Social media is no longer just a place for sharing funny cat videos, it’s become a powerful way to connect with customers, build loyalty, and boost sales. But for many retailers, getting customers to like, follow and tag your brand on social media can be tricky. In fact, only 17% of people post about their favourite brands on social media.
That’s where DataCandy’s Social Rewards comes in. This Pro-level feature lets you reward loyalty members for engaging with your brand on Instagram—directly integrating these actions into your loyalty program. In other words, you’re giving your customers a real incentive to interact with your social media.
By the end of this post, you’ll see how Social Rewards can not only grow your social presence but also strengthen your loyalty program and drive repeat business. For additional tips on marketing your retail loyalty program, explore our blog featuring seven effective promotion strategies.
What is DataCandy’s Social Rewards Feature?
DataCandy’s Social Rewards feature lets retailers turn everyday Instagram interactions into tangible loyalty rewards. Instead of social media engagement existing in silo, this feature connects your Instagram activity directly to your loyalty program—so every tag, mention, and follow can drive measurable customer action.
With Social Rewards, you can award bonus loyalty points when members complete specific actions, such as:
- Follow and DM to confirm their follow. This keeps members connected to updates on products, promotions, and events.
- Tagging or mentioning your business in their posts, stories, or reels
- Using a custom hashtag you define, helping you track campaign participation and boost brand visibility in niche audiences
Once you’ve decided which social actions to reward, you can tailor how often members can earn points to best suit your marketing goals and customer engagement strategy.
Retailers can customize campaign frequency to match the desired level of interaction and program objectives:
- One-time only for onboarding bursts: Perfect for welcoming new loyalty members and giving them an immediate incentive to engage with your brand on social media. This helps kickstart early participation and builds momentum from the very beginning.
- Recurring for ongoing engagement: Encourage consistent activity by rewarding members for repeated social actions, like tagging your store in posts and using a branded hashtag. This helps keep your loyalty program top-of-mind and maintains steady interaction over time.
- Limited-time seasonal pushes: Create urgency and excitement by offering bonus points during special events, holidays, or product launches. Limited-time campaigns can drive short-term spikes in social engagement and align your online activity with in-store promotions.
By adjusting campaign frequency to your audience and business needs, Social Rewards ensures that every interaction feels purposeful—whether it’s sparking initial engagement, sustaining ongoing activity, or amplifying seasonal campaigns.
The best part? Setting up Social Rewards is quick and easy! All you have to do is connect your social media accounts, choose the actions you want to reward (like follows or mentions), set the points, and turn it on.
By automating point awards and verification, it takes the manual work off your plate, letting you focus on providing the best possible experience for your customers—while watching your social engagement grow on autopilot.
How Social Rewards Benefit Your Retail Business
1. Social Rewards Grow Your Social Media Following
Your loyalty members are already some of your most engaged and high-value customers. By rewarding them for following you on Instagram, you’re adding high-intent, local followers who are much more likely to engage with your content and shop with you again.
Here’s what makes this so impactful:
- High-intent audience: Followers are already loyalty members who have demonstrated interest in your brand.
- Increased engagement: These followers are more likely to interact with your posts, stories, and promotions.
- Promotion visibility: Every new follower expands the audience that sees your seasonal campaigns, limited-time offers, and product launches.
In a real-world example, a national thrift retailer piloted Social Rewards and saw 53% of their new Instagram followers come from loyalty members engaging with the program. By leveraging their existing loyalty members to grow their social presence, Social Rewards not only turned their most engaged shoppers into brand ambassadors but also gave them more opportunities to reach their customers with promotions and special offers.
2. Social Rewards Turns Customers into Content Creators
Did you know that 88% of customers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising? This means that when customers tag your store, post about their purchases, or share their experiences online, they’re essentially creating free, authentic marketing content for your brand.
