Perhaps the most important question that every online business owner and manager faces is this: how to sustain long-term relationships with the customers?
This question has given rise of a lot of innovation and creativity in digital marketing and particularly customer acquisition channel development. The need to have ‘repeat customers’ is an essential aspect of the business, and you can broaden your brand reach via reliable WordPress hosting to keep your site up at all times.
An innovative customer retention tactic that has gained popularity in both online and an offline business scenario is some sort of reward points system. Given the popularity of the reward point system, it is no surprise that these programs come in a wide range of options and designs.
In many cases, the implementation of a reward points system is ideal for online businesses because of the ease with which business owners can manage (and scale) the program without any major deviation in the business processes.
Fortunately, implementing a reward point system for a WordPress-powered business, thanks to myCRED WordPress – a freemium points management plugin.
myCred – Points, Rewards & Badges | Loyalty Plugin
myCRED is a freemium points management plugin that allows you to create a points and rewards system for an ecommerce store created with WordPress and WooCommerce. Once the plugin is active, store owners often notice a visible increase in traffic and sales. In the longer term, the program ensures repeat customers, increased customer loyalty and improved revenues.
Features of myCRED
myCRED WordPress is a feature-rich plugin that simplifies the process of setting up loyalty and reward points program for WordPress websites. Popular features include:
- Point Balances: Each user can have a distinct point balance. Website owners can use shortcodes and/or widgets to display the balance on appropriate locations.
- Account History: Every transaction in the points balance is logged to ensure complete transparency and allow for enforcing limits. Users can view this history through on-page widgets.
- Automatic Points: These are the perfect ‘hook’ for retaining the customers. These points are rewarded automatically for simple actions such as interacting with your website content or downloading a third-party plugin.
- Customization: The plugin can be fully customized for your own scheme of points reward and management via built-in and premium add-ons. In addition, if you need a custom feature, you can submit the request via the myCRED website.
- Code snippets: myCRED offers custom code snippets for different pages that can help you engage your visitors.
myCRED Built-in Add-ons
The free version of myCRED comes with a range of add-ons that adds value to your website:
- Badges: Users can earn badges when they accomplish certain point-based milestones.
- Banking: Users can earn interest on users balance or set up recurring payouts.
- buyCRED: Users can buy points in exchange for real money.
- Coupons: Create coupons that users can redeem for points.
- Email Notifications: Set up email notifications for points gains/losses.
- Payment Gateway: Users can pay with loyalty points for items on your store.
- Notifications: Set up pop-up notifications for point gains/losses.
- Ranks: Set up a leaderboard based on users’ balance.
- Sell Content: Offer access to store content in exchange for points.
- Statistics: Get detailed statistics and overview of the users’ points.
- Transfer: Users can transfer points to other users.
If you want further functionality, refer to myCRED premium add-ons that include Notification Plus, buyCRED Gateway, Scratch Cards, Partial Payment, Lottery, Transfer Plus, CoinPayments, SMS Payments, etc.
myCRED Hooks
myCRED WordPress plugin offers the following hooks for setting up/managing different types of points.
- Points for registration
- Points for daily visits
- Points for viewing content
- Points for logins
- Points for publishing content
- Points for trashed content
- Points for comments
- Points for clicking on links
- Points for viewing videos
- Points for referrals
- WooCommerce Product Reviews
Requirements for myCRED
In order to use myCRED WordPress plugin, a website must have:
- WordPress 4.5 or greater
- PHP version 5.6 or greater
- PHP mcrypt library enabled
- MySQL version 5.0 or greater
Install myCRED on WordPress
To install myCRED on WordPress, go to WordPress Dashboard → Plugins → Add New, type ‘mycred’ in the search box. Once found, click the Install Now button.
Once the installation finishes, click the Activate button.
Once the process finishes, you will notice the myCRED setup under the Plugins menu.
Configure myCRED Settings
To configure myCRED settings, go to Plugins → myCRED setup. Before you begin, you must set up point type(s). This includes Labels, Format, and Security. Once you have added the required details, click the Create Point Type button.
You will see the ‘Setup Complete! Congratulations! You are now ready to use myCRED. What’s next?’ message.
Now, go to WordPress Dashboard → Points. There you will see four different options: Log, Hooks, Add-ons, and Settings.
1. Logs
The Logs option helps you track (add or deduct) points for users. The adjustment of points is logged in a dedicated log, allowing the users to browse their history. These logs also provide raw data for detailed statistical analysis, user badges and ranks.
2. Hooks
These Hooks can be enabled or disabled as required.
If you want to offer points to your customers using specific hooks, simply drag and drop that hook in the Active Hooks section. For further reference, please refer to the following screenshot in which I have enabled a hook for daily visits.
After enabling the Points for daily visits hook, when a visitor visits your website, he will be rewarded with pre-assigned points, and you can always check history from Points → Logs for the detailed statistics.
3. Add-ons
All of these Add-ons can affect specific users or categories of users, such as longtime members.
If you want to enable any built-in add-on, simply hover your mouse on it, and then click the Activate button. In my example, I have activated the Badges add-on.
After the activation, I can configure its settings from Points → Badges. This step is the same for all the others built-in add-ons.
4. Settings
The last tab Settings has the following four options:
- Core Settings: Update previously set Labels, Format, and Security settings.
- Management: View Log Table, Balance Meta Key, and Allow Remote Access. You can also reset all the values and export balances from this tab.
- Point Types: Add new Meta Key and Labels for points management.
- Exports: If Exports (front end/back end) option is enabled, users will only be able to export their own log entries! You can also set the file format from this tab.
That’s all! Now you can leverage myCRED on your WordPress website.
Wrapping up!
myCRED WordPress is a great option for setting up a loyalty points and rewards system on your WordPress powered online store. As a result, the number of new customers’ increases and store owners witnesses a significant increase in the number of returning customers.
The good news is the low cost of the Premium Addons of the plugin. When you have tried out the free version and think that the premium add-ons will add more value to your store. For more information, visit myCRED.
If you have problems with purchasing or installing the plugin, or how to use the plugin for setting up a rewards program, leave a comment below; you will get a reply as soon as possible.
Mansoor Ahmed Khan
Been in content marketing since 2014, and I still get a kick out of creating stories that resonate with the target audience and drive results. At Cloudways by DigitalOcean (a leading cloud hosting company, btw!), I lead a dream team of content creators. Together, we brainstorm, write, and churn out awesome content across all the channels: blogs, social media, emails, you name it! You can reach out to me at [email protected].