifting, improve your points-to-reward programs, or better collect user feedback. In other words, you'll be sending monetary rewards to people who aren't in your organization. 

If that’s the case, you’re in the right place and asking the right questions: we've helped countless businesses grow and hit their targets with our flexible, digital gift cards. If you want to boost customer loyalty and/or accelerate business growth, then you’ve got lots and lots of options to do that well.

Follow-up: where are your recipients?

Giftbit’s incentive catalog includes hundreds of brands from around the world and the ability to reward globally.

If you don’t know where all your recipients are located, you may want to consider the high performance Giftbit USD Virtual Prepaid Mastercard®. You can send it anywhere in the world that accepts Mastercard (which is most places), and your recipients can use it anywhere in the world that accepts Mastercard, including online, in-store, and through their mobile wallets.

Meanwhile, we offer easy international funding and currency conversion, and our catalog includes hundreds of the world's most popular brands. We now have gift cards available in GBP, Euro, AUD, Brazilian Real, and Indian Rupee, with more on the way.  

If you have any questions about global sending or funding for international currencies, please reach out. 

Question #3: What types of incentives should you send?

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Some clients have specific incentive requirements for their recipients, but otherwise many haven't considered which types of rewards to offer.

Digital rewards work best for customer incentives because they’re cost-effective and allow for instantaneous delivery and redemption (which most recipients now expect). They offer the perks of cash rewards, reimbursements, monetary bonuses, and even non-monetary incentives—all rolled into one easy-to-scale product.

If you’re opting for digital gift cards, consider this key choice:

1. Will rewards encourage time-sensitive actions, like a sign-up bonus or survey completion?

2. Or will they reward earned actions like a work milestone, or sales payout?

How you answer this question will determine whether you want rewards and incentives with claim periods that expire, or ones that never expire.

When to use promotional rewards (expiring)

Promotional rewards are designed to encourage engagement. These rewards incentivize customers to make purchases or redeem benefits sooner rather than later.

There are two main reasons to use promotional incentives:

1. To create urgency, especially in campaigns targeting prospects
2. To help manage campaign costs

When to use standard rewards (no expiry)

Standard incentives are best used when your recipient is expecting a payout, and/or has earned the reward such as years of service awards, referrals, or research participation.

In either case, promotional or standard, you can always expect some amount of unclaimed rewards—this leaves some "money on the table". 

Different gift card distributors treat this "money on the table" differently—so be sure to ask how your provider manages that revenue. Hint: find a partner that is transparent about these details. You'll especially want to ask if they share back some of this value with you.

Giftbit’s model from Day One has been to be transparent about unclaimed offers, and to share a portion of that revenue with our clients. We’ve always been open with our clients, both in how much money we’re making, and how we can help them make and save more, too. See our pricing model. 

Note: on the ‘terms and conditions’ side of things that your gift card provider  handles, it’s not the reward itself that expires, but the value attached to it. For example, if you send a $25 Amazon.com gift card, your recipient will have a set amount of time to claim it before the offer is no longer available. Once they have their gift card in hand, that gift card won’t expire. 

More decisions: what value should you set?

Ideally, the size of any incentive will correspond with the effort you’re asking for.

For example, a common telecom incentive strategy is to offer customers up to $500 in prepaid cards as an incentive to switch providers. We all know what a pain it can be to sign up for a new cell phone plan, so you generally need a bigger financial incentive to make it worth a potential new customers’ hard work and time.

But we also have lots of clients doing quick survey incentives that only ask for a few minutes of time, and they therefore only need to offer a few dollars to make it worthwhile.

Bonus: Giftbit lets you send gift cards in low denominations—even as low as $1. Being able to offer such small incentives is not very common in the industry. So especially if you’re doing a program where you want to offer smaller, ongoing rewards, be sure to look for a gift card company that will give you this option.

Question #4: What are your sending and branding requirements?

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Choosing the optimal delivery method for your incentives is crucial to the success of any rewards or recognition program. Aim to provide recipients with a seamless, top-notch experience from start to finish.

With your free Giftbit account, you get immediate access to a wide variety of ways to get your incentives into the hands of your recipients: via email, text, direct SMS, and/or as direct links that you can use any which way you like.

You can also integrate with our streamlined gift card API or via Zapier to build the process directly into your own app, platform, or processes.

So how do you choose?

Consider the recipient of your rewards: What kind of experience do you want them to have? And how much customization is needed to achieve it?

Web App → Fast, simple setup

The Giftbit web-based platform is a quick and easy way to get started—just sign up and start sending. Without any development work, you’ll be able to customize email templates (at no extra charge), send global rewards, and track delivery and open rates.

Right out of the box, you’ll be able to give your recipients an elegant redemption experience.

This is a great option especially for non-expiring rewards and situations where you and other team members need to send rewards at scale with minimal setup time.

Choose the web-based delivery platform if you want:

• To start sending rewards quickly
• A pre-built templates and email customization
• Minimal technical setup
• Manual fulfillment, like sending rewards after events, is better suited for your workflow

Note: If you choose to go this route, be aware that not every gift card platform offers the same level of email customization, and that there are providers that charge extra fees for templates and other customizations.

