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Email marketing campaign guide

How to launch and promote a rewards program with customer email marketing

Karen F avatar
Written by Karen F
Updated over 3 years ago

Introduction

Email marketing is an essential part of communicating your rewards program to current and prospective customers! Running email campaigns that complement your program allow you to easily explain program elements to your audience, increasing participation and visibility! Check out our available email marketing app integrations here.

Email campaigns also influence repeat purchase rate by increasing engagement and help to re-engage inactive customers by incentivizing them with rewards. πŸš€

Overview

βœ… Note: app integrations are available on the Starter plan and above.


Program launch

Objective:

Explain your rewards program setup to your customers!

Check out: configuring my program to get the most out of your program configurations beforehand!

What to include:

An overview of your points earning & spending rules, referral advocate and friend rewards, VIP tier information

Call to action:

For program members, link to your homepage with Deep Links (#smile-home) or to your (optional) dedicated Rewards page!


Points redemption

Objective:

Encourage customers to spend their points on a reward! (This is a great campaign to run if you have a high number of outstanding points and low redemption rate)

What to include:

Points balance (if your ESP is integrated with Smile), a message that customers have points to spend!

Call to action

Link directly to your spending rules with Deep Links (#smile-points-activity-rules) or to your (optional) dedicated Rewards page!

Referral Campaign

Objective:

Encourage program members to share your products with their friends! (This is a great campaign to run if you find your referral conversion number is low)

What to include:

Advocate & friend rewards, and an outline of the referral process

  1. Program members (Advocates) share their unique referral URL with their friends

  2. Their friend clicks the referral link and inputs their email address into the Smile panel

  3. Their friend completes an order with the Friend reward

  4. Your advocate is rewarded for a completed referral with the Advocate reward

Call to action:

Link directly to your referral program with Deep Links (#smile-referral-program-details) or to your (optional) dedicated Rewards page!

Promotional campaigns

Objective:

Utilize Smile as it's own campaign, or include Smile information with your other promotions!

What to include:

For Smile campaigns, run a Double Points/Double Sign-up Bonus points promotion! For store campaigns, include how many points a customer can earn on promotional products, and incentivize points earning by featuring the rewards program with sales and other store promotions!

Call to action

A direct link to your store's homepage

Ongoing communication

If you have an email service provider that integrates with Smile (see Smile Apps), you can take advantage of merge tags that allow you to add Smile customer attributes right in your emails!

Objective:

Remind members of their program status in every email!

What to include:

Customer points balance, referral URL, VIP tier

Call to action:

Keep these merge tags as static text, as a helpful reminder of a program member's information!

If you're looking for more inspiration, our Pinterest page has more great email marketing examples ✨


What's next?

Get help with Smile apps
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​Learn more

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