Your rewards program is only as powerful as your marketing

Rewards are one of the most powerful levers in consumer spending.

They convince people to try new brands. They push them to spend a little more than they might’ve planned. They keep consumers reaching for the same card over and over again.

The research backs this up. PayPal and Reach3 Insights found 81% of shoppers make choices based on rewards.

And they work on an emotional level, too. 63% of consumers say rewards make them feel more valued as a customer, and 33% say thinking about rewards gives them feelings of satisfaction and joy.

For merchants and issuers, that enthusiasm translates to opportunity:

• Merchants gain broader access to new segments of their TAM and higher AOVs. 
• FIs and fintechs gain deeper engagement and long term loyalty.

There’s a catch, though. Cardholders have to know that your rewards exist.

Some will find offers on their own. For everyone else, there are promoted rewards — dedicated emails that send one offer, from one brand, straight to their inbox. Below, we walk through how they work and the eye-popping results our pilot customers have seen lately.

What are promoted rewards?

Most rewards marketing looks the same: a monthly email roundup with a dozen offers competing for attention, or a banner buried inside a banking app that most users scroll past.

Promoted rewards are different.

Instead of asking cardholders to go find an offer that may or may not apply to their interests, a promoted rewards email brings a cash back offer directly to them — with everything they need to act on it right there:

Hey [First name],

You’ve got a reward waiting!

Use your [Fintech name] card at [brand] and get $X (or X%) cash back automatically deposited into your account. 

Offer valid through [Date].

Claim your reward →

The backend mechanics are straightforward:

1. A merchant funds a dedicated send to a fintech or issuer’s cardholder base.
2. The email tells the cardholder they have a cash back offer waiting, what the amount is, and how to claim it.
3. The cardholder makes the purchase.
4. Kard matches the transaction to the offer and deposits the cash rewards into the consumer’s bank account.

Here’s what happens when a promoted rewards campaign goes live:

A major consumer brand saw 156% increase in daily transactions

The first brand we ran promoted rewards for already had a solid cash back offer in market. They just wanted more cardholders to know about it, especially heading into their busiest season of the year.

So, we ran four dedicated email blasts to our issuer cardholder base.

Daily transactions jumped 156% the day the first email went out. Spikes followed a few days after each subsequent blast — cardholders who didn’t act right away came back once the messages had time to sink in.

These results have gotten this brand excited about future use of promoted rewards, plus other Kard features rolling out soon, like:

• Click to activate offers, where users opt in to unlock a new cash back offer
• Purchase count offers, where users see visual progress toward a reward threshold
• Click to boost offers, where users engage for a higher payout

And the merchant results are only half the story.

A fintech provider reengaged 200,000+ cardholders

The fintech partner we ran this campaign with was looking for ways to increase both cardholder engagement and spend on their card. A timely, relevant offer from a merchant that their cardholders already knew and trusted was exactly the right vehicle.

With multiple emails going out to roughly 1 million users, we split the audience into three segments to protect deliverability at scale. Performance was consistent across all three, with a 99% delivery rate — a reflection of healthy sending infrastructure.

Even more impressive was its open rate: 30%, above the 27.1% average for fintechs, according to Campaign Monitor.

The metric that stood out most, though, was that 23% of everyone who received the campaign opened the app within 10 days. That means over 200,000 cardholders went back into the product from a single promoted rewards campaign.

Push notifications and in-app messages reinforced the campaign throughout, driving more than 100,000 additional engagement actions beyond email alone.

Marketing makes rewards work harder

The data from these two campaigns points to something every issuer and brand should be paying attention to:

The connection between marketing and consumer spend is direct, measurable, and near-immediate.

Cardholders are already emotionally invested in their rewards. They want to use them. The brands and distribution partners that make it easy — by showing up in the right place, at the right time, with the right offer — are the ones that turn one-time transactions into lasting spending habits.

Interested in running your first promoted rewards campaign? Get in touch with the Kard team.