Answerbase has rolled out its Rewards Program functionality, allowing you to offer tangible rewards to your members for their contributions….so they can exchange any points they’ve earned for real world prizes.  Perhaps you want to offer a great t-shirt or mug with your company’s branding on it, or perhaps a gift certificate to your own store or other stores (Tip: treat them to coffee to keep them energized so they can continue writing for you!)….whatever your prizes are, they can help create an incentive for your members to invest their time and energy into making valuable contributions to your company’s content.

Administration Capabilities

Enabling the rewards program for your site

In your administration site under “System Settings”, you’ll notice a new option called “Rewards Program” where you can manage your settings, prizes, and see a redemption history.  Click into this area to get started and manage your settings, so you can start given your users added incentive for creating content.

Program Settings

You’ll notice a “Program Settings” tab when you first enter the rewards program page, which will allow you to enable the program as well as customize your message around the program.  This will allow you to communicate your message about your program rules, what prizes they’ll have available, and how many points they must earn in order to order those prizes.

Manage Rewards

When visiting your “Manage Rewards” tab, you can add all of the prizes that you’re going to support for your program, identifying the reward title, how many you have in inventory, as well as how many points the user will need to order that prize.  You have easy capabilities to add, edit and remove items as you’d like.

Rewards History

Admins will be able to see a history of what awards have been redeemed, and have different filters around that list so they’re able to see the exact items they’d like to and keep track of the award redemption activity.    You’re able to see a unique transaction ID for each order, what item was ordered, who ordered it, any special delivery instructions (if provided), and what the order status is.  Every new order for an item will display as “Pending”.  Once you’ve completed and sent the order, you can mark an order as “Fulfilled” which will allow you to keep track of all items you’ve taken care of and what there is left to do.

Member Account

From a member’s perspective, when you have the rewards program enabled, for every point they’ve earned on the system the platform will keep a “Rewards points” total (this won’t impact their reputation) where they can choose to put any points they’ve earned towards redeeming prizes.  This allows them exchange points they’ve earned through their contributions and participation, and get real world prizes for their efforts.

Redeeming Prizes

Under their account the member will be able to see a “Redeem prizes” option, which will allow them to see the total of rewards points they’ve earned as well as the prizes that are currently in stock and available to redeem.  The user can choose the item they’d like to order, and then submit their order with any delivery instructions so that site administrators can fulfill it.  Please note that users will only be presented with items where there is inventory available, taking into account how much inventory you have in stock as well as any orders that have already been submitted but still pending fulfillment.

Rewards History

Members will be able to view a full history of all of their orders, so they can keep track of order status and when the order is fulfilled.  This ensures that members know exactly what they’ve ordered and see details of what is going on with it.

Answerbase encourages site owners to use the rewards program in order to create an appealing incentive to members to continue contributing valuable content.  That content and engagement will benefit both your brand and your business, as you’re able to efficiently create incentive for your membership.