Over the last year, Absinthe has helped several projects launch points and loyalty programs successfully. We deeply care about the incentives space in the new digital world and want to share the best ways that all of you can launch valuable loyalty mechanics for your business!
The following are ways to attract more participation in your points program (and consequently drive usage for your product). These options are listed in order of increasing expense or complexity. In certain cases you should also execute these items in order because the success of more complex methods depends on having already done the simple ones. These are things to do in general alongside designing your points program (or alongside launching the points program)
Organic Reach across social media (X, Discord and Telegram): Ask your social communities to come check out your loyalty program, these include your discord, telegram and twitter communities. Make sure you’ve configured discord and twitter into the Absinthe platform located under Points Sources so we can track them coming in! You can then also use this as a community growth strategy, by rewarding extra points to your Discord OG members, hence pulling more people to your discord.
Create a Mascot: The broader web3 community has been shown to respond well to memetic representation. It’s often useful to have a product mascot or even just a loyalty program character guiding users through the onboarding process. Some known examples are Pepe for Pendle, the Pufferfish for Puffer, baby dragon for DragonSwap.
Create a Theme: Regardless of whether or not you adopt a mascot, you should try to have a theme built around your points program. For products with a strong consumer brand, your loyalty program theme should closely resemble your product. This applies to wallets, games and gamble fi products. More infrastructural products can afford to get really creative with their loyalty program themes and is seen in points programs for Plume, Hemi, Supra.
Brand your points currency: While it is completely OK to call your loyalty points something understandable and derivative like XP, Scores or just Points, there is non-trivial brand value in establishing your points as a unique currency. Some classic names here indicate valuables (like Gold, Diamonds, Gems, Coins), collectibles (stamps, notes, tickets), thematic symbols (feathers, miles, totems, droplets)
Write a blogpost announcing your program: Clear communication about your points program is most important. We always recommend having a clear blogpost describing the points program and its objectives. Make sure to have all relevant links to the product and the points program in this blog.
Material on navigating the program: It’s recommended to have at least a few tutorials shared with your community on how to navigate your product, especially through the lens of your points program. This can include a short step-by-step guide on creating a loyalty account, interacting with your product and seeing your points increase, and indicating some general ways to earn points.
Set up a referral program: Historically, referral programs have been a great way to incite FOMO amongst users. There are a few ways to use referrals and set up referral points — but the essence is that users have some benefit from using a referral code to sign up to your loyalty program. Setting this up is a great starting point. You can even launch your loyalty program landing page (portal) with just a referral program and no other points earning activities and that should still allow you to start generating usage.
This concludes some of the basic steps you ought to follow so that you launch a loyalty program with strong fundamentals. In the next article, we’ll be covering some intermediate methods that will supercharge your points program by building on the basics. We’ll be talking next about some pay to play hacks!
