Does your chamber give rewards for referring a business for membership? If so, how do you “pay” them? Do you give them a discount on renewal? Maybe you send over a gift basket.
Whatever you do, you want the thank you gift to do two things — show your appreciation and encourage them to refer more potential members to you.
Thank You and Incentive
Because this is both a thank you gift and an incentive to encourage future referrals, you want the gift to be meaningful and useful. A chamber gift certificate (or chamber bucks) works for several reasons:
Practicing what you preach. You encourage people to shop local. By giving a chamber gift certificate as your referral gift, you are continuing the encouragement you talk about.
Tracking. You can see where the member spends the money.
Award is associated with cause. Many chambers give a discount on dues upon renewal. This is effective only if they are renewing close to the time in which they earn the renewal discount. If not, they will have forgotten it by the time they receive the reward.
In order for the reward to be the most effective, the action that causes it must be close to the time of the appreciation. If there is too great a span of time, the two will not be correlated.
More gift certificates in the community. If every certificate is an exercise in branding, the more you have out there being used, the more attention is brought to your program.
It’s personal. Giving a discount on dues, while appreciated, is a gift for the business not the person referring. The person referring the member to you may or may not have a vested interest in what the business pays.
Even if the referrer is the business owner, the award of a discount has very little personal appeal. A gift certificate to a local business allows that individual to pick out something he/she will enjoy personally.
When deciding on a referral “gift” for members who refer others to your chamber, know it should both thank them and incentivize them to continue their course of action. Community gift certificates are ideal for this. If you have members who would rather have a discount on dues, they can always use community gift certificates towards their renewal.
Image credit via Pixabay by herblady28
