Pick reward programs carefully
remember grocery shopping with my mother as a young child and watching the cashier hand her a handful of S&H Green Stamps. She would carefully paste them into her Green Stamp book at home and I assume she redeemed them for exciting prizes once they were full. Some of you may remember saving your Green Stamps, too.
With the advent of the Internet, new rewards programs are coming out all the time. The concept is the same, which is providing an incentive to shoppers to maintain their loyalty.
Today, many manufacturers reward customers on the spending they are already doing by giving them an opportunity to record special codes from the product packages at their Web site. The codes are logged as points, and when the customer’s point balance is high enough they can redeem their points for exciting prizes.
Although I have heard of various point programs over the years, I have not taken the time to participate, until I noticed a program advertised on one of my favorite products.
Coca-Cola recently introduced an easy rewards program called “My Coke Rewards” at www.mycokerewards.com. Because I buy this item already, and I always buy it on sale, any prizes earned from points would really be free to me. I do not have to pay postage to mail any special forms, I do not have to take the time to address an envelope, and it only takes a few seconds to enter the code from the package. Why not?
I am now on the lookout for easy point programs like these. Although I’ve only found a few so far, I expect more companies will begin these programs because they are easier for their staff to manage as well. And I expect rewards programs like these will be more successful than past programs that required more effort, so other companies will get involved.
Before I sign up for any program, I try to get an idea of how valuable their program is. For example, if I need to spend hundreds of dollars on their product in order to earn a $5 video rental coupon, it really isn’t worth my time to participate. If the only prizes they have are large prizes that require a high number of points, it probably isn’t worth my time, either.
Rewards programs that have a wide range of prizes including very small prizes appeal to me. If I compare the value of the points earned at My Coke Rewards (as compared to what I had to spend to get them) to airline miles earned toward a free airline ticket, the My Coke Rewards points have a much higher value. I could spend $300 on an airline ticket that only earned me 500 miles (when I need 30,000 miles to get a free ticket worth $300), making an airline mile worth about one penny each. At 500 miles per one-way trip, I will probably never earn enough airline miles to earn a reward as an average traveler.
Each 12 pack of Diet Coke earns 10 points, and the least expensive reward that appeals to me is a “rent one, get one rental free” coupon for Blockbuster for only 26 points. That coupon is worth $4.23 at my video store, and I would earn it after buying only three 12-packs of Diet Coke and still have four points left in my account. I pay an average cost of $2.50 per 12-pack on sale, so I am earning $4.23 in rewards for $6.50 worth of Diet Coke spending. When I redeem my points for that particular reward, each point is worth 16 cents, quite a bit more than the value of the airline mile at one cent.