The Basics of Village in 15 Minutes
Understanding the building blocks of Village, and what you can do with them.
"All great things start with the right incentives."
-A Very Wise Person (who we agree with)
The purpose of this guide is to quickly get you up to speed on the different building blocks you'll encounter within Village, as well as some examples of what you can do with them.
Here you'll learn:
What's under the hood
The building blocks you'll use in Village
Understand what you can do with them:
Examples of incentive programs
Examples of segmentation programs
Watch an optional video walkthrough
This guide is not intended to be a substitute for the more in-depth explanations you'll find throughout the knowledge base.
To get setup on Village for the first time, go to the Admin Quickstart guide ->
To learn about Village by seeing it in action, check out our Guides ->
First up, what's under the hood?
Let's start with a quick theory session on what's actually going on inside Village. You can skip this section for now if you're not in the mood for that.
You can think of Village as two separate components that work together: an Intelligence Engine, and an Execution Ledger.
The Intelligence Engine
The Intelligence Engine securely connects to activities and events that happen on your platform through Village's API or data-integrations. It listens to all these events, and decides what to do when each event happens using rules within Village. You and your team create these rules according to business logic, and Village's intelligence engine will help you along the way through recommendations and ongoing optimization. The goal of the Intelligence Engine is to drive the best action that any given individual in your ecosystem can take at any given moment to meet defined goals.
The Execution Ledger
Our execution layer is built on Village’s powerful ledger. It works to simultaneously evaluate, distribute, and reconcile complicated value flows. While the Intelligence Engine is constantly making evaluations based on data and events coming from your platform, the Execution Ledger is automatically and instantaneously performing output operations such as securely distributing incentives into users' wallets, sending comms, and segmenting users. The best part about the execution layer is that every actions it takes is fully able to be scrutinized by your team.
Understanding the building blocks
Whatever you do in Village, you'll be using the following building blocks.
1: What Rules do
Village is built on a system of logic called Rules. Everything that happens in Village is a result of a Rule being executed. The basic components of a Rule are (1) its trigger, (2) its conditions, and (3) its output operation. Triggers could be some event happening on your platform, or a defined scheduled time, and the output might be to award your users when that event happens, with a promotion, loyalty points, or many other award types. Rules can also do other things, like segment users and send comms.
Output Operation | Overview | Examples |
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Issue Award: Rules can issue value to a user. This is called an Award, and takes many different forms - everything from monetary awards like cash, to non-monetary awards like points, benefits, or more complicated structures like bonus pools. |
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Segment User: Rules can add or remove users from defined Segments. Segments are groupings of similar users that can be used to personalize comms, send particular incentives to specific users, or for analysis or experimentation. |
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Send Comms: Rules can send specific comms to a user based on activity, Awards received or Segments, or some combination thereof. This can be done through the end-user dashboard or through 3rd-party CRM integrations [in beta right now]. |
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2: How Rules are triggered
All Rules are evaluated when a Rule ‘trigger’ occurs. Depending on what you want to achieve, there are a few different ways to trigger a Rule.
Trigger Type | Overview | Examples |
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Activity Triggers: the most basic trigger type. These trigger a Rule based on some defined activity (Action) or transaction (Sale) occurring on your platform |
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Goal Triggers: goals trigger a Rule when the logic defined inside the goal has been satisfied. This can include:
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Segment Triggers: triggers a Rule when a user joins a given Segment |
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Scheduled Triggers: while these aren't distinct trigger types, it's worth knowing that a trigger can either occur as soon as an activity occurs or an award is issued, as well as on some predefined time schedule. |
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3: Different types of Awards
One outcome of a Rule executing is some type of value, what is called an ‘Award’ in Village, being distributed to a user. Awards can be simple one-off transfers of value, eg. a $5 bonus, or form part of much more complicated programs involving many different Rules. How an Award is configured determines how it is communicated and experienced by the end-user of your platform.
Monetary Awards
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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Non-Monetary Fungible Awards
Within Village, we distinguish between fungible awards, eg. awards like $1 or 1 point that are identical and interchangeable with each other, and unique or non-fungible awards, like a badge, a discount code, or gift card that are uniquely identifiable.
Before configuration, non-monetary awards are called 'Units' in Village; effectively a blank store of value. Depending on how they are configured, you can create the use cases below and others.
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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Points: A non-monetary, point which tracks towards some other benefit or event |
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Redeemable Points: A non-monetary, point that can be redeemed for some monetary or non-monetary Award by the user |
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Credits: A form of redeemable point that can be exchanged on platform for the equivalent cash value goods or services |
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Funded Units: funded units can be linked to a bonus pool and pay out a portion of the bonus pool based on how many of the units a user holds |
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Tokens: A generic representation of value that can be used in a variety of contexts |
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Non-Monetary Unique Awards
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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Badges: Markers or Awards that can be customized and awarded as a representation of progress or achievement |
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Status: Milestones that can be customized and awarded based on loyalty or engagement, and unlock benefits within your platform
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Benefits: Awards that can be used to unlock some form of access or capability within your platform ecosystem |
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Discounts: Award a reduction in the price of a transaction based on a percentage or fixed amount |
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Commission Rebates: a way to reduce the take-rate for a given supplier transaction |
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Gift Cards: a store of value that can be redeemed on a 3rd-party platform |
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Digital Assets: Awards that represent some asset, including artwork, physical asset or some other right |
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4: How to apply conditions to rules
Before a Rule can successfully issue an Award or place a user in a Segment, it first needs to be evaluated and the conditions of the Rule satisfied. Conditions are the business logic you want to be met before executing a Rule.
