Benefit Tracking Tips
Create and Use Benefit Item Categories
Benefit Items can be assigned to one or more benefit item categories. These categories can be created by you to organize your benefits further. Having your benefits categorized will provide a nice way to group your items in the Benefit Usage Report and the Benefit Item History Report.
To help you develop the category names, think about how you might want to analyze your benefit statistics.
Do you want to see all benefit items that are a particular type of benefit? i.e., Advertising benefits, Other Money-Saving discounts
Would grouping your benefit items by signature event be helpful? You could create a category for each of your five signature events (assuming there were multiple benefits available at each event).
The reports will give you subtotals per category for usage, value, and by transaction type, among other options. Read more about creating categories here.
Be Consistent and Mindful when Recording Adjustment Descriptions
Adjustments should always have a great description. The description is important. If you are consistent and conscious when recording usage to record the words that you want to share with your member, you’ll be glad you planned ahead.
The adjustment description that is available to your staff when they record a usage or change the remaining quantity etc. is something that can be included in reports and eventually as part of the data that can be sent to the benefit owner.
So being conscious of what is written in there - that it is a good, meaningful public description will be important.
Create New Benefit Packages Yearly
To keep your benefit offerings fresh and new, consider changing your benefit offerings each year in accordance with the needs and economic climate of your membership.
Use the Benefit Usage Report and summarize by Benefit Item, Membership Type, or Benefit Category to understand which benefits are less valuable than they once were or see which benefits have become more valuable to your members due to various external reasons.
You might be surprised that a small tweak to your benefit offerings each year, based on statistics, might give an edge to your retention percentage and increase revenue when you start offering benefits that are even more meaningful than last year’s benefits.
Set up your packages beforehand (make sure to set the Package dates for next year) and start prepping your new benefit packages. Remember, you can copy last year’s package as a starting point to save time and effort.
Reminder about login/password
If you want a particular event to have the Login/Password be more noticeable to your customers, go under Event>Attendee Setup tab. In the Overall Registration Options, change the Default Sign-in drop-down to 'Login Encouraged.' This way, people will be more likely to try their login or to create a login in order to use their benefits.
Benefit Tracking FAQ's
Does GrowthZone automatically prorate benefits if needed?
No. Assignment of a benefit package always assigns the full set of benefit items and quantities. There is no automatic proration of benefit items.
If proration is desired, staff will need to manually adjust the remaining quantities using the ability to adjust assigned benefit items.
What happens to existing benefit assignments if I modify a Benefit Package after it has been assigned?
If you need to go back and edit a benefit package, it will never affect existing benefit assignments. The only effect it will have is on new assignments going forward. If you wish to modify existing assignments, you would need to change those with an adjustment. You can do that manually, one at a time, or in mass via the Assignments tab. See Adjust Membership Benefits.
What happens to existing benefit assignments if I modify a Benefit Item after it has been assigned?
Editing a Benefit item will result in changes to existing benefit assignments. The details of a Benefit Item, such as the Allow Use By the Category, Value, or Discount, will apply to any existing assignments that are still remaining to be used.
Often times we expect that will be a good thing.
If you need the existing assignments to be kept as is and not be affected by the changes to the benefit item, you will need to create a new Benefit Item.
Do you have a way to set a benefit item at an Unlimited quantity?
No. At this time, we require a value in the quantity field and do not have an ‘unlimited’ option. If you set the value at 99, that might be the best workaround at this time.
What should I do if I have a benefit item that we no longer want to offer?
Edit that benefit item and remove the “Is Active' checkbox, which sets the item as inactive. Setting an item as inactive will remove the item from any existing packages and will no longer show that item as a possible item to be assigned.
Note this does not delete the item but keeps it visible in reports so that you can still want to see the item in reports to view the past history of the item.
The remaining quantities of an item that are already assigned will still be honored. They will display the word “(inactive)” appended when internal staff views their list of benefit items on a Contact.
Will benefit tracking work with both calendar year or anniversary renewal memberships?
Yes. Both types of membership renewals are supported. But please note that proration of benefits is not automatic if needed.
How do my members use their event benefits?
Once the benefit item is setup properly on the event, then the benefits are automatically given out to eligible registrants.
Registrants will be required to login when registering to receive the benefits unless you have enabled the setting "Event Benefits applied with email address match" under Setup, Manage Benefit Tracking on the Setup tab.
Which ticket is used first if I have two free event tickets to the same event?
Event registration is programmed to use up any shared benefits first, meaning that if the event benefit is assigned through a business contact and the event has “Allow Use by” of “All Individuals of a Business”, then that event ticket will be used first.
After that, we use the ones that expire first and then those that have the most quantity remaining.
If I have multiple benefit packages tied to a membership type and to a level of that membership, what benefits does the member get?
The member would get the combination of all appropriate benefit packages - the package(s) assigned at the membership type and any packages assigned to the membership level.
If my membership is a business membership, where do I record and track the benefits?
Business memberships are owned by the business, and thus the benefit tracking is also visible only on the business record.
Note that the primary contact, by default, can use event discounts, but the tracking is stored and viewed on the business contact.
Why does my Used column have so many ‘uses’?
The Used column on the Assignments tab and also on the Benefit Tracking widget on the Contacts>Overview tab both show the quantity that has been used 'all time; on these items, regardless of the date used.
So if a contact had the same benefit last year as they do this year, the Used total would be showing the Used quantity for all-time time on that item (including last year).
However, the filtering offered in both of those places can help you display only the uses for the desired date range.
Click the Customize Filter (funnel icon) on the Assignments tab.
If you select a date option in the “Used Date Range” Column filter section, it will modify the quantities that display in the Used column to show only those quantities that were used during the selected date range.
To filter out the contacts that haven’t used any during that time frame (Used quantity of '0'), select “Has Used” in the “Benefit Status” drop-down.
I’ve never offered benefits before. Do you have any suggestions for how to get started?
If you haven’t ever tracked benefits before, how you implement your tracking will be based on your business decisions about benefit tracking.
You may wish to consult various industry leaders and articles that would help you develop your business plan about offering memberships with benefits that need to be tracked. We’ve understood that a number of associations have benefited from the information offered by industry thought leaders Kyle Sexton and Frank Kenny.
Get your business plan in place for your offerings and the philosophy of your association in regard to benefit offerings first. Then you can start using GrowthZone to help you assign and track them.
Can a benefit item be changed from Custom to Event Registration or vice versa after it has been assigned?
Yes. When you change a benefit item under Setup, it will update for all those that have it currently assigned.
What happens when someone upgrades or downgrades their membership?
The items that are tied to the current membership will be zeroed out and then the benefits from the new membership will be assigned. If there are adjustments needed you’ll need to manually change those afterwards.
Can event registration benefit items be manually recorded?
Yes. Automatic recording is possible when set up correctly, but you can always manually record the use of event registration as well.
Can I change the email template that displays when sending the email to benefit owners?
The email content that appears is automatically populated by default with suggested verbiage. You can always modify the content on-the-fly at that time. Another option it to create a new email template of your own and select a different one in the Template drop-down whenever you’d like.
Can my staff register on behalf of someone and apply their benefit item discount?
Yes. Staff can use the option to log in as that individual found on the Contacts, Overview tab. Registering for the event from the Info Hub allows you to fully authenticate as that individual without knowing their login and password. This method of registering will grant any appropriate benefit item discounts.
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