The Incentive Marketing Association (IMA) presented its 2022 Excellence Awards during the IMA Summit Awards ceremony at its annual IMA Summit at The Cliff Lodge in Snowbird, Utah. The Excellence Awards recognize the development and delivery of outstanding non-cash incentive programs that motivate employees, win customers and improve sales.
Excellence Award Winners
- Consumer Promotion – Create Direct SRL for Michelin
- Dealer/Distributor Incentives – Motivforce for IBM
- Employee Incentive Program – All Star Incentive Marketing for AmeriGas
- Gift Cards in an Incentive Program – Blackhawk Network for TapOnIt
- Innovation and Technology – WorkStride for Humanscale
- Merchandise in an Incentive Program – Agência Digi for The Coca-Cola Company
- Recognition Program – WorkStride for Cleveland Clinic
- Sales Incentives – C.A. Short Company for Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED
- Social Responsibility – Tango Card with Charity On Top
- Travel in an Incentive Program – Uwin Iwin Performance Incentives for Sanlam
Consumer Promotion – Create Direct SRL for Michelin
Create Direct SRL developed two B2B cashback programs for Michelin to help increase sales and attract and incentivize customers and dealers while building long-term engagement. CLUB PRO by Michelin and WHOLESALE CLUB PRO by Michelin are multi-country programs with automated seasonable sell-out campaigns on the country level and multiple campaign elements for cross-selling and upselling built into the platform. By promoting CLUB PRO by Michelin to customers, dealers are supported in stimulating their own sales and get rewarded with cashback for purchasing Michelin tires. Users and dealers have access to a tool that automatically calculates the cashback/reward potential, and users have a Google Maps-connected map of dealers in their area. Both programs are successful with thousands of invoices entered each month and future implementations are foreseen in more countries.
Dealer/Distributor Incentives – Motivforce for IBM
Motivforce helped IBM refresh its long-running Know Your IBM (KYI) program to address the ongoing negative impacts of COVID-19 on sales and revenue. KYI must continually stand out in a heavily competitive market where IBM distribution channel business partners are inundated with product training and incentives from hundreds of competitors. Leveraging the increased time available due to decreased sales, through its KYI program IBM encouraged participants to spend time on learning and pivoted to create highly attractive and enticing promotions such as Race to 52 to drive sales of certain products. For 2021, IBM’s B2B resellers participating in the KYI program generated an average of 4.1 times more sales/revenue for IBM compared with like-for-like non-participants.
Employee Incentive Program – All Star Incentive Marketing for AmeriGas
All Star Incentive Marketing helped AmeriGas develop its Committed to Safety recognition program to engage safety-sensitive workers throughout the company and keep them safe. After a successful six-month pilot with 500 employees in six regions, the program was expanded nationally to 4,000 safety-sensitive employees resulting in a dramatic shift in engagement, participation, safety numbers, and reduced turnover. The program quickly became engrained in the fabric of the company, and a large part of how the company does business. With its own branding and design, the program conveys to the participants that the company cares about each employee and wants to give them a platform to keep them safe, engaged, motivated, and rewarded for what they do.
Gift Cards in an Incentive Program – Blackhawk Network for TapOnIt
In the early days of COVID-19 when businesses were forced to close, gift cards became a way to support favored local businesses, however, those without online gift card programs couldn’t participate. TapOnIt, a Hispanic-women-owned provider of SaaS-based platforms for organizations to manage their own local gift card incentives, was asked by their local chamber of commerce for help. The idea for The Community Gift Card was developed to replace Chamber Bucks and other paper programs. TapOnIt asked Blackhawk Network to supply tailored experiences, so they provided customized gift cards, card carriers, websites, and experiences directly relevant to the individual participating communities. Through the card tracking capabilities, an issuing chamber can analyze data to determine where and how the cards were spent. To date, 85% of the funds loaded on more than 6,000 cards purchased have been spent in local communities.
Innovation and Technology – WorkStride for Humanscale
Humanscale asked WorkStride to help re-build and manage their B2B channel partner sales incentive programs. WorkStride provided an AWS-hosted, feature-rich SaaS-based configurable incentive platform. After the launch of a pilot program, Humanscale’s audience has grown to over 2,500 participants across the U.S. and Canada. The backend support and custom logic make claims submission simple because only two data points are needed, making the submission process seamless. This speeds up payout times, creating a better experience for admins and users. The program’s ability to easily scale and pivot to changing market conditions resulted in over 400,000 products sold in 2021, a 10-fold increase when adjusted by population.
Merchandise in an Incentive Program – Agência Digi for The Coca-Cola Company
Recognition Program – WorkStride for Cleveland Clinic
During COVID-19 the Cleveland Clinic decided to expand their Caregiver Celebrations program strategically and geographically for their growing global workforce of 60,000 employees. They partnered with WorkStride to enhance the program. New award types relevant to the times, such as a COVID Heroes Award, Caregiver Philanthropy and Teaching Recognition, were added. The program was expanded to include patients so they too could recognize their caregivers. These coveted recognitions are an important part of daily life at Cleveland Clinic as they inspire competition among individuals and institutes by using gamified leaderboards and other widgets to display program data in a fun and visually appealing way. Additionally, more relevant and inclusive e-cards were added as a result of an internal inclusivity push. This provided a revamp for a highly utilized award type (e-cards) and increased the number issued by 127% in 2021.
Sales Incentives – C.A. Short Company for Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED
Social Responsibility – Tango Card with Charity On Top
Tango Card wanted to respond to emerging social justice issues by adding new donation options to its catalog. Through a partnership with Charity On Top, they were able to quickly add donation options for organizations like Equal Justice Initiative, the NAACP, and GLAAD. Emails from Tango Card’s CEO emphasized the importance of improving our world for everyone and offered a $25 Reward Link for each employee to donate to the organization of their choice. Next came outreach to customers highlighting the three donation options that were now available. After a 13-month period, the donation option was one of Tango Card’s top six most popular rewards, making it the most popular not-for-profit donation option ever offered.