Zapier → Automation with no dev hours

When you’re ready to start scaling your rewards and incentives programs, you’ll likely want to automate sending. And ideally, you’d like to integrate your program with software and workflows you’re already using.

So how do you do this if you don’t have a developer on staff? Simple: you use a quick Zapier connection to automate your program, no coding required.

This process ensures a seamless, branded experience for recipients with minimal effort from you or your program manager. By choosing this option, you can send automated rewards in minutes.

To get started, sign up, customize your template, and set your desired triggers or automations—like automatic rewards for customer anniversaries, sales team incentives for peak performance, limited-time survey rewards, or incentives to attract top talent.

Once set up, you can easily share your incentives via email, text, or other channels.

This is how Curipod’s COO & Co-Founder Eirik Hernes Berre set up a scalable incentive program in just ten minutes, using Zapier to connect Giftbit with their HubSpot account. He used this video guide.

When to choose Zapier:

• You want to automate incentive processes without custom development.
• You need to build simple workflows for ongoing campaigns (like team incentives or survey completions).

Note: Zapier connects with thousands of apps. HubSpot, Salesforce, Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Airtable, Slack, Google Sheets, and Sawtooth are some of the ones most commonly used by our clients. But if you use it, there’s a good chance Zapier’s got you covered. See all the available integrations here.

API → Complete control and customization

For businesses seeking full control over the recipient experience, the Giftbit API is the ideal choice. With minimal development, it enables you to create a fully branded, customized experience from start to finish..

Specifically, your developer can use the API to embed a fully branded experience directly into your app or platform. This approach lets you build a seamless, fully branded recipient journey from start to finish, including custom notifications, delivery methods, and tracking.

For example, let’s assume you have a loyalty points program, or some type of prize draw. Your customers will likely expect the ability to trade in their points 24-7, and then they’ll likely want to have their reward revealed in real time. Any delay will impact their overall experience—so you may want to opt for an ‘instant reveal’ experience within your own app.

When to choose API integration:

• You have an in-house development team and need deep integration.
• You want full control over the reward experience, from branding to delivery.
• Real-time reward reveal is crucial for customer satisfaction. 

Meanwhile, don’t assume that ‘API integration’ means a lengthy, costly process. Gitbit’s straightforward RESTful API is designed to be developer-friendly. Your developer should be able to build that bespoke interface experience quickly—often in just a few days or a lot less.

That’s how quickly things moved for Prime46, when Project Manager Greg Augustine decided he needed a better way to send survey incentives. Once he gave his developer the go-ahead, the program was ready to go in two days.

"It wasn’t difficult for our developer to implement at all,” says Greg. “I basically told him, ‘Here's the information I have, let me know if you need anything more’ ... And I haven’t heard anything since."

Question #5: How much choice do you want your incentive recipients to have?

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By now you’ve determined whether to send rewards with expiration dates and how to deliver those rewards to your recipients.

Now, you need to decide what to send. Giftbit allows you to offer your recipients a wide selection of gift cards and prepaid cards from hundreds of popular global brands in our extensive rewards catalog.

So how to choose? Ultimately, you’ll want to provide your recipients with rewards and brands they find meaningful.

Custom Selection:
Sometimes, it's beneficial to limit the options available to recipients. For instance, if you’re treating webinar attendees to lunch, offering a few specific food delivery gift cards (like Uber Eats and DoorDash) along with a couple of convenience brands (like Starbucks or Dunkin’) can be really effective. 

For employee programs, providing essentials like gas and grocery gift cards or flexible prepaid cards (like Mastercard® or Visa®) often resonates better. Themes aligned with your company culture, like well-being, mental health, and professional development, are also popular.

Full Choice:
Allowing recipients to select their rewards enhances their engagement and satisfaction, because feel empowered to choose what they truly want. This personal touch can lead to a more meaningful connection with your program, increasing the likelihood of desired actions and fostering loyalty.

With your Giftbit account, you can let recipients explore a diverse array of rewards. When recipients have the freedom to select from a constantly updated catalog of top brands, they are more likely to appreciate the rewards they receive. If providing unrestricted access to this extensive selection is important for your program, be sure you have that capability in place.

Ready to make your new incentive plans?

There are no fees or minimums to get started with Giftbit, no matter what setup you choose. The plug-and-play API is un-gated and free to access, so anyone can sign up for a sandbox account.

That said, my team and I are always happy to jump on a call to help with any technical or strategic questions you might have. And there are certain use cases where you might want to chat through your program before you get started.

Specifically, I highly recommend booking some time for a quick, low commitment consultation if you:

• Plan to run a large incentive program
• Plan to monetize your program
• Plan to run a program with unique, custom requirements
• Need sophisticated integrations 
• Need sophisticated global options
• Just aren’t sure how to get started

We’re also always happy to discuss revenue sharing options and bulk discounts.  

Ultimately, your incentive program should boost your bottom line. If you’ve got any questions about how to make that happen, please book some time to chat.