This guide attempts to answer many of the frequently asked questions about PunchTab and our products. If you don't find something here you can check out our feedback forum or send an email to support@punchtab.com.
PunchTab is the world’s first instant loyalty platform that allows website owners (including bloggers), application developers and brands to create a social and mobile-enabled loyalty program for free in minutes. We have two popular products today, both of which cost nothing to use:
There are four main components of the PunchTab loyalty solution for your site:
All of the above components of the PunchTab solution cost nothing to use, including a default catalog of rewards that are provided free of charge by PunchTab and its partners.
The PunchTab giveaway widget allows your users to earn entries into a raffle for a prize that you provide by taking the following actions on your site:
At the end of a time period that you set the giveaway will end; the system will then let you choose a winner at random and contact them by email. You can choose more than one winner.
All loyalty programs and giveaways provide basic analytics and statistics about user activity.
To set up a loyalty program on your site you can simply visit the homepage of PunchTab.com and sign up using your email address and domain. Make sure to provide a valid email address; this is where we’ll email you a temporary password to log back in and manage your loyalty program. Also make sure to use just the domain component of your website address (eg. domain.com, do not use www.domain.com) unless you are on a blogging platform like Blogger where you’ll want to use the full URL. The installation wizard will take you through the steps of getting your loyalty program up and running on your site with in-line help along the way. You should take this time to change the password we emailed you to something that you’ll remember.
After installing you should log out of PunchTab.com and visit your site and make sure that the program is working. You should see a red Rewards tab appear on the side of your site (this can be customized, see below); any social sharing buttons or comment boxes that you already have will automatically be detected and a red ribbon will appear next to them (these can be turned off, see below). Not all social sharing buttons and comment boxes are supported (see the Earning Opportunities section for more details).
Continue to test by logging into your new loyalty program by clicking on the red Rewards tab that appears on your site using Facebook. If you get an error message instead of a login screen then check the following:
If everything is working then you will see your leaderboard with the early PunchTab team members pre-populated. You can click between the leaderboard and your catalog. Users can immediately start to earn points (see the Earning Opportunities section for a complete list of ways users can earn points).
A good next step is to customize your rewards catalog by reading the Catalog section below.
To further customize the look and feel of your loyalty you can visit the following article which teaches you how to style the Rewards tab and ribbons any way you like:
http://blog.punchtab.com/index.php/2011/07/customizing-punchtab-for-your-site
Your users can earn points on your site in the following ways; a small red ribbon will appear next to supported social sharing buttons and comment boxes automatically.
Currently we do not support third party social sharing widgets but fully support generic:
We also only support the following commenting systems Facebook, Wordpress (requires plugin), Typepad, Blogger, DISQUS.
As you can see the maximum number of loyalty points that a user can earn in one day is 500.
We also have a developer kit that allows you to define custom earning actions. You can go to our blog and find examples showing how you can use it: Simple Javascript SDK Tutorial – Reward Enable Your Website and if you are interested, you can get access to the SDK by activating your developer account on PunchTab.
Once users earn enough points they can redeem points from a rewards catalog. When you first sign up you will be using the Default Catalog provided free of charge by PunchTab and its partners or you can switch to a Custom Catalog at any time.
The default catalog is provided free of charge by PunchTab and its partners. It features high quality gift cards from some great brands. The contents of this catalog can change at any time based on availability; the points required to redeem will also change based on negotiated offers and as we add ways for your users to earn points faster. When a user redeems points from the default catalog on your site you will get an email to let you know; the user will get an email letting them know that PunchTab will take care of getting them their reward.
The custom catalog is the best way to align incentives to attract the right kind of users to your site. For instance, if you are using the Default Catalog the rewards may not be targeted to the interests of your users or community. You know your users best and you’ll have the best idea if the type of users you want to attract should be earning towards getting a gift card or something custom.
You can quickly set up your custom catalog by browsing to the Catalog section of your Loyalty Program after logging into PunchTab.com. Here you can enter a brief description and how many points the user must earn before being able to redeem for each custom reward.
When a user redeems from the custom catalog you will be notified by email; you must then contact the user by email (provided automatically) to provide delivery. The user will be notified by email letting them know that you will contact them shortly and the appropriate number of points will be deducted from their redeemable points balance.
You can delete any reward from the custom catalog at any time or add as many rewards as you like. Remember that you are responsible for the costs and delivery of all rewards in your custom catalog.
Due to the nature of our various partnerships you cannot combine the default rewards and custom rewards.