The Zero-Threshold Rule in Incentive Marketing

It still surprises me how many incentive marketing & cash back websites maintain minimum payout thresholds. In a space where trust is paramount, payout thresholds destroy credibility. If users must accrue $10 or $20 in rewards before seeing those earnings, many will invariably hit the eject button. Site owners mostly use payment thresholds as a means of withholding payouts from low-earners under the guise of covering transaction costs. The transaction cost argument no longer holds water given the efficiencies of bulk e-payments. PayPal mass payments cost a mere 2%. If you choose to go the snail mail route and cut paper checks, your costs will be astronomically higher. I, Keyen Farrell say, "Don't do it!" Unless you are operating at enormous scale (think Ebates, NetFlip circa 2002), or have unusually lucrative offers, the price of cutting checks is simply too high. Keeping your transactions purely electronic will save you time and avoid needless headaches for you and your users. You can even designate a single bank account into which commission revenue flows and from which incentive payouts are drawn.

If you follow the Zero-Threshold Rule, your visitors will be inclined to complete more, not less offers on your site. You may find that users complete one or two offers to test it out. Yet once you hold up your part of the bargain, they will almost always return. The Zero-Threshold Rule builds trust with your users and should not be ignored as a selling point. You can further leverage the rule by working it into your site's messaging. It's astounding how many incentive websites have not only minimum payout thresholds, but bundle offers together, forcing users to complete several offers at one time. Bundling offers is the antithesis of the Zero-Threshold Rule and not only destroys your user base but compromises the quality of transactions. Sustained incentive marketing rests upon happy users and happy merchants. The last thing you want is low-quality, chargeback-prone transactions caused by bundled offers. If your site contains a varied selection of offers, and users are given the flexibility to complete which offers and how many, everyone comes out on top.