Good to know about buying direct vs. Amazon, I had been using Amazon Affiliate links (which it appears quite a few people have used) I love your products to I’m happy to talk about them, create videos etc. regardless of any reward programs.
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@Melerann – I’ll respond first thing tomorrow – I just updated the post above based on a lot of your feedback and we appreciate it!
Thanks everyone for your feedback, we’ve had a ton of fun working on this and have a lot of ideas to bring to the team designing and coding this. More to come tomorrow (Sept 10), but we’d love any continued feedback you have.
We think we’re really close to something awesome!
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This is wise. I think brand loyalty is something Inovelli shouldn’t bother with right now because that’ll come on its own among more technical customers. The product and feature set really does speak for itself.
Using myself as an example- I narrowed my choices down to HomeSeer, Inovelli, and Zooz (in that order). From using all 3 I settled on Inovelli- not being able to individually address the LEDs is a downside, but having the config button as a scene trigger is a major upside (better WAF than multi-tap) and firmware development is far more active than HomeSeer. Plus, cost is less than HomeSeer and I like you guys a lot 
So I’m now brand-loyal based on the product alone.
What I think has value to everybody is rewarding correctly (and perhaps very completely) answered questions in the forum. ‘Buy an Inovelli dimmer, if you have any problem 50 people on the forum will fall over each other to help you make it work’ is a good selling point. That can be taken care of with voting or with the submitter marking various responses as ‘this helped me’ (make that button prominent in Q&A forums). I think this is what should be focused on as it’ll both improve engagement and education and further augment your already excellent support.
As for rewards- The easiest one is forum badges. Things like ‘trusted helper’ for people who post a lot of good answers, or maybe automatically highlight posts by trusted people in a help request thread.
Another obvious one for people who post a lot of helpful info would be a beta program invite, where they get either free or for a big discount beta test hardware or firmware. That would probably have two levels- one for beta firmware, and a second for beta hardware. It would have to be made clear that the goal is not to make people work to become beta testers, but rather that you are using participation to select a group of reliable helpful testers.
Beta hardware might run into liability issues if the test device hasn’t yet had UL or equivalent certification.
I also think there should be a badge for ‘certified electrician’, that is issued manually by sending in a copy of a license. There may not be many of those here yet, but that gets to my next point- installers.
If you want to make a lot of sales, courting electricians might be a good idea. Getting brand loyalty out of me or someone like me gets you 5-30 products sold. Getting brand loyalty out of a sparky gets you 100’s or 1000’s of products sold. The big automation guys push Crestron / Lutron Homeworks / Control4 / etc, which are integrated platforms. Ignore them. Focus on the smaller electricians, the ones who do Lutron RadioRA and the like. Also focus on alarm companies- a lot of them are branching out to networks and some automation as well; a few alarm panels have Z-Wave built in and while it’s rudimentary it will integrate. These small operations often push consumer level tech, adding a Z-Wave hub and switches to their product line is a good fit.
As a side note I’d try for a partnership with Honeywell- their Tuxedo alarm panel does Z-Wave, and I’d think having switches that change color based on alarm status could be a thing people would want.
Finally on physical prizes- I think you should stay away from specialized tools for the most part like electrician’s pliers. A non-contact voltage tester might be a nice giveaway (as it’d be used by almost anyone installing the switch). However I think swag is really what you want to focus on- price point is lower and it’s more universal. Not everyone wants a voltage tester, but everyone wants a comfortable T-Shirt, insulated mug, hat, backpack, etc. If I could get a special T-shirt by posting a lot of helpful answers to questions I’d definitely be motivated to do so. Hell, I’d probably buy an Inovelli shirt if it was decent looking and/or had a cool logo/slogan. (My light switch is smarter than I am? :P)
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Hey @Chris I’m not @Eric_Inovelli, but I cant help but want to chat with your points, since thier awesome.
Inovelli definitely wins in the product department. I myself was thinking of bringing my company into the manufacturing game until I found them. But I think part of the aim of the Loyalty program is to stand out in the market. Everyone says thier stuff is the best, but nobody has a loyalty program!
I agree, until inovelli starts gaining mainstream traction with Muggles, this forum will be the biggest thing for customer retention and loyalty. Zooz and Leviton aint got no community forum!
