Wildfire Case Study | Boosted Offers Rewards Incentives

Background

Our client, a major financial institution, provides their customers a shopping rewards program, accessed through desktop and mobile browser extensions and other channels. The client wanted to increase their customers’ participation in their shopping rewards program, so they tested the effectiveness of Wildfire’s Boosted Offers incentive program to increase enrollment and engagement with their rewards program.

Wildfire’s Boosted Offers allow clients to set and fund a special budget to enhance the cashback rewards their customers will earn at select merchants. Boosted Offers provide a means for Wildfire clients to deliver the most competitive cashback rates at merchants where their customers shop the most.

In effect, clients use their own budget to increase cashback payments to their consumers.

Goals

The overarching goal was to increase customer participation in, and the perceived value of, this Wildfire client’s shopping rewards program.

Specifically, we focused on:

increasing the number of browser extension installations
increasing the number of customers who enroll (e.g. register their browser extension to their client account)
ultimately, growing offer activations and purchases from those who enroll

A secondary goal was bringing back users who had become inactive (who had not purchased through the program recently.)

Campaign Details

To achieve these objectives, the client implemented two significant "Boosted Offers" campaigns. These campaigns provided higher cashback rewards of as much as 10x select merchants’ original cashback amounts for a limited time.

These boosted offers were promoted to the client’s customers through various channels, including a robust email campaign.

In the email creatives, the client called out the boosted cashback multiplier (3x, 5x, or 10x) in the subject line and the body of the email, and utilized merchant logos to increase email click-through rates (CTR) and drive more interest in the email by featuring recognizable brands.

The Results

The Boosted Offers campaigns had a positive effect on key performance indicators when compared to metrics from the client's previous marketing campaigns with no Boosted Offers (aka “Business as Usual” or BAU.)

Increased Installs & Enrollments: The campaigns led to a significant lift in both the number of installations and the number of enrollments compared to the BAU campaign.

✅ The Boosted Offers campaigns resulted in an average 38% increase in installs and 48% increase in enrollments, compared to the BAU campaign.

Enhanced Engagement: Boosted rewards proved to be a very effective way to engage users.

✅ Narrowing in on the boosted merchants (Kohl’s, Ulta Beauty, etc.), the campaigns consistently increased activations by 91% and orders by 756%

Accelerated First Purchase: Users who enrolled during the enhanced campaigns made their first purchase much faster than usual.

✅ The average time to first purchase for users who enrolled during the campaign and transacted at a boosted merchant was just 1 day.

Effective Re-engagement of Inactive Users: The campaigns proved successful in re-engaging inactive customers, defined as customers who had enrolled more than 30 days before the campaign launched, and also had not made a purchase in the 30 days prior to launch.

✅ Approximately 33% of the customers who made a purchase at a boosted merchant during the campaign period were previously inactive.

Significant Improvement in Click-Through Rates: The enhanced offers drove more engagement with campaign emails vs. the BAU email results. Notably, the messages featuring higher Boosted Offer rewards saw particularly large improvements in click-through rates.

✅ The Boosted Offers email campaigns saw as much as a 4x improvement in CTR (2.75x on average) vs. the client’s standard email campaigns.

Increased Retailer Activity & Spending: Retailers whose original cashback rates were enhanced by the client’s Boosted Offers campaign also benefited from being featured in the campaigns.

✅ One of the leading online marketplaces observed a 179% lift in sales (GMV) during the Boosted Offers campaign period, compared to the BAU campaign.

Conclusion

The implementation of Boosted Offers was a very successful strategy for our client. By providing attractive purchase incentives for a limited time, Boosted Offers effectively drove considerable growth in KPIs related to the adoption and engagement of their shopping rewards program.

The campaigns not only attracted new installs and enrollments and drove faster initial program participation, but also successfully re-engaged users who had not been active.

The substantial improvements in installs, enrollments, engagement, and spending clearly demonstrate the value of offering compelling incentives to encourage the adoption and use of shopping rewards programs.

These results highlight the power of strategic incentivization to influence user behavior and maximize the impact of a shopping rewards program.

Looking for a flexible shopping rewards platform?

Schedule a demo with one of our product experts to learn about how Wildfire helps companies leverage merchant-funded cashback rewards, and the incentive tools our platform offers to drive engagement and participation.

Wildfire Case Study —

Driving Shopping Rewards Program Adoption with Wildfire's Boosted Offers