Brand marketers are in a bit of a pickle these days. They can count Twitter followers and Facebook likes, but sifting through the casual fans to find the die hards is a tricky business. Competitive Cyclist has realized that the advent of Strava means they have an easy way to determine exactly who the truly hardcore riders are: saddle time. They’re taking that realization and doing something pretty cool with it.
If you link your Strava account with Competitive Cyclist by clicking here (http://www.competitivecyclist.com/strava), you will get $1 of in-store Competitive Cyclist credit for every hour you ride.
This is an especially good deal for me, because I’m slow. If it was a dollar of credit per hundred miles I might be able to earn two this year. But no, it’s hours.
In the interest of never asking our readers to do something that we, the Singletracks.com team, wouldn’t do ourselves, I went ahead and signed up. When I did I found a short list of stipulations:
- Each hour ridden is worth $1.00 in store credit, in half-hour increments. So, a 1:45 minute ride would receive $1.50.
- Credits will be deposited into your Competitive Cyclist account within 24 hours.
- Credits will expire at 11:59pm MT on the last day of the following month. For example, credits earned for a ride in March will expire on April 30th.
- You can receive up to 40 credits per month.
- Credits are non-transferable.
- Multiple credits can be combined when placing an order.
- Time is measured in moving time.
- Manual entries do not count.
- Only the Strava activity of “cycling” will count.
- Activity completed prior to syncing accounts does not count.
As fine print goes, that’s pretty fair. I don’t know when I’m going to find time to ride 40 hours in a month, but I have no doubt that someone will do it every month. Some times I look at people’s Strava profiles and I’m like, dang, is this your job? Because it’s kind of my job and I don’t ride 10 hours a day.
Anyway, check it out, sign up, and earn some credits. As far as methods of incentivizing die hard people goes, this is one of the coolest I’ve seen.
I don’t have a cell phone. So, the cost of phone plus service nixes the $40/month… for me.
Since the credit expires so quickly you need to use it or lose it… meaning you may end up buying things you don’t need and spending real cash to make up the difference. Marketing ploy!!!
From my perspective, if I’m riding 40 hours per month I’m probably going through at least one thing of Chamois Butt’r and chain lube per month, possibly a tube or two, and that doesn’t even begin to factor in wear and tear on tires and other components. Generally speaking, if I’m riding that much, I’m spending AT LEAST that much just to keep riding. I see this as a great way to help cover those daily, recurring riding costs.
Obviously it’s a form of marketing for Competitive Cyclist, but heck, I think this could be a big benefit for riders. Since I’m already logging my data on Strava, 3 clicks of the mouse linked it to competitive cyclist and now I’m getting free cash over there to help pay for all the bike things I already buy.
Also, it is worth mention that you don’t need a cell phone to do this: you can use Strava with a standard GPS unit and desktop/laptop computer.
I didn’t know that about Strava and GPS. However, stipulation #8 says “Manual entries do not count.” I would assume that refers to this. Maybe I’m wrong.
I agree with your sentiment. My point is, just don’t get sucked into spending your credit before it expires on something you don’t need just for the sake of spending it. Just a few words of wisdom from an ‘old dog’.
Yes, there’s no need to have a fancy phone. I’m using a 16 year old GPS unit worth $20 at most and uploading the data to my desktop PC and the program is working fine – credit of $17.50 so far after signing up a week ago.
Dude, I feel ya Scott… but I almost always need some sort of riding gear 🙂
Just FYI for anyone interested, a “manual entry” on Strava is when you log in and just basically type in, “I rode X miles in X time.” As you can imagine, it would be really easy for someone to just say they rode 10 hours per week. As long as you have the GPS data to upload, whether it comes from the phone or a GPS unit, it will count for a normal Strava entry. This stipulation is the same one that Strava uses for all of their on-site “challenges.”
Thanks Greg. Good to know. Maybe I will give it whirl.
You couldn’t PAY me to use Strava. Oh wait, I guess you can. 🙂
Full disclosure: I am a regular Strava-er.
“Because it’s kind of my job and I don’t ride 10 hours a day.” 40 hour per month isn’t 10 hours per day.” It’s 10 hours per week!! Most people who do Ironmans and distance races do that much and more hours per week. Just saying.
I know all about it. I did Ironman in 2009. And you may notice that my articles occasionally contain exaggeration.
Credits suspended as of April 21st. Reworked program details on May 19th. Apparently the credits were adding up faster than they dreamed.
Competitive Cyclist canceled the program today. I thought this sounded too good to be true. Looks like Singletracks simply assisted Competitive Cyclist in its scam to get as many riders to turn over their personal information and identification as possible before shutting it down.
Update article is now live: http://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-news/competitive-cyclists-strava-campaign-underestimated-cyclist-zeal/