Although i love badges, what happens after i get it? It kinda loses shineyness soon after that.
I think this is the penultimate goal, but when it comes to loyalty, they are still just guys who will want more of a discount and the ability to call customer support and get answers instantly. This loyalty program is to capture the DIY market.
Alarm.com cert might be a bigger target to get on those big boys radars
Noooooooo, I hate non useful swag… but I agree, everyone does that kind of swag because it works.
@Eric_Inovelli Can we make a thread chain where we can brainstorm this? Even if we just have a place for where we can make some dank memes and joke around 
I’ll be handing in my resignation later today as my entire background is in brand marketing lol jk. I understand what you’re saying for sure, but I would argue (albeit with a large bias) that brand building should be front and center at all times.
I agree with you that the feature set speaks for itself, but that can be easily replicated by other brands. What you need is a story and for people to be loyal to spread the word.
Let me tell a quick story and I mean no disrespect to this brand as I think they’re one of the best companies out there from a technological standpoint.
About 3 years ago now when we were launching our Gen 1 switches, we looked to HomeSeer for inspiration as they had all the bells and whistles in their switches. The main one being scene control (ie: double, triple-tap, etc). At the time, we were selling smart plugs and the feature set was also way above par – but what also was way above par was the way we interacted with our customers. We branded ourselves as the brand that’s built by actual smart home owners and we’re people that hopefully you’d like to hang out with and talk home automation. We were responsive in the forums, Reddit, etc and tried our best to go above and beyond with our customer service.
When we launched our Gen 1 switches, we talked about scene control, and we started engaging more around how to continuously improve the products. We talked more about what the product could do for you vs all the technical specs of it as we knew the average person did not care that it had x parameters, byte sizes of y, etc – they just wanted to know you could control your entire house from one switch by double tapping.
Another brand that was out around the same time, which I also have a lot of respect for is Zooz. They were also innovative and we shared the same manufacturer for a while.
So what’s going to separate us from Zooz, HomeSeer and ultimately GE (Honeywell came later – these were the big 3 at the time in Z-Wave)? Brand loyalty.
Now that we’ve launched the Gen 2’s, we’ve seen GE take some inspiration from us by adding scene control on their new switches, we’ve seen Zooz add smart bulb mode (some may argue they’ve done it better than us, but that’s a battle for another day lol) and also add scenes to their switches AND offer incredible pricing (I’m honestly not sure how they’re getting away with it). In addition, we have our old manufacturer selling products under the Eva Logik and Minoston brands. We’ll never be able to beat them with pricing, so we have to beat them with brand loyalty.
So, while your point around it coming on its own does carry merit and I agree – I’m more under the mindset of playing offense. I’ve seen what happened to HomeSeer and Zooz once we entered the market and I’ve talked to Mark (I remember this one time at a Z-Wave Summit he came up to me and introduced himself by saying, “Are you Eric from Inovelli? You guys are kicking our ass right now, nice work.” – I’ll never forget that – cool guy. Point is, I don’t want that to happen to us, so we’re trying to be aggressive in creating that loyalty.
We like you too brotha lol. I’m actually really enjoying this conversation as well as the packaging one.
Totally agree – we were talking about whether or not there was a plug-in or something where people could upvote like on Reddit. I’m still trying to figure out a good way to mark a solution without feeling like Judge Eric on every post!
Yeah definitely – we just installed a plug-in for this so that it will show next to your name and flag. We’ll have some that signify where you are in the rewards program as well as other helpful ones to easily identify people.
Definitely – it’s pretty much how we do it now, just not officially. But to have something official in writing would be good as it would help encourage new testers (not that there is a lack of people asking!)
I think this is a good idea – my only pushback would be to the electrician him/herself – would that open up liabilities to their license as they are volunteering and are not present in the room and are relying off of community pictures? I guess I just want to protect whomever is willing to step forward and help from any liabilities as that’s why we also had to step out of giving official advice. Maybe we have a badge that just says, “wiring expert” or “sparky” lol.
Totally – @anon14959390 leads our B2B sales with these types of customers. We work with all levels (mom/pop shops all the way up to the multi-million dollar companies) and have different Tiers of pricing for each.
