Today we are making three announcements that will help position Endorse as a reliable part of your shopping routine for years to come.
As you know, Endorse launched just two months ago. In that short time, so many of you have already started to make Endorse an important part of your daily shopping routine. We started off by providing you a wide range of products and retailers for you to endorse in order to experiment how to best save you money and to create a sustainable business. After a few months, we now have a better understanding of how to do just that.
On the product-side, we are working hard to make Endorse much easier for you and your friends to use. And, most importantly, we are creating a more sustainable rewards structure that will enable Endorse to provide you pop rewards for buying the products you love for years to come.
Here are the changes:
- We are reducing the rewards for endorsing grocery stores and retailers from 10% to 2%. We are also removing several from the service entirely- you will get an email from us if any of your endorsements are effected. Everything else, especially product and restaurant rewards, will stay unchanged at 10% back. And “5 and Free” for you and your followers will stay unchanged for all endorsements on the site.
- We are adding 45 sub-brands of the major grocery chains for you to endorse and earn 2% rewards every time you pop.
- We are offering 20% rewards on twenty products that comprise your family Thanksgiving dinner.
Rewards Changes
When we launched, we provided flat 10% pop rewards for both products and retailers. We did this as a thank you to all of you that discovered Endorse. As of today, all rewards for popping retailers and grocery stores will be 2%. Product and restaurant rewards will remain unchanged at 10%.
The reason we need to make this change is to focus on building the best service for rewarding you for buying and staying loyal to the products you love. As I mentioned last week on our blog discussing how Endorse will make money over time:
… consumer products companies tend to spend more on marketing than grocery stores and retailers, so you will have the opportunity to earn more rewards by endorsing and staying loyal to your favorite products.
As a startup company, we need to focus our resources on the businesses where we have the best opportunity to pass on the savings to you.
Endorsement Removal
After providing rewards to our users for two Honda POPs as well as six Disney theme park POPs, we are removing automobiles, gas stations (including gas at grocery and convenience stores), airlines, theme parks, and department stores from the site so that we can focus on product-level rewards. We will continue to honor these endorsements if you purchased prior to November 10th.
When we launched, we had different categories available for you to endorse and to earn 10% rewards. Giving huge rewards to a small amount of people for one-time, big-ticket purchases is not consistent with our mission and will prevent us from giving dependable, ongoing rewards to the rest of us. The bottom line is we are removing these businesses to help the 99% of us save on the things we buy everyday.
Adding Grocery Stores
We are thrilled to announce that you can now endorse your favorite grocery sub-brands from the major grocery chains- including Safeway, Kroger, Ahold, and Supervalu. There are now 56 grocery stores available on Endorse. You will earn 2% back every time you endorse and pop these stores.
Remember, you will get 10% rewards whenever you shop and pop your products. In the long term, you will earn the most rewards by buying and staying loyal to the products you love. Over time, we will provide the most rewards to those that endorse products and get their friends to buy along with them. And don’t forget, when you endorse products, you get rewarded every time you buy wherever you shop.
20 Products you love, 20% off
We are thrilled to announce a special offer for Thanksgiving where you can earn 20% rewards for endorsing and popping your favorite products to prepare your family Thanksgiving meal. Please click here for more details and rules.
Thank you for using Endorse. Our goal is to make Endorse a service that you can rely on for years to come. At these early stages we will make changes from time to time as we learn more about how we can make Endorse into a business in order for you to earn the most rewards. Sometimes (hopefully most of the time) we will get things right. One thing is for certain, Endorse will continue to change as we grow, and I appreciate your patience with us.
shop. pop. earn.
Update: Further Clarification on Rewards Changes
We wanted to quickly answer some questions we’ve been getting about the rewards changes.
1) ALL receipts dated Friday, November 11th still qualify for 10% cash back – even if those products or stores that have now been removed.
2) For all products and stores, regardless of the reward level (10% or 2%) the “5 and Free” still applies.
3) We are in the process of sending out individual emails to everyone who has been impacted by these changes detailing which endorsements have been reduced or removed. We are sending out literally thousands of these emails, so it may take a few hours for you to receive yours.
These changes are far from a ‘bait and switch’ but an effort to create a sustainable rewards structure that will enable Endorse to provide you pop rewards for buying the products you love for years to come.
November 13, 2011 at 11:25 pm |
While we are sad to see the 10% go for department and grocery stores, we realize it will create a more sustainable business model. With that in mind, we will take our smaller rewards and look forward to years of earning.
November 14, 2011 at 10:58 am |
[...] Friday, we made changes to the Endorse rewards structure. Because some of our emails to you notifying you of these changes took longer than we anticipated [...]