Coming Soon: Inovelli Rewards Program

[Brianna_Inovelli]

I can totally understand your thinking here. We want to create opportunities for customers to earn points but not have too many options that are too easy to achieve. The nice thing about reviews is in places like Google and Facebook, you can only leave a review once. I think having our lower tier options like following our social pages would be the ones people would do first, but higher tiered actions like answering a question in our community or making a video showcasing your products would be harder for people to achieve without actually engaging with us. Great ideas from everyone so far!

[Brianna_Inovelli]

@datavortex

Since you have the sales records already, it would be nice to get retroactive points for purchases that were made through inovelli.com in the past.

We do plan on offering some retroactive points just to highlight since a few of you have brought it up. I think Eric mentioned above they would be from purchases made from Jan 1st, 2020 to present and that the points will have an expiration date.

[MarkTr]

@jmason888

@Brianna_Inovelli

How about some free Inovelli gear at a certain number of points?

That would take a lot of points. Inovelli gear is less expensive than most comparable Z-wave devices (and some Zigbee and WiFi devices ), but it’s not a Big Mac either.

I thought we were talking about Inovelli hats and T-shirts…but I’ll definitely take some free switches

[Brianna_Inovelli]

Nothing is set in stone yet, just testing the waters with ideas

[vreihen]

How about Detroit Lions tickets in the Inovelli VIP corporate suite at Ford Field???

[Brianna_Inovelli]

[gibbor]

In addition to the redeemable points, you could track the total lifetime points earned and give bonuses at certain milestones. For example, when you have X number of lifetime points you get free stickers, t-shirt, hat, switch, discount on next purchase, etc.

[vreihen]

I probably shouldn’t joke about that again. The last time that I did, I wound up driving 825 miles round-trip in a lake effect snowstorm to Buffalo for a Bills game in one of our vendors’ suite at the stadium…

[Eric_Inovelli]

Hey guys, thanks so much for your input – we love it – exactly what we were looking for. We have a meeting with the team that’s developing this on Thursday and have incorporated pretty much everything on the lists above!

@jmason888

Another thought: you have beta testing—both closed betas for new devices and open betas for firmware. For closed betas I could see “gold” (or whatever your upper teir is called; maybe “Red Series” ) folks getting to the front of the beta tester queue. For both closed and especially open betas, perhaps points for bug reporting? More points for reproducible example and/or analysis (or whatever else helps the engineers fix the bug and/or the community work around it) than for a simple “I did this and it didn’t work” report…

Yes, this is a great idea – and goes along with what @datavortex mentioned below, which I 100% agree with. We’re not the company we are without you all contributing to the overall product(s).

@jmason888

With the second generation devices, I’m excited to see Inovelli focusing on what I see as your core competencies—really awesome switches—for which there is nothing comparable on the market. (Yeah, smart bulbs too, Illumin is pretty cool…) I can’t wait to see what comes out of R&D in the next year or so… And I think a program like this might help get the word out to new potential customers.

I agree!

@jmason888

My home automation journey really ought to be its own post

Let’s see it! I’d love to read it – I think there is an older post here by @simriv123 (How did you end up deeeeeep in home automation? - Digital Lounge - Inovelli Community) that was an interesting one – but yeah, I’d love to have a separate post talking about people’s journey’s – it’d be interesting to read and also help us understand where most people start. One of the struggles we have is that most people do not start with Z-Wave (or a hub for that matter) but rather with Alexa/Google and when they want to get serious with their HA journey, they start researching hubs and stumble upon us.

@jmason888

the money you spent on Amazon “sponsored” placement worked: before I got into Z-Wave I was buying Kasa switches, and Amazon kept suggesting Inovelli gear.

Yeah that’s great to hear – we actually have really good metrics with Amazon sponsored ads, but it’s good to see the anecdotal evidence vs just seeing Amazon’s data lol

@jmason888

What finally won me over was the support: I thought about the most difficult use case in my house: a virtual three-way between lights on two different circuits, where two-way sync would be needed. I had some ideas about this and opened a ticket… and got a response the same day from @Eric_Inovelli basically saying that it was an interesting question and deferring to @EricM_Inovelli who had the complete answer within a couple of days.

