For many business-to-business (B2B) brands, the biggest obstacles of an incentive program are the time and resources required to manage it. A properly managed incentive program, however, can yield the kind of sales and customer data that helps brands dramatically improve their sales and marketing efforts. Not only that, but a combination of incentive technology and services can reduce time and resources spent on incentive planning and channel marketing strategies in general. In an article published in Modern Distribution Management, Nichole Gunn explores the ways channel incentive programs can return game-changing data:
Enrollment Information
When you run an incentive program, you can choose “open” or “closed” enrollment. Closed enrollment requires an invitation, so brands can limit participation to a specific audience. Any channel member or customer can freely sign up to the program in an open enrollment set-up, on the other hand. This presents an opportunity for brands to collect data about channel members.
Reward-Motivated Data Submission
Rewards can be used to motivate a variety of behaviors in channel partners. Brands can reward channel partners for submitting data to gain access to sales and customer insights. Using incentive technology with an online file upload tool, channel partners can submit documents such as warranty registrations to claim rewards. The instant gratification of the reward lowers barriers to data submission while offering an incentive to do so.
Data from High-Engagement Reward Moments
Channel partners are more engaged with channel marketing content that’s rewards-related. You can take advantage of your channel partners’ attention and engagement as an opportunity to collect data. For example, you could send an email offering channel partners rewards for submitting customer satisfaction surveys.
Data Between Integrated Channel Platforms
Channel platforms, such as customer relation management (CRM), through-channel marketing, inventory management, or sales enablement programs, all maintain data about your sales and customers. Incentive programs also collect unique information about channel partners and their participation in incentive sales promotions. By integrating incentive technology with these other channel systems, you have a unique and more complete picture of your channel partners and how best to market to them.
For more information on using reporting and data in your channel incentive program, read the full article on Modern Distribution Management.