What ARE credit union referral rewards?

by: Gillian Smith

In a recent conversation with a colleague, we had a philosophical, almost existential debate about referral rewards, chiefly, what are referral rewards?

Right now, you might be thinking “that’s a stupid question. Referral rewards are rewards offered as part of a referral program”.  This is true. However, this post is going to take a look at some of the semantics of referral rewards. We’re going to show how marketers can create false denotations for referral rewards and how consumers can be misled in to believing referral rewards are something other than what they are.

During our debate, my colleague mentioned that it must be frustrating for customers to not get the reward they are promised. I stopped him in his tracks: in the programs we create, rewards are not promised. In fact, the whole structure of his sentence and the words used were incorrect. Customers are not frustrated because they “do not get the reward they are promised”. They are frustrated because they “do not qualify for a reward that is contingent on meeting a prescribed set of requirements”.

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