In our How To Run a Successful Bonus Points Event guide, we have covered everything there is to know about when and how to run an amazing bonus points campaign with a few examples along the way. Now, the final question is “what does a good bonus points event actually look like?”
Let’s dive in to see the best examples, from some major brands and small businesses, including Oatopia, Copper Cow Coffee, Stoneglow Candles to Sephora, and Patagonia.
Jonathan Roque
ECS Coffee's bonus points events
ECS Coffee creates bonus points campaigns to get customers to earn more on purchases during their select campaigns at different times through out the year. ECS Coffee offers customers 5x the points on purchases. Followed up a few weeks later, they create a double redemption campaign to get customers to come back. Customers who have earned multiple points on the previous event can now redeem their points at a higher value.
What you can learn from ECS Coffee:
ECS Coffee plans multiple campaigns throughout the year, when typical retail seasons are slow. Such as in the months following holidays, summer months, and right before Black Friday Cyber Monday (holiday spending).
Sephora's Beauty Insider has aspirational reward tiers
Sephora’s loyalty and rewards program has different tiers that every customer can move through the more they shop. From Insider, VIB, and Rogue, when Sephora runs member events, depending on where you are on the reward tier you can earn 2x points per purchase to 5x points. Sephora’s member appreciation events aim to incentivize spending in an otherwise slow period, while also showing customers that Sephora values their business!
Offering Beauty Insiders 2x the points, VIB members 3x the points, and VIB Rouge a whopping 4x the points, Sephora successfully encourages shopping while also promoting the value of their top-tier membership.
Sephora runs these events on slow seasonal months and uses these events to promote products from their lineup. For example, shopping for Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin products will earn anyone on the Beauty Insider tier 4x the points, an increase from their usual 2x points per dollar spent. Sephora ran this campaign for 2 weeks.
What you can learn from Sephora:
Sephora Beauty successfully promotes the status of top-tier membership while simultaneously making all customers feel valued. No matter what rewards tier you fall into, you will earn more additional points and benefits.
Copper Cow Coffee gets three times bigger with Triple Points Weekend
Specialty Vietnamese coffee brand, Copper Cow Coffee promotes its triple points weekend offering 3x the points on all orders. They emphasize how members can redeem rewards with just as little as 75 points for free products.
Simultaneously Copper Cow Coffee promotes its rewards program for new members to join. Walking through online and through email how new members can join their rewards program. Where normally every dollar spent is equal to 1 point, Copper Cow Coffee’s ‘Triple Points Weekend’ event is inclusive to members and non-members.
Their email primes customers to return for a repeat purchase. Emphasizing that their next reward is their next pack of creamers, coffee, and lattes. They end with an actionable CTA– “Check My Points.”
Copper Cow Coffee mixed in a triple points campaign with an effective design and branding
What you can learn from Copper Cow Coffee:
We analyzed our data at Smile.io, and after one purchase, a customer has a 27% chance of returning to your store. Build your brand community through loyalty to ensure customers come back for a repeat purchase again and again. Provide the most value to the customers that provide the most value to your business. Mix in a relevant meme, meaningful rewards, and a valuable bonus point offer, and you have a winning bonus points event strategy.
Gabrielle Policella
Bonus points success with small business Oatopia
If you can get customers to come back for a repeat purchase and increase their AOV each time they return, you can lock in customers that will spend with you and pledge their brand loyalty. Smile.io data reveals that on average, the top 10% of customers spend 2 times more per order than the lower 90%, and the top 1% of customers spend 2.5 times more than the lower 99%
UK-based small business Oatopia is a family-run and female-led business offering healthy flapjacks made from oats. Oatopia certainly knows how to magnify its program’s value with its double points weekend event.
Oatopia’s rewards program is appropriately named, “Oat of this World Perks”– rewarding customers 10 Points for every £1 spent, with every 100 points being £1 off. During a weekend in February, Oatopia offered 20 points per every £1 spent. Customers can earn a sign-up bonus of 100 points and points for celebrating birthdays or taking social media actions like a follow on Instagram. Customers can start to redeem rewards with a minimum of 100 points.
Oatopia’s loyalty program has brought immense value to their business. Smile has driven over 12% of revenue for Oatopia since they launched their loyalty program 6 months ago.
Jonathan Roque
What you can learn from Oatopia:
Oatopia makes their event exclusive limiting it to a single weekend to boost customer participation, allowing them to earn points and redeem rewards at a higher value.
Recurring bonus points events
While you can keep your bonus points exclusive, you can build a campaign to prime your customers to expect a bonus points event every week, on the same day. Candle brand Stoneglow has designated every Tuesday to be a double points day. Where customers can earn each time they shop on Tuesday.
What you can learn from Stoneglow:
Combined with email marketing, Stoneglow reminds its customers that every Tuesday they can earn double points. This can make your customers be excited to shop with you and set an expectation of what they can earn in return, for future purchases.
Double credit with Patagonia
Patagonia is an iconic apparel brand with a mission in sustainability and doing good for the planet. Those who shop with the brand know Patagonia rarely drops their prices on their apparel.
Patagonia ran a double credit campaign all month long. Their trade-in program Worn Wear lets customers trade in the previously used clothes for store credit. Patagonia ran a double credit campaign in January to get customers to trade-in old gear to declutter their closets. Customers could earn double the credit, for mailing in their trade-ins.
What you can learn from Patagonia:
Patagonia is known for not doing major discounts or offering these bonus credits all the time. Make your bonus points events exclusive and truly make it an event, worth your customers joining.
Bonus points events: double the success!
We hope these examples from major large brands to small businesses leave you inspired to start designing a bonus points event that can help you increase program participation and guarantee a repeat purchase. Ultimately, building brand loyalty and a brand community.