What’s funny is that we have been trying with the various alarm companies and all seem to love the idea, but then never bite or their Certification Process takes over a year (looking at you Alarm.com). But we can definitely try with Honeywell too!
Yeah I think you’re right. Another point would be that shirts, mugs, stickers, etc will all be taken outside the house and hopefully be put in front of other people to see the logo, whereas tools remain in the house where only family will see it.
EDIT: I just saw @Melerann’s post after posting! Adding in my responses here
Agree – I’m having fun!
I won’t beat a dead horse here – I got carried away in my response to @Chris lol
Yeah, I think one of the best books I’ve ever read was called, “The Xiaomi Way”, which talked about how important a forum is (and was to their growth) and how you need to treat it as one of the highest priorities as it will ultimately help you from a customer service side as well as keep people engaged with your products if you’re open about them.
Initially, I looked at a forum as more of a hinderance as it required the team to have another place to answer questions and we were already overwhelmed with tickets (still are), so admittedly I put out a half-baked forum on our old site (RIP) and never really engaged. This left a bad taste in my mouth for forums. However, after reading the book and really understanding the point of a forum and being open with customers about problems, new projects, firmware, etc, it really creates a healthy community and generates some amazing brand loyalty.
If you guys haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it as their story is really amazing and very similar to ours. The founders were huge fans of cell phones, specifically Android and wanted to make a cell phone that had the best firmware on it at the best value to customers. They were so passionate about it and had to compete against Apple and Samsung which dominated the Chinese market. The book talks about the strategies that helped them become the #2 brand in China in the cell-phone industry and gives a roadmap to how they did it.
I do see your point, but I also think that having it prominently displayed next to your name can carry some clout and hopefully get people asking questions and tagging you due to your badge and ultimately that will help you earn more points as you’ll be able to answer them.
We could also create some rare badges or something where it’s only given out once a quarter? Idk, I have a Garmin watch and they have something similar whenever you hit a new level. I do plan on starting a new thread that talks about badges and we can brainstorm some cool ones.
Agree – I do want to figure something out for the B2B market, but yes, at the end of the day, I think they just want the lowest price. I still understand @Chris’s point in trying to attract those people, so I’m open to suggestions for sure as there will come a time when we will not be able to compete on pricing and have to balance some other auxiliary benefits.
Bingo – we’re so close too… it’s taken over a year.
Non-useful? You put clothes on, right 
? Kidding, I understand what you mean.
Heck yeah – I want to make one for badges too. Maybe we’ll make a Letterkenny badge for all you Canadians called, “Squirrely Dan”.
//edit up front- sorry for the giant long replies… this is a fun few conversations and I am not always good at being concise. I’ll try to work on that 
That’s really cool- kind of thing that makes me glad to be a HomeSeer customer. Not vilifying those we compete with is often sadly lost in our society these days.
You make a good point about playing offense. So I guess the question then is… how do you create loyalty to a light switch? To me, my mental classification of the Red switch is ‘same level as HomeSeer 200 series, with extra button, only one addressable LED, with LED brightness control, with 3way flexibility, without z-wave association 3way, cost $10ish less than HS-WD200+’. It’s nice but I’m loyal (to the hardware) for the functionality and price point. What gives me personally brand loyalty is this forum and how you communicate with your customers- as respected peers not as sheep to be herded and managed. As I said in my other long post in the package thread, there’s no ‘thank you for your suggestion we will give it to the product team’, rather, the product team themselves are here engaging. That’s sadly rare these days 
Back on topic- brand loyalty, and rewards. You want people to buy your products, ideally direct but if they buy from Amazon or B&M that’s good too. So I’d suggest have a way to redeem Amazon and B&M purchases in this program. You never want there to be a ‘I would buy this, but I won’t get credit’ situation. So I suggest maybe have a bot where one can paste in an Amazon order # to redeem credit, and for B&M put a unique code in the box to redeem credit. That can then become a callout on the back of the box- ‘join our loyalty program code inside all Inovelli purchases qualify’
IMHO, you beat them on product features. I have a Zooz switch and a bunch of their plugin modules (which work really well). The switch has only basic scene control, no LED notifications, and the scene control overlaps with their config stuff so triple tap puts it in include/exclude mode even though that triggers a scene also. Can’t beat their price though.
