As more users get onboarded to web3 and more people are exposed to digital collectibles, brands are beginning to look past the ‘one off drop’ and think about digital asset ecosystem development...
Gigantik have developed this series of articles to provide five frameworks for understanding how web3 can play a role in developing brand loyalty. These frameworks will help you make sense the current web3 brand loyalty landscape, distilling complex ideas into easy to understand concepts. This article will focus on the concept of tiered NFTs, and explore how a brand can use a tiered approach to offer a range of benefits to users. We’ll also look at how a roadmap can be used to outline the different tiers of NFTs that a brand plans to offer, and how underpromising and overdelivering can help to build trust and loyalty among customers. And finally, we’ll discuss how community and community leaders can play a key role in fostering engagement and driving value for users.
As more users get onboarded to web3 and more people are exposed to digital collectibles, brands are beginning to look past the ‘one off drop’ and think about digital asset ecosystem development. Much like traditional product lines, brands are developing digital product lines with different tiers of access related to price points and benefits for different customer segments.
A tiered approach to NFTs could involve offering a range of NFTs at different price points and with varying levels of benefits. For example, a brand might offer basic NFTs at a lower price point that offer access to basic features or content, while more expensive NFTs could offer additional features, such as exclusive content or early access to new products. Furthermore, the different tiers of NFTs could be organized into different product lines, with each line offering a unique set of benefits to users.
These different tiers can also have different use cases. Top tier NFTs may act as an all encompassing ‘membership’ pass to a brand’s digital ecosystem, enabling holders to tap into all the benefits available. On the other hand, lower tier NFTs that may have a lower pricepoint could unlock a smaller subset of benefits that may be tokenized themselves. These benefit tokens could then be traded on the secondary marketplace, allowing for even more entrypoints into a brand’s ecosystem.
The different tiers of NFTs can also integrate with each other in a number of ways. For example, lower-tier NFTs could be used as a prerequisite to unlock higher-tier NFTs, or the different tiers could be designed to complement each other. Rarity of traits can also be integrated into this approach, with some traits being more rare than others and unlocking different benefits for users.
A roadmap is a plan or strategy that outlines the steps a brand will take to achieve a specific goal. In a brand’s NFT ecosystem, it is important to transparently outline the long term plans for your digital products to customers.
A roadmap could outline the different tiers of NFTs that the brand plans to offer, as well as the benefits and utilities that each tier will offer to users. It could also include details about how the different tiers (and potentially traits) will be integrated and how they will complement each other. A timeline could also be included that outlines the planned rollout of the different tiers of NFTs and their benefits.
The importance of underpromising and overdelivering on a roadmap cannot be overstated. Setting modest expectations for the benefits and utilities that each tier of NFTs will offer to users is a must. If the brand is able to exceed those expectations and offer additional benefits, it can create a more positive and rewarding user experience and build trust and loyalty among customers. On the other hand, if a brand fails to deliver on promises, there are severe consequences as NFT communities are ‘always on’ and expect transparency given the investment they are making.
Community and community leaders can play a key role in bringing a brand’s customers together and fostering a sense of belonging and engagement, subsequently leading to stronger brand loyalty. Given this, brands need to consider how to approach community and community communication when developing an ecosystem strategy. Platforms like Discord and Twitter can provide an online space for customers to connect with each other and with the brand, and can help to build a sense of community among the brand’s followers.
Community channels, Discord bots, voice chat, and Twitter Spaces can all be used to bring a community together and facilitate engagement and interaction. Discord bots, for example, can be used to automate certain tasks or provide information to users like community size, floor price tracking and token ownership verification, while voice chat can allow users to connect with each other in real time. Twitter Spaces can be used to host live discussions or events with the brand’s community leaders, and make brands’ initiatives discoverable to followers of the conversation’s listeners.
Creating a sense of exclusivity and scarcity within a brand’s community can be an effective way to foster engagement and drive value for users. Token-gated access can be used to create exclusive spaces or features within a brand’s online or offline community that are only accessible to users who hold certain NFTs, such as exclusive access to online content and IRL experiences and events.
Brands can partner with other communities or brands in order to drive utility and value for their customers. For example, a brand might partner with a community that has a complementary product or service, and offer its customers access to that product or service as part of a bundle or package.
For example, a brand that sells NFTs might partner with a fashion community or brand, and offer its customers access to exclusive insider access to the brand or features as part of their NFT purchase. This could create additional value for the brand’s customers, and could also drive engagement and loyalty within the brand’s community.
A brand’s NFT ecosystem can be either an initiative promoted from the brand’s primary media and communication channels, or it can be a separate entity with its own name and social media accounts.
This strategy should be carefully considered, as long term promotion of the initiative through primary channels may dilute messaging or cause backlash. If a brand’s web3 project is a separate entity, it can use its own social media accounts to build a separate community of users interested in the ecosystem specifically, driving engagement and loyalty within the community and separate but additional value for the brand’s business.
Stu Richards (aka Meta Mike) leads Partner Success at GigLabs and has a passion for contributing to the education and enablement of the open metaverse. Gigantik is an end-to-end web3 engagement platform and marketplace provider built for enterprise brands. It empowers marketing teams to own the experience of creating, selling, and distributing NFTs while enabling them to generate repeatable customer loyalty campaigns and activations using built-in utility tools. Gigantik provides a seamless end-user experience and onboarding using credit card and wallet integrations.
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