Enhance Your Mobile Presence: Introducing the Sleek New Edge Button for Instant Campaign Access!

At Gather, we're always striving to provide you with innovative tools to connect with your customers effectively. Today, we're excited to announce a brand-new addition to our suite of engagement features: the sleek and subtle Edge Button for instant campaign access, designed particularly with mobile in mind!

We understand the nuances of the mobile browsing experience. Screen real estate is limited, and users often navigate quickly. That's why we've developed a discreet yet powerful way to provide instant access to your personalised campaigns without being intrusive.

Introducing the Elegant Edge Button:

Imagine a stylish, minimalist button neatly tucked away on the edge of your customer's mobile screen – a subtle invitation to engage with your latest campaigns. That's the essence of our new Edge Button.

This persistent button resides along the side of the screen, offering a clean and unobtrusive way for users to instantly open your personalized campaign layer with a simple tap.

Why is the Edge Button ideal for mobile engagement?

While Gather already offers versatile options like floating buttons and bottom bars, the Edge Button brings a unique advantage to mobile:

• Maximises Screen Real Estate: Its slim profile ensures it remains visible without obstructing valuable content on smaller screens.

• Non-Intrusive Presence: Unlike potentially more prominent floating buttons or bottom bars, the edge placement offers a gentler way to provide access to your campaigns.

• Clean and Modern Design: The sleek aesthetic complements modern mobile interfaces, enhancing the user experience.

• Direct and Effortless Access: A single tap on the Edge Button provides immediate access to your personalised campaign content..

Seamlessly Implement the Edge Button

Integrating the new Edge Button into your Gather campaigns is straightforward. During your campaign setup, you'll now find the "Sticky Left" and “sticky Right” button options in the campaign preferences section of your Gather campaign.

While our existing floating and bottom bar options continue to provide valuable ways to engage users across devices, the new Edge Button offers an optimised solution for the mobile environment, providing a sleek and non-intrusive pathway to your personalised campaigns.

Ready to enhance your mobile engagement strategy? Explore the new Edge Button in your Gather dashboard and provide instant, subtle access to your campaigns for your mobile audience! We're excited to see how you leverage this feature to connect with your on-the-go customers.

Read this article for instructions on how to implement a launch button on your site.

Stay tuned for more updates from the Gather team!

Enhance Mobile Engagement: Introducing Smart Sidebar Triggers in Gather

At Gather, we are committed to providing sophisticated tools that optimise user engagement across all devices. Recognising the nuances of mobile browsing, we have enhanced our sidebar functionality to trigger intelligently based on visitor behaviour.

This update introduces responsive design principles to our mobile sidebar, ensuring it appears at opportune moments without disrupting the user experience. The Gather sidebar, used for both opt-in and referral programs, can now be activated by the following user interactions on mobile devices:

• Dynamic Upward Scroll Trigger: When a visitor on a mobile website scrolls vertically upwards with a defined speed, the sidebar will be displayed. This speed threshold is configurable within the Gather Rails application, allowing for precise control over when the sidebar appears based on user navigation patterns.

• Viewport Re-entry Trigger: If a mobile visitor leaves the active viewport where the Gather widget is embedded and subsequently returns to that view, the sidebar will be triggered. This ensures that the call-to-action remains accessible when the user's focus returns to the relevant content.

The Strategic Advantage for Your Mobile Presence:

• Improved Responsiveness: These triggers are designed to react dynamically to user behaviour, providing a more integrated and less intrusive experience on mobile devices.

• Contextual Visibility: By appearing upon an upward scroll or viewport re-entry, the sidebar is presented when users are potentially re-engaging with the content or looking for further interaction.

• Optimised User Flow: A more subtle and context-aware presentation of your referral or opt-in prompts contributes to a smoother and more effective user journey on mobile.

• Centralised Configuration: The parameters for these new triggers are managed within the Gather Design Editor, offering a unified approach to controlling your engagement strategies.

Implementing Enhanced Mobile Engagement:

Consider how users navigate your mobile site. The dynamic upward scroll trigger can capture attention when users revisit previous content, while the viewport re-entry trigger ensures visibility for returning users. These enhancements aim to optimise engagement without being overly assertive.

At Gather, our focus is on delivering adaptable solutions that align with contemporary web design best practices. This update to our mobile sidebar is intended to provide a more refined and effective method for engaging your audience on mobile platforms.

Explore these new capabilities within your Gather account and observe how these intelligent triggers can contribute to your mobile engagement metrics.

We remain dedicated to providing you with innovative tools for building stronger customer relationships.