Same
You should put this on the website somewhere, like a ‘join our reseller program!’ link. For a lot of them, I think a partnership with a hub company (something simple) would be a good fit- a reseller pack of a hub and a few switches and BRAIN DEAD SIMPLE instructions for the pairing setup would go over well.
Yes exactly. Turn people into walking billboards
[quote=“Eric_Inovelli, post:67, topic:4750”]
Yeah, I think one of the best books I’ve ever read was called, “The Xiaomi Way”[/quote]
This is on my reading list now!
You guys have done a GREAT job growing this forum from a blank canvas to a healthy community. I suggest if you are swamped with support tickets, tweak the support site to try and funnel some questions to the forum.
We had a good discussion in the new site thread a while back and I know you guys are working on that. But right now, when you click on support in the main menu, submitting a ticket is front and center while going on the forum requires an extra click or two. I think they should be presented as equal options.
Wait, is my webcam open? 
@Melerann’s point is well taken, we all love useful stuff. But a $10 T-shirt turns you into a billboard, a $20 voltage tester is seen by nobody. Maybe that’d be a second level reward.
I avoid branded t-shirts in general for that reason. I could be persuaded to, but I need good reasons and being an Inovelli fan isn’t quite enough. If it’s comfortable, I’d wear it around the house. But for me to wear it in public where it serves its marketing purposes the shirt would need to look good, fit well, and preferably have geeky references/humor while simultaneously not looking blantantly billboard.
I think the voltage tester would be more useful as a free include in a “getting started” bundle package for beginners like some switches, bulbs, and a hub. It would take a lot to put something like that together, but that’s where I see the tester fitting.
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I LOVE this idea.
Legally things would have to be worded right so nobody takes it as encouraging newbies to screw with wiring they don’t understand. IE, ‘this package is for the experienced DIYer who understands 120v wiring’.
That said, I think it’s a great idea if Inovelli can find a good hub partner for this. Personally I hope it’s one of the non-cloud companies but that’s just my 2c 
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Whats to stop you from going the other way? High end market? I know you have to choose between the two markets, but why not shoot for the top rather than undercut each other? I think there is room for a smart switch that does it all, with all the bells and whistles. Right now it seems that niche only gets filled in the wifi space.
Thats what I love about Entrepreneurs. Its sports for grown ups. I think you and Mark will have fun competing for a long time, mostly because throughout this forum it seems you genuinely respect eachother.
Might be worthwhile to call the old crew “alpha testers” and market “beta testers”. That way Alphas can still be invitation only.
Also what would happen if they lie or lose their Cert? It would open you guys up for liability, since you recommended them. I think keep the titles informal and avoiding official language like that might be better. Lol “Sparky”, That was my first job after the market crash, then I realized how boring residential is and got out of that fast.
No audiobook version Now i have to read a real book?
Now your comment on the language stuff makes complete sense. I was looking at thier Smarthome forum, not thier smartphone forum.
Some kind of metric that indicates prestige, whether it be forum replies, or solutions awarded, if you have a number of tier badge it goes a long way for both the persons modivation, and the consumers trust in the answer.
Leviton just launched a loyalty program for just installers, maybe that could be a place to start?
[quote=“Eric_Inovelli, post:67, topic:4750”]
Im not surprised, they are becoming a dinosaur, is there any other upstarts coming into the game to challenge them yet?
Hey man I’m a Canuk! We dont wear T-Shirts until the temperature goes up to -20 at least! 
I don’t wear t-shirts when meeting with clients, instead I wear a blank polo or button down shirt, so if you have swag like a tablet bag, coffee mug or gift screwdriver for faceplates, even if i dont make the sale you will get advertising. And I imagine that would apply to most other installers or designers.
I was thinking that the Canadian techs get the “Red Green” badge
I think a challenge right now @Chris is we both have loyalty to @Eric_Inovelli rather than Inovelli itself. What Eric is trying to do is scale that system up (Correct me if I’m wrong, im doing some assuming again).
