Every merchant, at one point or another, has heard a horror story about cash back/reward sites and why they shouldn’t work with them, however, when done properly (avoiding known issues and ensuring that certain checks are in place), reward sites can actually help grow your program.
Here are five ways:
1) Reward sites have strong membership bases that can be leveraged. Whether you are a well-known or lesser-known brand, the reward site can use its relationship with its members to give your brand both exposure and credibility.
2) Most reward sites keep track of the purchase histories of their members in some way. Using their databases, they can help you target particular demographics and types of purchasers for your products. They know who buys shoes, kids clothes, electronics, etc.
3) Because reward site members watch their accounts closely for credits, the sites can help you pinpoint tracking issues at the network level or even on your site. This can help you isolate particular landing pages or links that are not working before the problem becomes widespread.
4) Reward sites give people an extra incentive to make bigger purchases than they might have made otherwise. When a member is getting cash back on a purchase, they often consider it the same as a discount, which can lead to higher purchase amounts. In many cases, it may even lead to a purchase where there may not been one.
5) A good reward site will be able to quickly track down and minimize fraud. By monitoring accounts and watching spending patterns, reward sites can often alert you to fraudulent purchases before they are even shipped. This can include stolen credit card numbers and false information.
The degree of benefit will, of course, depend upon the particular reward site. Talk to the cash back sites with which you are interested in working and ask them how they can help you with some or all of the above.
Tricia Meyer is the owner of the cash back shopping site SunshineRewards.com.
Download the entire FeedFront issue 7 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/17376069/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-7
FeedFront issue 7 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/08
