At Novel, we think about NFTs as a seamless way to reward and provide value for your brand’s most engaged customers using dynamic, exclusive membership experiences. 

Think anything from site-wide discounts, exclusive products, and gated content, all without ever entering a promo code. With NFT-based memberships, you can treat your VIP customers to automatic discounts, IRL event access, and an endless array of upgraded digital offerings. 

New and returning customers can now receive additional benefits for their loyalty and continued engagement. Critically, NFTs should not be treated as an afterthought or a side project. Rather, NFTs should play a role as a core part of your customer engagement and loyalty strategies. 

Below, we’ll run through our guide to getting started, with direct input from friends of Novel.

1. Exclusive storefronts for influencers and top customers

A fundamental use case for NFT-gated collections is influencer and ambassador programs. 

Today, it’s impossible to build out elevated experiences for specific customers using existing tech. To put it bluntly, every customer gets the same digital experience, no matter how engaged or loyal they are.

Using Novel, your brand can create token-gated Shopify collections that are only visible to NFT holders. This approach allows brands to quickly spin up VIP programs where ambassadors get access to different merchandise than your everyday customers. It’s the first time brands can offer true exclusive experiences, rather than basic email lists or one-off merchandise offerings.

Unique to NFTs, this end-to-end membership experience is completely fluid while also reducing the need for manual inputs and overhead. We see Novel as a step-function change for creating ambassador loyalty programs that go above and beyond for your brand’s best customers.

2. Hydrant’s CEO on launching NFT drops from scratch

In the environment of rising CAC driven by Apple's iOS change in 2021, more brands are focused on developing strong relationships with their customer base. 

Historically, brands may have been more interested in driving maximum growth at a reasonable CAC, but now more brands are focused on maximizing their LTV at less aggressive growth compared to pre-iOS change days. 

While I believe everyone is still trying to figure out how to best leverage NFTs, I believe they’re interesting because you can form various types of emotional connections that you couldn't before with your customers. NFTs can be especially powerful for creating communities and developing exclusive membership programs. 

3. How Novel makes it easy to upgrade your site experience

Since the first wave of digital brands entered the market, the most common approach was to roll out the same e-commerce interface for everyone, but this strategy is a concept of the past. 

Using Novel, you can choose to gate on the storefront level or product level, giving you the option to create either an exclusive drop experience or an exclusive store altogether. In turn, this enables access to exclusive product drops or early access to marquee products. 

‍

‍

From a high level, Novel makes it easy to create, mint, and sell NFTs by:

1. being entirely no-code and;
2. by tying NFT ownership to your customer's Shopify account, meaning they never need to link a Metamask or chrome extension to access these benefits.

The result is the first easy-to-use experience that combines emerging NFTs with a traditionally branded website.

Critically, the premium offerings that Novel enables are designed to be intuitive and easy to spin up by leveraging our platform’s no-code builder and development engine. This engine not only delivers a VIP experience for your users but cuts down on engineering resources.