Milestones offer a potent strategy for nurturing enduring relationships with advocates, encompassing customers, ambassadors, professionals, and influencers.
Brands that effectively incorporate milestones into their strategies reap numerous benefits, including heightened monthly campaign completion rates, increased social engagement, and the cultivation of profound brand loyalty among advocates.
Understanding Milestones
Milestones, often referred to as levels or tiers, are attainments unlocked through the accumulation of points. Advocates amass points by fulfilling campaigns and driving word-of-mouth sales. Upon achieving a milestone, participants are rewarded with incentives like discount codes, store credit, or complimentary products.
A milestone series comprises a sequence of milestones, each requiring progressively higher points. Skillfully designed milestone series foster sustained participant engagement over extended timeframes.
Milestone Series Checklist
While initiating a milestone series within Roster is straightforward, optimal outcomes require careful planning of various elements. The ensuing sections elucidate five pivotal decisions to be made when establishing a milestone series.
Participants
Milestone Series demonstrate efficacy across a spectrum of programs in Roster, with particularly noteworthy results in brand ambassador programs, athlete programs, and customer programs. While configuring a milestone series, the option to incorporate one or more programs is available. For instance, different engagement and reward mechanisms may warrant separate milestone series for an ambassador program and a customer program.
Upon a milestone series' launch, all members affiliated with the respective program(s) become eligible to participate, encountering milestones upon logging into the advocate portal.
Time Frame
The temporal scope of your milestone series hinges on the program(s) targeted. If your brand operates a calendar-based program, aligning the series launch with January 1, and concluding it on December 31, is a logical approach.
In cases of ongoing programs, such as customer programs or affiliate initiatives that continually welcome new applicants, maintaining an ongoing series might be more suitable. This ensures that newcomers can engage with all milestones without feeling rushed. Upon reaching the ultimate milestone, promoting participants to a new program equipped with its milestone series is a prudent step.
Milestones
A milestone series is characterized by one or more milestones, each distinguished by a unique name, color, points, and reward. While the common number of milestones in a series is 3-5, instances of brands successfully implementing up to 15 milestones are not unheard of.
Typical naming schemes include:
3 milestones: Bronze, Silver, Gold
4 milestones: Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire
5 milestones: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4, Tier 5
10 milestones: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, ..., Level 10
When determining the number of milestones, consider the points required to unlock each, participants' frequency of point accumulation, and the budget allocated for rewards.
Refer to the Milestone Series Worksheet for assistance in estimating the campaigns and referrals necessary to unlock milestones.
Points
Advocates earn points by completing campaigns and obtaining referral rewards for propelling word-of-mouth sales. Striking the right balance is crucial, ensuring that milestones remain attainable without being overly easy or excessively challenging to achieve.
Mapping out the number of campaigns and/or referrals essential for unlocking each milestone can be a valuable exercise. For instance, motivating participants to complete all 12 monthly campaigns in a year could involve assigning 100 points to each campaign and structuring milestone points around quarterly rewards: Bronze (300 points), Silver (600 points), Gold (900 points), Platinum (1,200 points).
Presently, two methods to earn points in Roster exist: campaign incentives and referral rewards.
Points for Campaign Incentives: In addition to discount codes and products, points can be awarded as campaign completion incentives. Opting for default point values (100, 150, 200, 300 points) is advised, although custom values can be integrated.
Points for Referral Rewards: Alongside discount codes and products, points can also function as incentives for campaign completion. Similar to campaign incentives, default point values (100, 150, 200, 300 points) are recommended, with customization available.
Learn more about creating ways for advocates to earn points.
Rewards
Milestone allure escalates when participants receive rewards upon unlocking milestones. Typically, rewards augment in value as participants progress through the milestone series. It's commonplace to present a highly desirable reward upon reaching the final milestone, motivating participants to journey through the entire series. Acknowledging participants' accomplishments within the community upon hitting key milestones further enhances engagement.
Milestones can be assigned rewards, with options including:
Discount codes (percentage-based or fixed amount)
Products
A custom reward of your choice
For Shopify brands, milestone-triggered discount codes are automatically generated within your store. Non-Shopify brands can upload pre-existing discount codes into Roster for automated assignment upon milestone achievement.
Next Steps