As you know, Facebook has been under fire this year for their developer platform. In response, Facebook has been making changes to their application programming interfaces (APIs). Yesterday, Facebook removed the ability for companies like Perkville to post check ins through their API. Due to this change, we’ve removed the ability for users to earn points for Facebook check ins.
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We love to share creative ways businesses are using rewards to engage their customers. At The Hot Yoga Factory in Chelmsford, Mass, founder Terri Fry built retention and community with her karma points concept.
Terri uses Perkville to allow members to donate their points to anyone facing financial hardship and collectively chip in for their membership. She came up with her Pay-It-Forward Karma Points idea when a student asked if her points could be used to help others pay for classes.
“The program is in its infancy, but people have been very receptive,” says Terri. “I love how students are thinking about how to get their friends here and how to pay it forward.” She adds that Pay-It-Forward Karma Points also inspires members who aren’t necessarily motivated by discounts to care about rewards. “They can get something tangible out of karma points because it feels good to donate. That’s what we want to promote at our wellness center: people feeling good not just physically, but also emotionally.”
In addition to the feel good element of the program, karma points help to retain members who have temporary financial hardship. Pay-It-Forward Karma Points fund discounted memberships and sometimes free classes depending on the individual's unique circumstances. It’s enabled members who have lost their job to continue their yoga practice at the studio while they get back on their feet.
Members can donate up to 100 points at a time, an unlimited number of times. The donated points are transferred to a karma account (a Perkville profile created with the studio’s email) where they can be redeemed later for other students. It takes less than five minutes from when someone redeems points to put them in the karma account, making the program easy to manage. Terri sends a personal thank you email to each member who donates points. Who receives karma points is kept anonymous to respect their privacy.
Thanks to the program’s success, Terri is now thinking about how to take karma points to the next level. “Everyone has been so generous with their points, one idea I have is to see if we can reach a goal for karma point donations as a group. This way karma points becomes more of a community effort.”
Terri’s success story just goes to show that beyond its rewards system, the perks of Perkville can reach extraordinary levels and create community-oriented experiences. Thank you to Terri Fry and Hot Yoga Factory for always innovating!
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You may have heard Yelp is increasingly cracking down on review solicitation across the internet. However, what are the consequences for businesses that ask for reviews? Yelp says it will activate a search ranking penalty, demoting the business in Yelp search results. Search Engine Land learned that for one company that meant going from being listed in sixth place in Yelp’s search results to not being in the first five pages of results for their main keyword. Click below to learn about Yelp’s solicitation policy in full and how to keep your business in compliance:
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Congrats to our partner Virtuagym for their €6 million Series B investment! Virtuagym is a leading provider of cloud-based fitness software and apps. They will use the new funding to fuel international growth of the company. Get the full details on this exciting news below:
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This article originally appeared on MINDBODY.
A rewards program can be a great tool to retain clients and bring in new business—but you have to structure the program well or it can cause problems. For example, you can’t give too much away because the program will become too expensive, but you can’t give too little or your customers will lose interest. That’s why we created this quick guide for structuring a rewards program that will set your business up for success.
The tried and true point accumulation system works where activities like spending money or attending classes earns points, and those points are redeemed for prizes. There’s a reason the major airlines and credit card reward programs are set up this way. This structure is easy for customers to understand and incentivizes them to engage more deeply with your business.
The average earn velocity tells you how many points each customer earns per month on average across all of the activities you reward. For example, for a yoga studio it might take into account the average number of classes attended each month, amount spent on retail, appointments or workshops attended and referrals. Let’s say for example that this equates to 30 points per month. You wouldn’t want a free class to cost 1000 points in this scenario because it would take the average customer almost 3 years to redeem a free class. But you wouldn’t want it to take only 50 points to redeem a free class either or the average student would get a free class every other month. You can contact us at Perkville to get a spreadsheet to help you calculate the average earn velocity.
Your customers should be able to earn at least one reward within a 3 to 6 month timeframe. Otherwise, they will lose interest in your program, and it won’t be effective. Ideally this reward would be small or inexpensive. For example, a health club may offer a smoothie or discount on retail. In the example above, it would mean at least one reward would cost between 90 and 180 points.
A successful referral is often worth hundreds of dollars to health and wellness businesses so ensuring that the points given for a referral are appropriate (not too cheap) is important to keep clients interested in referring friends. As a good rule of thumb, reward your referrals enough such that they can redeem a high value reward if they bring you a new customer.
Entice customers to try different services or products at your business by cross selling. For example, if you’re a salon, use retail as the rewards so more customers give your hair products a try. Or if you’re a gym, make personal training a reward so that more customers try PT. Cross selling not only encourages customers to try out offerings they may have not otherwise, but also adds variety to your rewards program.
You don’t want the rewards you offer with your program to put you out of business, but at the same time, variety is important. A good way to give customers great value rewards while also keeping the rewards financially feasible is to partner with other nearby complimentary companies. For example, if you’re a spa, perhaps partner with a local salon who may offer your customers a reward such as 50% off their first haircut. Or the local coffee shop might be willing to offer your customers a free coffee reward to drive traffic to their store.
Every business wants a competitive edge.
For those in the membership management software (MMS) industry that can be achieved by having an open platform. Bill McBribe, President & Chief Executive Officer at Active Wellness and industry veteran, breaks down why MMS companies can’t afford to not to collaborate with 3rd Party Applications if they want to keep customers happy. Check out his post below:
IHRSA 2018 | Takeaways from Bill McBride from Bill McBride Consulting
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Get more leads and grow membership with Club OS and Perkville!
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Sunil Saha, Perkville’s CEO, was interviewed by certified MINDBODY business consultant, Nicole Chetaud. They discussed how to use Perkville to generate referrals and increase client retention. They also covered best practices for rewards and points, educating clients about Perkville to get engagement and more. You can read the summary and listen to the podcast here.
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