I remember this for sure – I think I even said it was above my pay-grade lol

@jmason888

I don’t know how you folks manage such great support, with responses from the founders to customer inquiries, but I was impressed.

We appreciate it, definitely hard work (as well as a work in progress) as it’s such a small team, but we’re all passionate about HA so that helps!

@jmason888

I just saw that my first shipment of Red Series dimmers has been delivered. I’m so excited to install them this weekend!

Keep us posted! Happy to help

@amdbuilder

What about offering points for creative usage ideas? It’s easy to say the product is great, but being able to show examples (think recipe book) may have more value.

Doing it “right” in my mind you would have a list on your website that could be filtered by hub and Inovelli device. Then the user would know this idea would work for their specific equipment.

Yeah definitely, question for you – our first thoughts were to put them in the, “tips and tricks” section where each hub is located in the community.

ie: Hubitat = https://community.inovelli.com/c/hubitat/hubitat-tips-tricks/18

However, we will be building something similar to what you suggest in the next couple of months in that we’ll be creating a, “blog” (it’s not really a blog, but more of a, “choose your own adventure”) where you can read through various use cases and at the end of each article, we’ll list links on how to do that with your hub. This then leads to our Knowledge Base (support.inovelli.com).

I suppose we could list it in both places which should help with SEO.

@kreene1987

Tier 1: Direct Purchases - Should probably be 75% weight or more because this directly impacts your bottom line.

1. Self-Purchases (really appreciate purchases since 1/1, but even further back would be better. I think since V2 was released).
2. Referred purchases (add a referral code system like Tesla OR by username on purchase form entry?) This could be added to checkout form.
3. Leaving an approved review over 250 characters

Love it – we’ll have to brainstorm a bit around the referral program as my gut instinct tells me this could be abused, but then again, at the end of the day more products are sold, so that’s always good. However, I definitely agree with @Chris in that I don’t want it to tarnish any reputation we’ve built nor the credibility if every post on FB, Reddit, etc is, “buy Inovelli and be sure to use the code: xyz” (I’m being dramatic, but you get the point). I do, however think that people should be rewarded for spreading the news in a credible way.

@kreene1987

Tier 2: Support/Community Involvement

1. Marked as Solution posts
2. Top 25% and Top 5% tiers counted ~monthly
3. Beta software testing/bug discovery
4. Clicked links to support articles.

Love the addition of #2 and #3 here. #4 is good too and we were thinking of trying to figure out a way to have people actually read the support articles without just clicking the link and receiving points without learning anything. Maybe put a 3 question quiz at the bottom to earn the points? I’m not sure.

@kreene1987

Tier 3: Social Media

1. Videos broadcasting company
2. Social Media tagging (not sure how you would integrate?)
3. Community joins from social media (via registration form)

Awww yeah – now we’re cooking!

@kreene1987

Tiers could add up to “insider” rank
Insider

1. First crack at beta testing registration
2. Beta testing software
3. Priority Support (some of us DO have issues still!)

This is good too – I like these! The Priority Support is pretty easy to accomplish as Zoho Desk allows you to tag someone as Priority and the goal (separate project) was to tag priority people, people who have spent $x amount over their lifetime, etc.

@kreene1987

Insiders should get 10% off products and merch always.

Could be something!

@zavex

@kreene1987

Leaving an approved review over 250 characters

It might be worth avoid this. It can devalue the reviews - even if they are actually legitimate. It may make people question if they were done for the “reward” or because they really feel that way about the product.

There is definitely a fine line here that we’ll have to balance. Also, oftentimes English is not the first language so it may discourage someone from writing a review.

@Chris

Interesting idea.
I think the biggest concern, is that a financial reward will push some people to jump through the program hoops for the sake of the reward. IE post a lot of reviews that don’t really say much, answer a lot of forum questions with barely-acceptable answers, etc.