With Social Rewards, you’re not just encouraging this behaviour—you’re showing customers that you appreciate it. By rewarding them for their posts, you make them feel valued for spreading the word about your brand, which can strengthen emotional loyalty and inspire them to share even more.
The benefits of leveraging user-generated content (UGC) extend beyond just marketing:
- Builds trust and credibility: Prospective customers are more likely to trust recommendations from real people than branded ads.
- Drives engagement: Posts created by customers generate comments, likes, and shares, increasing your visibility on social media platforms.
- Keeps your content fresh: UGC helps maintain a constantly updated feed full of real-life moments, which can save time and resources compared to creating all original content internally.
- Encourages repeat visits: Seeing themselves or others featured can motivate members to return to your store and create more content. Additionally, members are motivated to return and redeem points they’ve earned through social actions since nobody wants their hard-earned points to go to waste.
Returning to our example of the national thrift retailer that tested DataCandy’s Social Rewards feature: within just one month, 12 loyalty members tagged the business on social media. This resulted in boosting brand visibility to over 45,000 new users and generating more than 3,000 likes. It’s a clear example of how Social Rewards can transform loyal customers into a powerful, organic marketing force that drives ongoing brand awareness.
Check out our blog with tips on how to maximize user-generated content for your business with a little help from your loyalty program.
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3. Collect Valuable Customer Insights from Social Engagement
Every follow, tag, or mention isn’t just a boost to your visibility, it’s also a valuable piece of customer data you can use to better understand your audience. Because Social Rewards is integrated with your loyalty program, these social interactions are tied to individual member profiles. That means you can see not only who is engaging with your brand online, but also how those actions connect to in-store visits, purchase behaviour, and overall lifetime value.
By connecting social activity with loyalty accounts, you gain clarity on the broader picture and the agility to adjust your social strategy.
- Spot trends in customer interests by tracking which posts, hashtags, or promotions drive the most engagement
- Refine your social strategy based on data insights—pivoting messaging, formats, or timing to better align with your audience and loyalty goals.
- Personalize marketing with offers that match members’ demonstrated interests and activity
On average, businesses using DataCandy Social Rewards saw 10% of new loyalty members share their Instagram handle at sign-up, with top performers hitting as high as 15%. Over time, this data helps you fine-tune both your loyalty strategy and your social media content for maximum impact.
4. Social Rewards Adds Value to Your Loyalty Program
Social Rewards doesn’t just grow your social presence, it adds value and interactivity to your loyalty program. On average, people are enrolled in 14.8 loyalty programs but are only actively engaged in 6.7 of them. That means many programs are competing for attention, and the ones that stand out are the ones that feel rewarding and worthwhile.
By integrating Social Rewards into your loyalty program, you add value to your loyalty program by:
- Creating more ways to earn points: Social Rewards expands earning opportunities beyond purchases, making your program feel richer, more dynamic, and more fun.
- Boosting interactivity: Offering multiple paths to earn, whether it’s tagging your brand, posting a photo, or following on Instagram, keeps the experience fresh and encourages ongoing participation.
When members can engage with your loyalty program both in-store and online, they’re more likely to become active participants rather than passive sign-ups. This creates a cycle where social activity fuels loyalty engagement, which drives more visits, more purchases, and higher lifetime value.
For more strategies on increasing engagement with your loyalty program, check out our guide on using loyalty program analytics to fuel customer activity.
Final Thoughts
In a world where customers are enrolled in numerous loyalty programs but actively engage with only a fraction, Social Rewards helps your brand stand out by giving members tangible reasons to participate. It strengthens emotional loyalty, drives repeat visits, and ultimately increases lifetime value.
With easy setup, automated point tracking, and flexible campaign options, Social Rewards lets you focus on providing the best customer experience while your social engagement grows on autopilot. Start leveraging your most loyal customers today to build a more connected, interactive, and successful loyalty program.
Discover how DataCandy Social Rewards can turn your social media followers into loyal customers and drive measurable results for your business.
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