Today’s DMNews had a great article by Kimathi Marangu, executive VP of Business Development at Mall Networks, a company that personalizes shopping rewards portals. The article, entitled, “Not All Online Malls Are Created Equal,” written to marketers who run or would like to run a shopping rewards program, discusses the keys to their success.
I don’t want to rehash the article in full detail — I posted a comment on it that hopefully they’ll approve and you can read my reaction there — but I felt it was good, pretty thorough advice: personalize the experience, offer a nice look and feel, have a variety of merchants available, promote the site to existing customers through special offers and emails, have flawless accounting in place, and update the site frequently. I disagree somewhat with the author’s recommendation that using a pre-written platform customized for your site will maximize the program’s potential (with no offense intended to Mr. Marangu, I think he may be a little biased in that he works for a program that does exactly that). This would definitely be the quickest and easiest way to start a rebate site, but there are many other successful programs that were designed from scratch (for instance, Ebates, then called Intellipost, began as a project at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business).
Aside from that minor bone of contention, I think this article is very insightful and great reading for those currently running a rewards program as well as those considering one.