I do very much like the idea of an incentive for people who drive the community and create a lot of good content. I am just encouraging caution to avoid unexpected negative results.

This is especially true with an affiliate program- you don’t want to find Inovelli affiliate spam causing problems on other websites. And if half the recommendations online to buy Inovelli carry an affiliate link, that may end up reducing the brand’s credibility as it could be viewed like a MLM program.

I’m just saying- as you create the problem, be always thinking ‘how will a moron abuse this’.

Yeah totally – you raise a great point and something we encourage everyone everywhere in our company (ok, there’s 7 of us lol) – is to be real. Customer service will talk to you like you’re a real person – our responses are not scripted and even if our product doesn’t solve a solution, we’ll recommend a competitor in a heartbeat.

We definitely do not want to tarnish this reputation with spam. I love your last sentence and will keep that in mind!

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@datavortex – I didn’t want to copy your entire post as this response is getting long, but I’m going to let you know that your response really hit home and I actually copy/pasted it to the team we’re working with. You’re absolutely right in every paragraph – thank you!

@Melerann

I think a country-specific community subboard is something that would help bigtime. I remember when I first found you guys how much of a pain it was to get product to Canada, and how bulk opportunities didnt exist until some fellow canadians explained thier meathods for getting around things. Even just broad catagories like: Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Ect. Would help a ton.

I’m going to move this to a new topic as I’d love to discuss your thoughts on this. I think it’s a great idea and we’ve talked internally about it before – we just couldn’t think of a good way to design it. What we’re talking about here is the Rewards Program, so I didn’t want to confuse people.

@vreihen

How about Detroit Lions tickets in the Inovelli VIP corporate suite at Ford Field???

LOL – That would actually be pretty sweet. We’ll have to sell more switches to afford that VIP suite though!

If only the Red Wings weren’t absolutely terrible… I’d like to go to the new arena.

@gibbor

In addition to the redeemable points, you could track the total lifetime points earned and give bonuses at certain milestones. For example, when you have X number of lifetime points you get free stickers, t-shirt, hat, switch, discount on next purchase, etc.

That’s an interesting idea!

[DaMadOne]

That response was perfect! Legitimate LOL moment!

[Melerann]

@Eric_Inovelli Thanks for taking the time to reply to all of us, and admitting the red wings are terrible

A couple thoughts that came to mind reading your posts:

1. I think more than getting points for tips and tricks, helping newbies get through their first expirence should be rewarded even more.

Many of us started smarthomes by accident and ended up in a world full of pros speaking a different language that you have no idea how to speak and boards that are so long you can’t find solutions easily (Let alone solutions you understand).

Maybe having a tier system that rewards newbies for asking questions, and pros for giving solutions would be helpful for the culture we would want. Even just an email saying “We want to help you, so any questions you ask for the first 20 days get you 1.5 points, if you ask a unique question or well explained problem we will give you 5× points!”

Then people in the 3rd tier would get many opportunities to answer questions, direct to answers, and then even clean up/merge unwanted posts after without making the newbie feel dumb, since they got bonus points! The idea is to encourage community involvement as opposed to perfect forums. The sub could even have a note saying posts are cleaned up constantly.

2. The other thought I had was about Swag. Its nice to have the big backpacks and leather jackets at the end of the rainbow, but maybe in the beginning have something cool available as an easy grab, like an inovelli bottle opener, phone charger, tiny screwdriver or EDC credit card (or all of the above and they pick one). That way they have an initial goal for getting involved in the community after they get the welcome gift, then they move up an tier and you open up all the other swag available.

[MarkTr]

@Melerann

something cool available as an easy grab, like an inovelli bottle opener, phone charger, tiny screwdriver or EDC credit card

Or something useful for installing Inovelli parts! Maybe a non-contact voltage tester, one of those tools which are really handy for not killing yourself when opening a switch box, aren’t super pricey, but aren’t in many beginners’ toolboxes. But a bottle opener could also be positioned as critical for celebrating after your successful installation.