He cant keep drinking Monsters forever and living on this forum, so he is making a way to find, encourage and groom and army of people who care about eachother. This will free him up long term to focus on development and stratagy, as opposed to getting opinions from us on what color packages should be and how to fix XYZ error code. If he can create an enviroment of collaberation and innovation.
Then @Brianna_Inovelli can make a post about the aesthetics of the new Smart Door handle lock marketing campaign (
) and we will all help her out. Then @anon14959390 can post about a b2b stratagy and we can suggest ways to improve it, or who he should target. A new user will ask for the millionth time how to pair the new Green-Eco-Zwave switch with hubitat and some other user will be excited he saw the post first and gets to answer.
The idea is to move the brand loyalty from @Eric_Inovelli to one that is bigger than even the corperation itself, and into a tribe status like Apple or the Boston Bruins.
Oooooo maybe base it on a typical bedroom? 1 main light switch and 2 bulbs for the lamps. Scene activate the light switch to turn on the bulbs?
Yea, hopefully Smartthings right?
Also I suggested this as the beginner tier swag giveaway, not the voltage tester. I can never seem to have enough of them and still have a few from over a decade ago. Like GE Simon XT days.
Note: I am on a picture mood lately, let me know if you all approve.
Agree 100%. If I had any criticism for Inovelli, it’s that it seems like everybody knows their product is premium market except them. While Zooz and GE are competitors of Inovelli’s, I feel they have different target audiences. HomeSeer (unabashedly premium) is selling their switches for $50ish, and Inovelli exceeds HomeSeer in features. Zooz wants to be the budget brand that works well, and they fill this space perfectly. And GE has the GE name.
That’s not to say I think Inovelli should increase to $50/unit- I think their $38/unit price just makes them a no brainer. I think just under $40 ($39.95) is the ideal spot, and I
would consider them a great value at that price point. At their current price of $38.97 or $35.00 (in 10-packs) they’re an even better deal.
Agreed 100%. Mind if I borrow that ‘sports for grown ups’ quote? it’s so true. And that’s the mark of a true sportsman- winning is good, but playing the game the right way is more important; you want to win but you also applaud your opponent for winning or skillful gameplay.
I think the deal with ‘beta firmware’ is that ‘releasing’ a firmware requires an expensive certification process, so officially all the firmware is ‘beta’ and doesn’t ship loaded on a product so they can have rapid public releases without spending a fortune and a ton of time certifying each release.
So maybe it’d be ‘alpha tester’ and ‘hardware beta tester’…
Agreed. Informal titles would be a good way to go.
Grab the e-book and run it through text to speech
I think just make it obvious that there IS an installer program with discounts. Then offer resources to help installers get started with smart home tech and add this to their own product line.
I think an alliance with a hub vendor maybe, where a hub can ship pre-paired with a few switches, so you can just install the thing and go…
I like Eric a lot. But his ideas and the company culture he creates are far more important than Eric himself. These ideas CAN scale, it’s just hard- when you’re a small startup there’s only a few of you, you can have an all-hands meeting at Starbucks, and people are their first names (Eric, Brianna, Courtney, etc). When the company is 200 people that’s a lot harder.
But the ideals can stay, if the ideals stay in the company culture and are enforced by its leadership. For example, anyone in a public facing department must register for the forum and spend one hour per week on the forum. Obviously some major roles (CEO, CTO, etc) will get a ton of direct messages and may need an assistant to direct some of their traffic. But that is no different than the executive support department at any large company, that opens the ‘Dear CEO, I’ve tried to make this work for 3 months but nobody will help me’ letter and lights a fire under peoples asses to solve the problem.
Put differently- this forum works because the company asks for ideas and listens to the suggestions and interacts directly with no PR-speak. Nobody has ever said ‘thank you for your suggestion I will forward it to the product team’. Keeping that attitude and the resulting loyalty doesn’t require Eric on the forum, it requires Eric to make sure that the culture he has created isn’t lost as Inovelli expands.
Sadly that was done (Holiday pack)… unfortunately not many people went for it 
All the unboxed dimmers and bulbs were just dismantled holiday packs that didn’t sell. Now perhaps the Holiday pack’s problem was that it was two big- should have been 1-2 dimmers and 1-2 bulbs so much lower price. But that’s a separate discussion.
