New users of your cashback rewards program don't come back during Black Friday because they remember your logo. They come back because you already gave them a reason to trust your rewards program: they earned cash back once, and they expect to earn it again.
That's the idea behind proving your program's value value before you need shoppers to participate further.
If a new customer's first experience with your program happens during the chaos of BFCM weekend, you're asking them to trust something they've never tried, at the exact moment they have the least patience for friction.
But if that first experience earning a shopping reward happens weeks earlier, in a period of relatively low stakes and low pressure, you've already answered the only new customer question that matters: does this cashback rewards program actually work for me?
By the time Black Friday arrives, that question can be settled.
The approach splits into two clear tracks, both built on the same idea: reward a specific action, e.g. making a cashback-earning purchase, not just joining the rewards program.
Adoption incentive campaigns reward your program’s extension install plus the user’s first purchase. In this track, program value for the new user is proven immediately, well before BFCM even starts, so there's no ambiguity about whether the program delivers.
Reactivation incentive campaigns reward a purchase over a set threshold, say $25 or more, during (or before) the BFCM window itself. Doing this provides the concrete nudge that gets dormant users to come back exactly when it matters.
For both of these, Wildfire has two incentive programs available that our clients can apply to strategically reward customers for taking certain actions (such as making a purchase):
Cash back on its own is a fine offer, but it doesn’t have to be the whole story.
The real value of your program includes three elements: cash back, the BFCM deal itself, and the extension automatically finding and applying coupons the user didn't even know existed.
Every asset, every touchpoint, should lead with all three.
Cash back alone undersells what's actually happening for your user.
Revenue and transaction volume are what everyone reports on after the season is over, but they're actually lagging indicators.
Instead, install-to-first-purchase velocity - how quickly a new user moves from installing to earning their first cashback reward - is the number that shows whether the strategy is working while there's still time to adjust.
A slower install-to-first-purchase velocity weeks out from BFCM means you might need to tweak your tactics to prove program value before it’s too late (when Black Friday is upon us.)
Remember, trust in your rewards program is built in the weeks before BFCM weekend, one cash-back proof point at a time.
For more recommended Black Friday/Cyber Monday strategies for maximum rewards program impact, read my post, "Win Black Friday Starting in September, Not November."