[Brianna_Inovelli]

@MarkTr

Maybe a non-contact voltage tester, one of those tools which are really handy for not killing yourself when opening a switch box,

This is a great idea! I’m always looking for “swag” ideas that aren’t a usb stick or a popsocket … and aren’t sports tickets either haha

[Ma2J]

@MarkTr

Or something useful for installing Inovelli parts! Maybe a non-contact voltage tester

Of course it would be branded… Right?

[Eric_Inovelli]

@Melerann

Thanks for taking the time to reply to all of us, and admitting the red wings are terrible

Lol, I miss the days of Federov, Yzerman and Shanahan. One of my favorite memories was when they won the cup against the Flyers. I was born in Michigan, but moved to NJ when I was 7 and Flyers fans were so obnoxious and that year the Red Wings swept them. But, they have fallen so far and were dead last this year. Hopefully with the return of Yzerman, he can turn them around.

@Melerann

1. I think more than getting points for tips and tricks, helping newbies get through their first expirence should be rewarded even more.

Many of us started smarthomes by accident and ended up in a world full of pros speaking a different language that you have no idea how to speak and boards that are so long you can’t find solutions easily (Let alone solutions you understand).

Maybe having a tier system that rewards newbies for asking questions, and pros for giving solutions would be helpful for the culture we would want. Even just an email saying “We want to help you, so any questions you ask for the first 20 days get you 1.5 points, if you ask a unique question or well explained problem we will give you 5× points!”

Yeah I like this and it definitely goes along with what we’re trying to do (making the community and knowledge-base and community a resource for people.

@Melerann

Then people in the 3rd tier would get many opportunities to answer questions, direct to answers, and then even clean up/merge unwanted posts after without making the newbie feel dumb, since they got bonus points! The idea is to encourage community involvement as opposed to perfect forums. The sub could even have a note saying posts are cleaned up constantly.

I’d honestly love this – heck, it’d be great to have someone clean up the community and make it more searchable. But I also do like rewarding people for asking questions and getting them, “hooked” on how awesome this community is.

@Melerann

The other thought I had was about Swag. Its nice to have the big backpacks and leather jackets at the end of the rainbow, but maybe in the beginning have something cool available as an easy grab, like an inovelli bottle opener, phone charger, tiny screwdriver or EDC credit card (or all of the above and they pick one). That way they have an initial goal for getting involved in the community after they get the welcome gift, then they move up an tier and you open up all the other swag available.

We can definitely do something like this

@MarkTr

Or something useful for installing Inovelli parts! Maybe a non-contact voltage tester, one of those tools which are really handy for not killing yourself when opening a switch box, aren’t super pricey, but aren’t in many beginners’ toolboxes. But a bottle opener could also be positioned as critical for celebrating after your successful installation.

Dang, now we’re talking. Inovelli branded champagne?!

@Ma2J

Of course it would be branded… Right?

We were thinking maybe something GE branded that doesn’t work properly

[Eric_Inovelli]

Hey so we had a great meeting with the development team today and we’re going to do some more brainstorming internally with your inputs.

What we’re leaning towards doing is something like Delta or Marriott where you will receive points and a, “status” (ie: Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc). Status is good for a defined period of time (TBD), but your points will not expire.

More to come – what we could use your help on right now is coming up with some ideas around the levels – there will be 4-5 of them.

We want something that will give a nod to either gaming, home automation, or something techie.

[Melerann]

How Nerdy we talking? Because I mean Dragonborn is my preferred title

[Eric_Inovelli]

You talking D&D or Skyrim lol?

[Melerann]

Tier 4 = D&D Dragonborn
Tier 5 = Skyrim Dragonborn

[jmason888]

@Melerann

in the beginning have something cool available as an easy grab, like an inovelli bottle opener, phone charger, tiny screwdriver or EDC credit card

Or an Inovelli inductive voltage tester, linesman’s pliers, or headlamp… those are things many of use would use regularly given our Inovelli addiction. I, for one, open a junction box far more often that I open a beer .

Edit: @MarkTr, apparently you had the same idea…