Yes these should be among the choices. Maybe the voltage tester should be in there too. There should be a broad choice. But little tools like that are great swag. USB sticks too.
Fine by me
From the moment I saw thier box, and black backplate I knew these guys were aiming to excel. Even the feel of the packaging paper screamed quality. Made me worried thier price was going to shoot up lol.
Its funny though because there is no switch zwave that does more than scene/bulb control really. I personally don’t see why there couldn’t be a zwave switch that is a touch screen, has a menu and controls multiple scenes/switches. (Maybe start with a 3 gang and work your way down in size). Or one that can operate as both a zwave and zigbee repeater instead of one or the other. (Probably there is a reason for these things that I don’t know). Or even one with a motion sensor built into it like the ecobee switch+.
100%! Though remember me when you get rich and famous.
I remember when I did a presentation at our Short term rental society and gave away a ton of secrets to oir companies marketing success, especially in standing out and being unique. At the end of the presentation some guy asked me what was keeping him from copying my business model. I told him to do it! And the reason I wasn’t worried was that I would out-work and out maneuver him into the ground if he tried to compete directly with me
I love it because it is a team sport and a solo sport. Mark and Eric both want Zwave to get huge on one hand, and compete with each other on the other.
100% agree
I agree, i think he is trying to make that culture on the forums user base first, so new employees will come into a world where they are collaborators as opposed to administrators and babysitters. The example he is setting right now is from the top, rather than delegated. That’s why I say we are loyal to Eric at this time, because it’s a culture not set in stone yet, but in time will be.
So I think the loyalty program is a great way to tweak things so they can scale up new users.
I recommend this one because thier are cheap, as opposed to a voltage tester which is expensive.
Yes quite true. Even the ‘premium’ HomeSeer comes in a fairly plain printed cardboard box.
You start getting into scene controller territory. As soon as you have a touchscreen people will want to customize it and then you need something more than Z-Wave (WiFi to transfer the programming and firmware into it).
Cost is also a factor. Any of these switches usually have a single chip architecture, where the Z-Wave chip also has a low power processor and some RAM and flash and GPIO to get inputs from the paddles and drive a TRIAC or relay or whatever. ZigBee’s the same way. So for a switch to have multiple technologies and a touch screen, now you need a standalone CPU / single chip system, which then has Z-wave chip and ZigBee chip hanging off it. Or if you’re really clever and one of the chipsets is capable enough, you have one chip (Z-Wave or ZigBee) be the CPU and hang the other one on its data bus like Inovelli does with the Holtek MCU. Either way, your controller cost is double what a normal switch would cost. And most users will pick one or the other (Z-Wave or ZigBee) so half the cost is wasted.
While this is cool, do you really want to pay $150-$250 for an in wall touchscreen switch?
That said, ZigBee’s protocol is largely open, and it’s been announced that Z-Wave will be opened within the next year or so, so in the future it’s possible someone could make a single chip Z-Wave / ZigBee solution. That probably wouldn’t be Silicon Labs (as they have no desire to promote ZigBee) but someone else would. THEN you will have the dual technology switch.
Quite true. The person with more drive and perseverance usually wins.
I know this is getting closer to releasing so this post might be too late, but you should rename the Diamond level to another precious metal to keep the theme of the other levels. Mithril would be my choice.
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Or better yet, unobtainium. Lol
That’s a cool idea. Maybe Titanium though since I have no idea what Mithril is…
(I didn’t look it up but I feel like this is going to be a star wars metal and I’m going to get ripped on for not knowing that. ha ha.)
edit: just looked it up. I guess I wasn’t too far off.
Mithril is made by Dwarves. LOTR. Frodo’s chainmail is mithril.
Pssssh Mortals use Metals like Iron and gold. We need to move to the next gen: Thermonuclear isotopes.
Basic - Plutonium
Advanced - Uranium
Expert - Thorium
Master - Enriched Isotopes
That could create problems with the mail service when you mail swag, like a screwdriver, made of plutonium.
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When someone orders 10,000 light switches, to be delivered to the nearest landfill, but is very concerned about where their reward screwdrivers are mailed to… you may want to call the FBI…