Seamlessly Connecting Your Referral Program: How Gather Integrates with Your Marketing Ecosystem

A referral program, no matter how well-designed, exists within a broader marketing ecosystem. To truly maximise its impact, it must integrate seamlessly with existing marketing efforts. Marketers often struggle with connecting their referral programs to email marketing platforms, and other essential tools. This disconnect can lead to missed opportunities and inefficient workflows.

The core challenges are:

• Data Fragmentation: Without proper integration, referral data remains isolated, preventing a holistic view of customer behaviour.

• Inconsistent Messaging: Disconnected systems can lead to conflicting or redundant messaging across different channels, confusing customers.

• Manual Data Entry: Lack of integration often necessitates manual data transfer, increasing the risk of errors and wasting valuable time.

• Limited Promotion: If the referral program isn't integrated with other marketing channels, it's difficult to effectively promote it to the target audience.

• Difficulty with Automation: Without integration it becomes difficult to automate referral-based workflows.

Gather is designed to solve these integration issues, ensuring your referral program becomes a seamless part of your marketing strategy:

• Direct EMP Integrations: Gather offers direct integrations with popular email marketing platforms, including Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor. This allows for automatic synchronisation of referral data, providing a unified customer view within your existing platform. You can segment customers based on their referral activity, enabling personalised marketing campaigns.

• Email Marketing Platform Integrations: Gather integration with leading email marketing platforms, enabling you to automate referral program promotions within your email workflows. You can easily embed referral links into your email campaigns.

• Robust API Access: Gather provides a comprehensive API, allowing for custom integrations with virtually any marketing tool or platform.

• Comprehensive Tracking and Analytics: Gather's built-in tracking and analytics provide detailed insights into referral program performance.

• Easy Shareable Links and Content: Gather creates unique shareable referral links, which can be easily distributed across various marketing channels, including social media, websites, and email. This makes it simple to promote your referral program and drive participation.

By utilising Gather's integration capabilities, you can eliminate data silos, automate workflows, and create a cohesive customer experience that amplifies your referral program's impact. This allows you to focus on building strong customer relationships and driving genuine growth, without the headaches of disconnected systems.

Protecting Your Referral Program: Addressing Fraud and Abuse

Referral programs are a powerful tool for acquiring new customers, but they also present a unique challenge: fraud. Marketers often worry about individuals gaming the system, creating fake referrals, or exploiting loopholes to claim rewards. This not only inflates costs but also dilutes the value of genuine customer advocacy. Effectively mitigating these risks is crucial for maintaining the integrity and ROI of your referral program.

The core concerns are:

• Self-referrals and Fake Accounts: Customers creating multiple accounts to earn rewards for self-referrals. This artificially inflates referral numbers and drains resources.

• Difficulty in Tracking and Identifying Fraud: Manually tracking and identifying fraudulent activity can be time-consuming and inefficient, especially as programs scale.

How the Gather's Platform can help:

• Automated Fraud Scoring: Platforms like Gather include fraud detection mechanisms that analyse various data points (IP address, email addresses) to assign a risk score to each referral, flagging potentially fraudulent activity. This automated scoring provides a first line of defence, efficiently identifying suspicious behaviour.

• Implementing a Fraud Detection Features: Gather allows marketers to set specific rules based on their business needs. Such as implementing fraud detection for a referral program and setting the number of referrals required to receive a reward. These customisation features empower users to tailor fraud prevention measures to their unique requirements.

• Manual Review Capabilities: Gather’s fraud detection feature that allows administrators to manually review flagged referrals, providing an extra layer of scrutiny and control. This ensures that legitimate referrals aren't accidentally rejected.

• Verification Processes: Gather uses verification processes such as double opt-in for referred customers, to ensure legitimacy. Gather recommends the use of double opt-in for a lead-generation campaign.

By using the Gather platform, marketers can significantly reduce the risk of fraud and abuse, ensuring that their referral programs deliver genuine customer acquisition and growth. This allows for a focus on genuine customer relationships and the promotion of real advocacy.

Choosing the Right Rewards: A Guide for E-commerce Lifestyle Brand Referral Programs

One of the most critical decisions when setting up a loyalty or referral program is determining the type of rewards to offer. The right incentives can drive engagement, boost customer lifetime value, and encourage advocacy. However, choosing poorly can lead to low participation and wasted resources.

The Problem: What Rewards Resonate?

Marketers often struggle to identify rewards that truly motivate their target audience. Common pitfalls include:

• Generic Discounts: While discounts are popular, they can devalue your brand if overused. Customers may become conditioned to waiting for sales rather than paying full price.

• Irrelevant Rewards: Offering rewards that don't align with customer interests or preferences can lead to low engagement.

• Complex Redemption: If rewards are difficult to redeem, customers may become frustrated and abandon the program.

• Lack of Perceived Value: Rewards that don't feel valuable to the customer won't be effective motivators.

