You may notice the fancy red tag to the left of my page, click it, and start earning while I both educate, and entertain you. This is how I am integrating loyalty/reward programs to build both brand awareness, and to attract an audience.
I've been slowly building a viewership for quite sometime, and I recently stumbled across Punch Tab via a good friend of mine. Punch Tab provides a turn key program model, and an effective vehicle for bloggers, and other web developers to create retention.
Loyalty Programs can instantly incentivize every visit, share, and comment of your content, which encourages your viewers to perform those actions. The name of the game is content engagement, and customer awareness. The more eyes on your content the better you will be in the long run. When you're struggling to maintain low numbers, programs in this model can provide a legitimate boost of traffic at no extra cost to you.
This does present a certain question in morality to anyone who has a respect for their own content. Am I buying my views? In short no, but in the long haul yes. You are balancing a very fine line. If your content is good you may not even require a loyalty program to have recurring visits, but it never hurts to provide that bit of extra to the people that support you. On the other hand you may have golden content that just doesn't bring the numbers. Discovery rates are dropping as the internet becomes even more populated with user generated content on several mediums. Any moment you can convert a viewer into a brand ambassador is a moment you should capitalize on. If you have the tool at your disposal, use it.
Cheers and Popular Teddy Bears.