Summary
Join It provides a unique ability for Organizations to offer membership benefits that can be validated and redeemed by 3rd parties.
Scenarios
Below, we've detailed different scenarios where our tools support our customers to offer benefits to their members.
Scenario #1 - Partners need to validate memberships to offer a benefit
Example: An Bicycle Club has negotiated members-only discounts with participating merchants, bike shops, and sponsors.
Requirement: Partners need to be able to validate that a customers has an active membership and the organization wants to track redemptions.
Solution:
Offer Digital Membership Cards with QR Codes to your members.
Enable your partners to scan the QR Codes and add a 'check in' to memberships, to indicate a benefit redemption
How this works:
Our tool for Check Ins makes it easy for anyone to add a Check In (when presented with a Digital Membership Card and QR Code) with any device.
By default, your partner can use their mobile phone (iPhone and Android devices both work) to scan the QR code and add a Check In.
By default, the partner does not have to have an account or access to your Organization (though, a requirement to require logged in accounts can be enabled).
This is an intentionally open approach to allowing anyone to add Check Ins with any device - and by-passes the complexity of requiring logins, specific scanning devices, specific scanning apps, etc.
Personally, I find it helpful to think about this approach as the 'digital' version of the old physical punch cards that used to be sold. Back in the day, there was no risk of folks fraudulently punching their physical cards because there is no incentive to do so.
Scenario #2 - Partner needs to redeem a limited/restricted benefit
Example: A Wine Club has negotiated 1 free glass of wine per week with participating wineries
Requirements:
Partners need to be able to validate that a customer has an active membership.
Partners need to validate that the benefit (1 free glass of wine / week) hasn't been redeemed within the past week
Wine Club needs to track which partners are redeeming the benefit
Solution:
Offer Digital Membership Cards with QR Codes to your members
Enable your approved partners to scan the QR Codes and verify that a membership is active and they haven't redeemed their benefit (1 glass of wine/week).
Run reports to see which partners are redeeming the most benefits and at which frequency.
How this works:
Our Digital Membership Cards are enabled with QR codes that your partners can scan to verify the active membership.
Scanning can be done with any smartphone (iPhone and Android) and only requires web browser (no dedicated app download is required).
Scanning the QR code will display a view of their Membership details:
Including their Membership Type, Membership Status, Profile Photo, etc.
Additionally, it can also display their recent Check Ins / Redemptions - which in this example will determine whether they're eligible for their free glass of wine (or whether it's already been redeemed this week).
Frequently Asked Questions
Do partners need to download an "app" to scan membership cards?
Nope! We were very intentional with our design of the system - and whenever we were faced with a decision, we chose the implementation that would be easiest for partners to participate - meaning there are no required 'apps' and no required 'hardware'.
However, we are compatible with dedicated hardware - if the partner would prefer to use a handheld scanner rather than a smartphone. More details can be found here in this article on "How to Check In a Member".