For our clients, launching a shopping portal is a fantastic way to drive engagement, capture shopping behavior insights, and create new revenue streams. However, the rule of "build it and they will come" does not apply to rewards programs, as we’ve noted many times!
To turn your customers into active shoppers and participants in your rewards program through your shopping portal you need a smart, continuous marketing strategy.
With that in mind, here are our suggested best practices for marketing your shopping portal.
A common pitfall is focusing your marketing on the existence of the shopping portal itself, rather than the specific, valuable deals from recognized brands in it. Your customers are far more likely to engage when they see featured merchants and curated deals that feel tailored just for them.
Spotlighting recognizable brands creates an immediate mental link between your program and the customer’s willingness to start shopping.
In our testing, regularly-deployed emails that feature specific offers consistently outperform generic messages that simply tell the customer to visit the portal.
For a new user, a rewards program must be easy to understand immediately. Your marketing needs to demystify the process and answer exactly how to start, how to buy, and how they get paid within the first five seconds.
We recommend using a consistent "1-2-3" visual in every email and on the landing page of the shopping portal:
Click to Activate
Shop & Pay as Usual
Get Cash Back Automatically.
Emphasize ease of use with phrases like: "One click to activate." or "Automatically applied at checkout." or "Zero extra steps."
Additionally, displaying the customer’s Earnings Balance prominently is one of the most powerful educational tools available. Seeing a "$0.00" or a "Pending $5.40" balance teaches the customer that the system is working in real-time.
A clear sign-up or "First Purchase" incentive (e.g., "$10 Bonus on your first order") is the #1 lever to convert a passive user into an active shopper.
When writing promotional copy about the rewards in your shopping portal, precision is key.
We recommend leading with concrete references to currency, rather than abstract percentages. A phrase like "$12 Cashback" feels more like actual money, but "5% Cashback" feels like a math problem for the customer to solve.
It’s also highly effective to use action-oriented language about the shopping portal offers (such as "Claim" or "Unlock") and emphasize a zero-friction experience in your calls to action.
On the design side, ensure your layouts are mobile-first and prominently feature large merchant logos, because users will scan for brands they know and love long before they read your text.
Relying on a one-off launch announcement will quickly lead to your portal being a ghost town. Long-term success requires a sustained, month-over-month marketing engine across multiple channels.
Marketing your portal across several touchpoints can result in a 3x higher conversion rate compared to single-channel efforts. Your omnichannel shopping portal marketing ecosystem can include:
Driving adoption for your shopping portal requires a blend of enticing brand offers, crystal-clear user education, persuasive copy, and consistent multi-channel outreach. By keeping the focus on real value and frictionless user experience, you can build a highly engaging shopping portal as a critical component of a successful rewards program.