Did you know that?

More than ¾ of companies design and manage their reward programs internally. Whether it's a loyalty program for their customers, conquest programs to reward new customers with welcome gifts, Incentive programs for sales forces or distributors, HR programs to reward employees etc. There are so many. And yet, let's face it, reward programs look very similar.

In essence: "Win this great gift, if you do this...".

The unhappy ones will easily conclude that it is because of the lack of imagination of the marketing departments of the companies or their providers.

But if you look closely, you can see that this is largely due to the fact that the gift part of the program takes up almost all the time and concern of the marketing departments. What gifts to choose? For what budget? How will the gift be delivered to the recipient? Will the recipient be satisfied with the gift? What happens if the recipient does not receive the gift or is not satisfied?

And these are just the first questions. Because the gift part also comes with a host of administrative and accounting questions. What are the objectives to be reached by the beneficiary in order to earn his points or his gift? What information system should be used to verify that the objectives have been met? What should the payment be? How and by whom are the payments of points or gifts made in the company? What is the fiscal environment, if the beneficiary is a customer, distributor or employee?

Reading the non-exhaustive list of questions, we all understand that reward programs have a certain inertia centered on the management of the gift part. That this part usually represents at least 80% of the responsibilities, resources and especially the budget that the company allocates to the creation and management of its reward program. Hence the great temptation for marketing departments to believe that they have solved the case once they have solved all of these critical issues. By only addressing the marketing side of things with the remaining 20% of resources. The temptation is therefore great, in terms of communication, to do what has already been done or to copy what the competition is already doing, without any further risk-taking or innovation.

The EARN and the BURN

In theory, a reward program is divided into two parts called the "Earn" and the "Burn". The "Burn" is the part we just described, which answers the question: how does a recipient "burn" their points or how do they enjoy their gift? The "Earn" is the part upstream in the beneficiary experience that tells him: how can he earn his points or his gift? What does he have to do to do that? Buy, sell, take a survey, recommend the brand or sponsor etc. To put it simply: the "Earn" is the story-telling of the engagement. And this is precisely the most important phase, the one that interests the company. The phase where it builds its relationship with its contact. That's why they finance a reward program.

The EARN should therefore be a major objective...

But, while this is where the challenge lies, and while companies deploy tons of technical expertise for all their other marketing programs to conquer, qualify and transform their contacts, they do not do so, or do so very little, when it comes to a reward program. This is despite the fact that their "gift" budget can reach tens of millions of euros, in large companies.

To date, AB testing is for example an unknown concept in reward marketing. SEO, SEA, SMA, Inbound, networking are terms that you will never find on the websites of incentive agencies specialized in reward programs. Despite the huge financial stakes, you have to admit that it is surprising to see that in 2022, reward programs with personalized objectives do not exist, while "one to one" is a concept that has been popularized since the 1990's (cf. Don Peppers & Martha Rogers in The One to One in practice).

That's why we created tooodooo. To completely relieve marketers of the management of the "Burn" part, in order to give them back their real job: marketing! To be able to finally have the marketing features capable of implementing the best "Earn" engagement programs, while there is nothing left to do for the "Burn" part.

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