Exploring Reward Options

Here are some common reward types to consider:

• Discounts: A percentage or fixed amount off a future purchase. Effective for driving repeat business, but can impact perceived value if overused.

• Gift Cards: Provide customers with the freedom to choose what they want. Particularly effective for lifestyle brands with diverse product offerings.

• Free Products or Samples: A great way to introduce customers to new items and increase product discovery.

• Exclusive Experiences: Access to special events, early access to sales, or personalized services can create a sense of exclusivity and strengthen customer loyalty.

• Tiered Rewards: Offer increasingly valuable rewards as customers reach higher loyalty tiers. Motivates continued engagement and spending.

• Charitable Donations: Allow customers to donate their rewards to a chosen charity. Appeals to socially conscious customers.

• Points Systems: Customers earn points for various actions (purchases, referrals, engagement) and can redeem them for rewards. Offers flexibility and encourages ongoing engagement.

Gather's Solution: Powering Flexible and Effective Rewards

Gather provides a comprehensive platform that empowers e-commerce brands to implement a wide range of reward options, including:

• Gift Cards: Seamlessly integrate gift card rewards into your loyalty and referral programs using Gather’s integration with Tremendous. Offer various denominations and even partner with other brands for expanded choice.

• Reward codes: Generate discount codes on the fly with Gather Promotions Connect. Design tailored promotions for advocates and friends at different stages of your referral funnel. You can even reward customers with store credit.

• Tiered Loyalty Programs: Design multi-level programs with increasing rewards and exclusive benefits for your most loyal customers.

By leveraging Gather's platform, you can overcome the challenges of choosing the right rewards and create a compelling loyalty and referral program that drives customer engagement, increases lifetime value, and fosters brand advocacy. For more information on choosing the right rewards for your brand read our Referral Program Rewards Playbook.

The Power of Gift Card Rewards

Gather now integrates with Tremendous. Reward customers with gift cards.

Marketers are constantly seeking effective ways to boost customer loyalty and drive repeat purchases. While traditional loyalty programs offer points and discounts, gift cards provide a unique and powerful alternative. They offer flexibility, personalisation, and a tangible reward that resonates with customers.

Why Gift Cards?

• Flexibility & Choice: Gift cards empower customers to choose exactly what they want, ensuring the reward aligns with their preferences and needs. This is especially important for lifestyle brands with diverse product offerings.

• Increased Engagement: Offering gift cards encourages customers to return to your store and explore new products, fostering a deeper connection with your brand.

• Brand Awareness: Every time a customer uses your gift card, it reinforces your brand and keeps you top-of-mind.

• Perfect for Referrals: Gift cards make excellent referral rewards, incentivising customers to spread the word about your brand.

• Data & Insights: Gift card programs provide valuable data on customer spending habits and preferences, allowing you to tailor future marketing efforts.

Implementing Gift Card Rewards Effectively

• Seamless Integration: Choose a platform (like Gather) that seamlessly integrates gift card rewards into your existing loyalty program.

• Personalisation: Offer a variety of gift card options (e.g., specific amounts, partner brands) to cater to different customer segments.

• Clear Communication: Clearly communicate the value and redemption process of your gift card rewards.

• Strategic Timing: Consider offering gift card rewards during specific promotions, holidays, or customer milestones.

• Track & Optimise: Monitor the performance of your gift card program and make adjustments based on customer feedback and data insights.

By incorporating gift card rewards into your loyalty program, you can create a more engaging, personalised, and effective experience for your customers, driving long-term loyalty and brand advocacy.

Find out about Gather’s integration with Tremendous and see how you can use gift cards as part of your referral program.

Generate Discount Codes on the Fly with Gather Promotions Connect

Tired of clunky discount code management? Gather Promotions Connect streamlines your referral program by generating unique discount codes instantly.

Say goodbye to:

• Manual code uploads: No more CSV files or tedious integrations.

• Bulk code apps: Eliminate the risk of codes ending up on discount websites.

• Low code alerts: Enjoy peace of mind knowing your codes are always available.

How it works:

1. Create your promotion: Design compelling referral or lead capture campaigns within the Gather platform.

2. Automatic code generation: Gather Promotions Connect generates unique discount codes for each referral or lead as needed.

3. Seamless integration: Codes are automatically registered with your Shopify checkout, ready for use.

Experience the Gather difference:

• Effortless implementation: Simplify your referral program with a user-friendly interface. Create the unique promotions for your campaign. 

• Enhanced customer experience: Reward your advocates with personalized and exclusive discounts.

• Increased conversions: Drive more sales and grow your customer base through effective referrals.

Ready to simplify your referral program?

Start using Gather Promotions Connect today and experience the power of automated, on-demand discount codes.