Condition | Overview | Examples |
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Active and Qualifying Times: Rules can be configured to only execute on certain dates and times.
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Segment Eligibility: users must be in (or not in) one or more Segments for the Rule to execute. |
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Max Budget: you can set maximum payouts on a Rule, time period, or user basis. |
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5: Specifying who the recipient is
There may be multiple users involved in an activity on your platform, so each Rule requires a recipient for the Award, communication, or segmentation. For example, John (User 1) might buy something from Jane (User 2), who was referred to your platform by Ralf (User 3). You may want to issue Awards and send comms to all three of those users in different ways, without creating multiple events.
Recipient | Overview | Examples |
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Activity User: one or more users can be associated with a given activity. For example, you might have a buyer and a seller in a two-sided marketplace. |
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Connected User [beta]: users may be uniquely mapped (or ‘connected’) to other users. Connections allow you to expand the recipient pool in Rule logic. For example, you may want to store referrals so that you can issue an Award to a seller’s referrer every time they make a transaction. Connected users are in beta right now. |
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Putting the building blocks together
To see use cases in action, and get more inspiration on what you can build, check out our Guides->
1: Incentive programs
The flexibility of Village’s Rules, and their underlying Triggers, Conditions, Award, and Segment logic, means you’re able to create and automate a variety of powerful incentive structures to meet your business needs. We’ve outlined a few common structures below.
Goal Structure Examples
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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DxGy Goals: Many incentive structures use one or more ‘do X, get Y’ goals. These can be used to incentivize more engagement, or any sort of valuable behavior on your platform. |
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Sales goals: Common and effective compensation structures for contractors or employees distribute Awards, rebates, or benefits when users hit a given GMV or sales volume in a defined period. |
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Spend goals: A user gets discounts, credits, or benefits when they hit a given spend volume across one or multiple transactions. |
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Referral Structure Examples
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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Simple Referrals: A one or two-sided referral that awards the same or different Award to referrer and/or referral | Eg. Simple Referral
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Trailing Referrals: A referral that awards the referrer or some other defined user a percentage of the GMV, sales, or value of the referred user (and optionally a % of the GMV, sales, or value of the referrals or the initial referred user) |
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Affiliate Structures: A 3rd-party receives a percentage of the GMV, sales, or value of the referred user, eg.
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Commission Split: A contractor or employee receives some percentage of the business that they have originated or managed |
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Bonus Pool Structures
A badge, status, or ‘funded unit’ are all able to be linked to a funding pool. When this happens, these Awards will automatically pay users an amount of the funding pool on a defined date proportionate to the total amount of linked awards they have accumulated.
Use Case | Overivew | |
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Revenue Share: An incentive structure that can be created using funded Awards and a funding pool to pay users a percentage of a platform's revenue generated in a given period, proportionate to the total funded Awards held. |
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Bonuses: An incentive structure that can be created using funded Awards and a funding pool that pays out a percentage of a fixed bonus pool proportionate to the total funded Awards held. |
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Creator Fund: An incentive structure that can be created using a funded Award and a funding pool that pays out a percentage of the fixed or variable bonus pool, proportionate to the total value brought to the platform by a creator. |
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Loyalty Programs
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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Loyalty Programs: These programs use a combination of points, status, and benefits to drive engagement and retention on your platform. |
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Subscriptions & Stored Value
Subscriptions: a recurring benefit or discount in exchange for a (recurring) upfront charge |
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Stored Value: A user is able to pay upfront for value stored on the platform that is used on future transactions |
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2: Segmentation programs
Read our User Segmentation Playbook to see segmentation in action->
Segments allow you to group similar users using Rules logic. These Rules are triggered based on activities or events on your platform. Segments are therefore a powerful way to group like individuals or track user journeys in order to deliver more personalized incentives or comms. While Segments are very flexible, some common use cases are below.
Use Case | Overview | Examples |
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Onboarding Funnel: Customer or supplier onboarding processes usually involve a number of steps before a customer is active. Even when they are ready to transact, users often lack an understanding of how to do so effectively. Segments can be created for each individual step in these funnels, and comms (through CRM integrations) or incentives can be created and automated to get users active. |
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Lifecycle Management: Define user archetypes based on transaction volume, behaviors or other activity on your platform. These Segments give you up-to-the-minute visibility into user engagement, from signup to power user. You can use lifecycle Segments for automated incentives like milestone badges, status, goals, as well as for sending targeted comms or analytics. |
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Churn Prevention: Certain user behavior across different Segments can be predictive or indicative of churn. By setting up churn prevention Segments, you are able to automatically catch and correct these behaviors (for instance, decreasing engagement from a power user segment, or no transactions in X period). |
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Personalization: Users respond better to incentives and comms when they are tailored to them. By creating Segments based on characteristics and activities a user does on your platform, you’re able to be hyper-targeted to drive the right behaviors. |
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Drip Campaigns: Sometimes it’s important not to overload users when trying to educate how a product works, or when trying to foster a relationship. Similarly, specific moments - positive or negative - can be extremely important to send just the right communications, education, or recognition. These can all be automated through segmentation on Village. |
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Percentile Cohorts: Percentile-based Rules allow you to segment users based on where they rank relative to their peers on any dimension. This is a powerful way to view and group users in order to reward behaviors or send the right communications, and these Segments are automatically updated on a defined frequency. |
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Waitlist Segments: Waitlist Segments can prevent users from engaging with some or all of your product based on some defined criteria. |
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Congrats! 🎉 You should have a high level understanding of how Village works, and what you can do with it.
Next up, we recommend:
Watching the video walkthrough below to familiarize yourself with Village
Reading through some of our Guides that walk through examples of rule creation in action->
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