Cymbiotika, a premium health and wellness brand, competes in a crowded market full of lower-priced alternatives. The team faces a common challenge: the constant pressure to run discounts in order to drive sales. While discounts can create short-term spikes, the savvy team knew this approach wasn’t sustainable, eroding margins and undermining the long-term growth they wanted to achieve.
Read on to see how Cymbiotika is reimagining customer loyalty programs with the help of Wyng. Shifting away from discounting and toward a strategy that rewards engagement, captures valuable data, and builds stronger customer relationships.
Standing Out on Experience, Not Discounts
As Jared Radtkey, Chief Digital Officer of Cymbiotika, explains:
“We offer a discount, sales go up. The discount ends, sales go down. There’s just the psychology of having some sort of discount. But with that discount strategy comes a decrease in margin and profitability.”
Discounting has become the industry default, but Cymbiotika is taking a different path. Instead of leaning on purchase history, points, and promo codes, they are rethinking loyalty entirely: rewarding meaningful engagement and delivering personalized experiences that align with their subscription-based model.
The team devised a summer campaign that:
- Drives sales while giving extra rewards for subscriptions
- Delights and continually re-engages customers with a differentiated brand experience
- Captures valuable zero- and first-party data to fuel personalization efforts across channels
The Solution: Summer Sweepstakes
Summer is typically the slowest season for Cymbiotika. To energize sales during this time, they launched a Summer Sweepstakes powered by Wyng. Over the three-month period, customers earn entries into a high-value prize drawing (including a Rivian, $50,000 cash, a wellness retreat, and a year’s supply of Cymbiotika products!) by completing actions such as:
- Making purchases (with extra entries for new subscriptions and subscription renewals)
- Checking into their account
- Leaving product reviews
- Completing health questionnaires
- Opting into email or SMS
- Referring friends
- Posting in the member community
“Sweepstakes was a way of incentivizing behavior without giving away a discount. Customers still feel like they’re getting something in return.” – Jared
Data-Driven Personalization
Driving subscriptions is the primary goal, but data collection is equally important. By rewarding actions like completing questionnaires, reviews, and daily check-ins, Cymbiotika captures zero- and first-party data that can be used to deliver more relevant content, product recommendations, and offers. Jared emphasized the importance of this strategy:
“We package all that information into profiles and try to personalize targeting to make it more appropriate for the customer.”
From health goals and routines to product preferences, the data collected during the promotion strengthens Cymbiotika’s ability to deliver relevant, engaging experiences, and build long-term customer loyalty.
Wyng Behind the Scenes
Even with a highly technical team, Cymbiotika turned to Wyng for the platform capabilities needed to bring the sweepstakes to life.
Updating thousands of records in real time, tracking customer engagement, and ensuring compliance are no small tasks. The Wyng platform provides the flexibility, scale, and legal guardrails Cymbiotika needs to execute their vision. Wyng Profiles makes it possible to log and credit customers with entries based on purchase value and a range of other interactions. Meanwhile, Wyng Profile Metrics consolidate these activities into a single view, giving the Cymbiotika team clear insight into which behaviors drive the most engagement and where to adjust incentives. As Jared notes:
“We wanted an API we could use that would also check the boxes from a legal standpoint. Wyng checked all the boxes.”
In addition, Cymbiotika relies on Wyng Services for white-glove promotion administration and fulfillment services to manage rules, winner selection, and prize fulfillment, further easing operational complexity.
The Results (so far!)
Just 45 days into the promotional period, and the sweepstakes is already showing some promising results:
- Over 112,000 customer profiles created
- 71,000 orders placed
- 15% increase in Average Order Value (AOV)
- 43% of participants opting into email
- Significant traffic spikes, stronger ad performance, and higher email click-through rates when promoting the sweepstakes
“We’re proving that we can run alternatives to discount codes that help with conversions and transactions. Our AOV has already increased 15% during this period.” – Jared
Looking Ahead
Encouraged by these results, Cymbiotika is exploring additional gamified loyalty programs and surveying loyal customers to inform the next evolution of its rewards strategy.
“This was an experiment to see how responsive customers are to new ways of incentivizing behavior. We’ll continue surveying our loyal customers to inform how we revamp our rewards program.” – Jared
In addition, there’s more to explore in terms of the partnership between Wyng and Cymbiotika.Though they haven’t yet tapped into Wyng’s customer-facing gamified experiences, Cymbiotika is excited to explore these options to further enhance experiences and fuel data collection.
Conclusion
Cymbiotika’s Summer Sweepstakes demonstrates that promotions don’t need to rely on discounts to succeed. With Wyng, the brand is running a campaign that boosts AOV, engages customers, and captures valuable data. Showing how reimagined loyalty programs can deliver growth and protect margins.
If you’re looking to add gamification into your loyalty strategy or explore other innovative ways to foster repeat engagement, reach out to Wyng.
