3 Tips to Make Your Reward Program Launch a Success

If you’re reading this article, you already know why investing in a rewards program is a great idea for your business. But where do you start? People always love the idea of earning rewards or prizes, but sometimes translating that initial interest into a sign up for your program can pose a challenge.

That’s where you, the studio owner comes in – with proper planning and execution (and a bit of hard work) you can set yourself up for success and a lot of early adopters. But here at WellnessLiving, we’re all about making your life easier… which is why we’ve put together our top 3 tips to help you make your rewards program launch a success.

1. Bulk Up on Information

Word of advice: Customers want to understand the benefits of products and services before they are sold on them. A rewards program can be gold to your existing customer base, but only if they understand why. So our first tip? Talk to your clients and let them know what’s new, and why it’s so great!

What do your customers need to know?

Give it to them short and sweet. Outline how the rewards program works, so that they can easily understand it. The last thing you want to do is mobilize your clients to attend and promote your services without the proper knowledge of what’s being offered. Below is a list of things your clients should know (beyond the basics) about your rewards program.

• How to become a rewards member
• How the point system works and tallies up
• How long those points are valid for
• How many points are needed for a 10-Class-Pass
• How to use points towards events
• How to earn additional points and/or incentives via Social Media
• How to link your account to a family member
• How points can be redeemed for a time or session-based pass
• How often they can refer new rewards members

Your clients should also be aware of how their points are tracked, and how long it takes for those points to appear in their account. If you’re going to be running contests, it’s also a good idea to let people know how point tallying works during the promotion period, and how it will affect their lifetime score.

Promoting Your Rewards Launch

So we’ve covered what it is that your clients need to know – but what’s the best way to tell them? That’s where our next two tips come into play. There are a lot of obvious ways to promote the launch of your rewards program in studio – while the digital age has made a lot of old school advertising obsolete, good old word of mouth and paper flyers still work great in person. But what are some ways you can think outside of the box?

2. Take Advantage of Your Team Players

Your staff are the public face of your studio, and can be your greatest tool in helping to promote your business and the programs it offers. During the lead up and launch of your rewards program, be sure to not only keep your staff in the loop, but involve them in the process as well. Have brainstorming sessions where your team can offer feedback about the program and share the insights they get from interacting with clients at the ground level – the more ownership they feel for the rewards program, the better advocate they will be. You can even offer internal incentives to staff members when their actionable ideas are implemented, or if they sign up a certain number of members to your new rewards program.

3. Go Outside (the Gym)

As great as it is to fill in your regulars about your new rewards system, how do you reach your more casual clientele? In our opinion, digital is the way to go. Customers are on social media and other online channels at various points of each day. Why not engage with them and use your branded channels to tell them about your rewards program?

You’ve Got Mail

If you’re running your rewards program through your studio management software (as you should be!), you should already have a built in way to get your message across directly to your clients via email. You’ve already built a considerable list by adding your clients when they signed up for your studio, now it’s time to utilize that data to let them know about all the great ways to earn points, and what they can redeem them for.

Make a Post, Do a Blog!

Click-through traffic makes the digital world go round, and your customers will frequent your website if you’re a consistent source of engaging content.  As a way of attracting more readers to your website, write a blog post about your rewards program – hey, write several!  Make it fun and educational and your rewards program will surely grow.

Sharing is Caring – Socially

If you’re reading this article, we feel confident in saying that your studio probably has a Facebook page – likely a Twitter and Instagram, too. Don’t forget to leverage your social clout by posting about your rewards program to all of your channels – and there’s definite bonus points for tailoring your message to the medium. The more appealing your post, the more likely your followers and subscribers are to share, retweet, and repost it to their own networks, which is a huge boost for your reach.

Time to Reap the Rewards

The more communication flows, the faster your rewards program will gain members and continue to grow. Make sure you do your part to get people talking beyond the walls of your studio by motivating your staff as brand ambassadors and saturating your branded digital channels with all the right information. If you’ve partnered with the right software solution the tools are already right at your fingertips and must be automated – but it’s up to you to make use of them.

If you’re interested in finding more about how WellnessLiving can help streamline your business operations while saving you money every month in unnecessary software and credit card fees, click here to get your free demo or call us at 1-888-668-7728 today.