Founded: 1996
Primary Products and Services
RRN is the online trade media platform for the incentive, rewards and recognition field, originally founded as Motivation Strategies print magazine in 1996. It launched with the first online information service in the field, known then as Info-now.com. It was also the official “trade publication” of The Motivation Show in Chicago until the show closed in 2012. RRN’s products include:
- RRN at RewardsRecognitionNetwork.com, featuring the latest news, research, profiles, mergers and acquisitions, etc. in the field.
- The RRN News Alert eNewsletters and Rewards and Recognition Linked in and Twitter communities to push out alerts to people who prefer receiving information via social media.
- Highly targeted, low-cost content marketing, social media and thought leadership strategies specifically for companies seeking to target resellers of brands, gift cards, master fulfillment company solutions and technology firms active in the field.
- A full suite of business development services using our Targeted Business Development process developed in 1996, combined with the latest social media, content marketing and account-based management strategies to measurably generate inbound leads.
Company Story
RRN at RewardsRecognitionNetwork.com evolved out of Motivation Strategies magazine, after the demise of The Motivation Show, the dramatic decline in advertising in the field after 2008, and the overall challenges faced by print publications even in prosperous industries. RRN is now the only dedicated digital media platform specifically focused on the trade, providing industry professionals almost everything they need to know delivered in short, easy-to-digest and timely news items, and enabling companies with even small budgets to implement high-impact, highly measurable campaigns to reach resellers to bring their products and services to market.
Brand Personality
RRN’s personality is steeped in a knowledge for and a care for the trade and for bringing the latest innovations to the field for over 23 years. The RRN team is comprised of a publisher, editor, freelancers, marketing manager and sales support professionals who have literally been with the company since its inception in 1996 or its earliest years. The company’s founders were involved with almost every major research initiative in the industry up until 2008, when they created the Enterprise Engagement Alliance to broaden our focus to engaging all stakeholders.
RRN Editor Richard Kern has written about the field for over 30 years, previously as Editor-in-Chief of The Counselor and before that Sales & Marketing Management magazine.
RRN Marketing Manager Anne-Sophie Pruvost, based in Lille, France, started as a U.S. intern for Motivation Strategies in 2003 and kept working with us since she returned to France. She has a deep understanding of the industry and every part of our business.
RRN Web Developer Jeff Severson has evolved into a master developer since he started working with us in the late 1990s and built the platform for the BrandMediaCoalition.com site.
Founder Bruce Bolger was Editor and Publisher at the industry’s venerable trade publication, Incentive magazine, when in 1989 it dropped the term “marketing” from its name to focus on using incentives for employees as well. Since then, he helped found the original group that became the Incentive Research Foundation, serving as president for three years; founded the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement at Northwestern University, whose research findings led to the creation of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance in 2008 to translate the findings of that research into a practical action plan for organizations. He also co-authored the original curriculum for the Incentive Marketing Association certification program. Bolger created the Universal Rewards Exchange (URE) technology platform to manage a marketplace of automated connections between brands and catalog companies to manage virtual catalog redemptions that it sold to Hinda Incentives Inc. in order to focus on its core information competencies. RRN’s parent company, Engagement Enterprises, founded the Brand Media Coalition.
Controller Gloria Golle, who in only eight years with the team has the least tenure, has branched out to help the company transition through the extraordinarily difficult challenges faced by the industry it has served over the last decade while also serving as an active mother of two young children and a School Board Trustee for her community.
Demographics
RNN has over 10,000 subscribers, focusing on the industry of about 3,000 companies active as resellers in the incentive trade and attracts about 5,000 unique visits to its combined platforms per month.
Editorial Focus
RRN focuses on the latest news, research, insights, how-to and reference articles, as well as other tools that can help the trade better assist their clients achieve goals through brand media. We pride ourselves in pushing out hot news within a day of getting it so that RRN readers can stay up-to-date with the trade via their smartphone in just a few minutes per day.
Contact
Bruce Bolger, Publisher
RewardsRecognitionNetwork.com
Bolger@TheEEA.org
914-591-7600, ext. 230