Back when I was a kid, my mom persuaded me to do painful chore – chopping up onions for her.

The way she motivated me, was by telling me that I’m really good with my hands.

Obviously it’s the last thing I wanted to do. But hearing that I was good with my hands, created a desire in me.

A desire to keep hearing that praise.

So I’d chop those onions.

And each time I did, she’d shower praises by saying how thinly sliced the onions were and how fast I’d chop them.

And soon I became her onion-chopper.

Turns out that there is a name for this psychological trick – it’s called altercasting.

Altercasting is a technique in which one person characterizes another as a certain type of person in order to encourage him or her to behave in a desired manner.

So a boss might describe his detail oriented staff as being technically gifted, in persuading her to become the tech support person for the team.

Or a spouse may characterize his other-half as being artistically gifted in hopes of persuading him or her to paint one of the rooms.

However, there is a catch – you have to reward the behavior too. You can’t just altercast away and not reward them for rising to the expectation.

So here’s how you can use altercasting to get your big spenders spending even more and staying loyal to you.

  1. Put together a list of your top 20 biggest spenders.
  2. Send an email to everyone except the top 5 spenders or the top 10 spenders.
  3. Here’s a sample email to send to them:

Hi Mary,

Congrats on being one of our most loyal customers. In fact, you are in our top 20 customers.

John Doe 1       $12,000
John Doe 2       $10,000
John Doe 3       $9,000
John Doe 4       $8,000
John Doe 5       $7,000
John Doe 6       $6,000
John Doe 7       $5,000
Mary Jane        $4,000

As one of our loyal customers, you receive the highest reward level on our loyalty program.

Thanks for your loyalty!

  1. Send these emails on a quarterly or monthly basis and you’ll start noticing Mary spending more often with you, trying to maintain her ranking or outspending the others.

As for rewards, you can keep it simple – a free product, gift certificates or even an exclusive t-shirt. The real reward lies in the recognition.

By the way, RewardCamp shows you your top 20 customers with a single click. So step 1 is already done for you.

Check out a demo of RewardCamp to learn how to implement this tactic.

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