Recyclebank uses a mix of education, rewards, customer engagement, and impact metrics to help people live more sustainable lifestyles. Through online engagement and a recycling incentives program, the company has helped increase recycling rates in more than 300 communities, partnered to recycle nearly 3.8 billion pounds of waste, and helped move people toward a more sustainable future.
On Recyclebank’s website, users earn points by working their way through a tiered series of questions and answers, learning about greener living practices, pledging to follow them, and exchanging points for rewards.
What’s more, Recyclebank is also an advertising and sponsorship platform able to reach highly engaged consumers. Brands can sponsor content on Recyclebank and promote their own green strides.
Loyalty360 caught up with Recyclebank CEO Javier Flaim for a compelling interview about some of the unique things the company executes around customer engagement while seeking brand loyalty.
What rewards are working for all participants in their channel programs?
We are always working to optimize what ultimately motivates individuals to increase recycling (among other activities) that we are trying to educate and inform residents about. We learn and customize our rewards offerings based on learnings at the community level over time, looking at member feedback, insights/primary research and redemption data. From there, we continue to optimize our offerings for residents–from national rewards, to local/community rewards, to donations to local charities and Green School program grants. We also find that other emerging rewards types also motivate behavior change, including sweepstakes offers and “surprise & delight” rewards/engagement elements. Finally, we also know that some members believe the points (and associated status/point levels) are sufficient rewards themselves−as they are representative of all their historical recycling behavior and green actions they have taken as a result of participating on our platform in partnership with their city/municipality.
Can you talk about your technology and how it impacts engagement and experience?
We leverage a range of data and technologies–both proprietary technologies as well as that of our partners/haulers/municipalities to help with the measurement of resident participation in curbside recycling. Depending on community, we are able to measure elements such as resident setting out of their recycling carts, weights/amounts of recycling materials by route, as well as other data and information. We leverage this information to help provide value to our clients as well as provide a richer experience for our participating residents.
How has it been getting and keeping customers/clients/advertisers/sponsors?
We are constantly looking for ways to drive value for our clients–whether it’s a municipality’s desire to increase recycling rates or decrease contamination
rates, an advertiser who wants to engage our residents and members on specific recycling education opportunities, or our members themselves of course, who are seeking better and richer educational and rewarding experiences on our platform. Each of these “get” and “keep” innovation initiatives are a core part of what we work tirelessly to accomplish–and learn–from our program.
Recyclebank uses gamification methods. Can you talk a bit about that and how it has impacted loyalty and engagement?
We definitely leverage a number of gamification “best practices” to try to continue to find ways to educate and engage our residents and members. A few examples include competitions (from large 50-state challenge to local recycling education challenges), notifications (reminders of specific recycling events), impact tracker/goals (individual, community or group goals to try to inspire higher levels of achievement & goals) and recognition (personal, group or community recognition programs for reaching certain recycling or sustainable goals). We leverage each of these tactics at different times throughout our communities and programs depending on the needs and goals of our partners.
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.