WORK
US Electrical Services Loyalty & Rewards Program
U.S. Electrical Services, Inc. · B2B Ecommerce Adoption · 2019–2022
U.S. Electrical Services built its digital self-service channel in early 2018: ecommerce websites and mobile apps with real-time inventory, barcode-scan ordering, and search across the catalog. Most existing customers still didn’t use them. They called inside sales, walked into a branch, or ordered through an outside rep they already knew.
Reward the spend
In 2019 I built a loyalty program to get existing customers using digital self-service more often, structured around one idea: reward that spend directly. Every dollar a customer spent through the website or app converted to one point. At $5,000 a customer unlocked a Yeti tumbler, at $15,000 a Rambler gallon jug, and at $50,000 a Tundra cooler.
Running the program meant stitching together tools that weren’t built for this: Phocas BI & FP&A software for sales data, Google Sheets for reconciliation, and Zapier and Dotdigital for customer communication. Participants received weekly points updates, while everyone else received a separate acquisition campaign. By the end of 2019, the program had rolled out in three waves across seven regions, generating about 537 registrations, 112 active participants, and ~$775K in qualifying digital purchases.
Test for frequency
Electrical Wholesalers New England ran the clearest version of the program, from May through October. Solutions Managers extended it past its original July end date. Of 141 registrants, 24 became active participants. Those customers averaged $638 per order, compared with $281 among nonparticipants. Customers opted into the program, so I wouldn’t treat that difference as incremental impact, but it was enough to keep testing.
Maurice Electrical Supply ran a smaller version that summer with similar results, despite having virtually no other marketing resources behind it.
Partway through the EW-NE campaign, I ran a Double Points promotion for participants who were still below the $5,000 reward threshold. I wanted to see if a stronger incentive would get lower-volume customers to place orders more frequently.
Chasing the habit
I worked with our BI team on online order frequency, trying to understand how often a healthy customer ordered and whether repeat purchasing predicted what happened next. We found that customers who placed at least five online orders within 90 days went on to place another 13 orders over the following 230 days, 94% of the time.
That shifted my thinking away from spend and toward repetition.
By 2020 I’d redesigned the program around that idea, under a new name, Power Program, with customers choosing from reward categories instead of a fixed catalog. I had it production-ready right as COVID hit. Digital marketing spend and headcount were both cut that spring, and the program never got resourced.
By 2021, that finding had given me a specific experiment to run: could we use an incentive to get customers through their first five online orders, then remove it and see whether the behavior persisted? I designed the test with a control group and two test arms.
Ship the repetition
In 2022, a version of Power Program went live at Monarch Electric. It rewarded five qualifying online orders, each over $250, instead of accumulated spend.
When a customer registered, I verified they were set up to transact online. A Google Sheet automated most of the handoff between Magento and Dotdigital, but every Thursday I still checked a Phocas report and counted each customer’s qualifying orders, then updated how many they had left. Customers received an automated weekly email showing their progress against a five-step punch card.
A 10% discount on qualifying orders ran alongside the reward during the same period, using the code POWER. Twenty-six customers registered. Six redeemed.
Spend, then repetition
The first version of the program rewarded accumulated dollars. The last rewarded five specific transactions.
USESI’s B2B web revenue grew from about $1.5 million in 2018 to roughly $7 million in 2022. The loyalty program was only one piece of that growth, and it got smaller rather than larger over time. But the question I was trying to answer got more specific with each version: how many times does a customer need to buy online before they start doing it on their own?