3 things every company can (and should) do to integrate NFTs

Like it or not, the era of NFTs is upon us. Despite their reputation as expensive JPEGs, NFTs actually represent a new infrastructure for the future of the Internet. They have the ability to provide market insights without grossly invading our privacy; they can create communities and organizations; they can provide the data architecture needed to construct Web3’s true vision.

Forward-looking companies are currently struggling to integrate NFTs into their tech stacks. We’ve seen NFT integrations from brands ranging from the NBA to Coachella. Some of these applications represent exciting advancements for membership economies, while others move in the direction of co-opting the technology without delivering on Web3’s promise. As someone who works on building NFT solutions on a daily basis, I present three things companies can do to authentically integrate NFTs to lead their business into a more community-driven future.

It all starts with membership

The first step is to offer memberships and build a community. That could include issuing NFT membership tokens to loyal subscribers, giving them access to your insider community. It can also issue an NFT to early supporters and enthusiasts, such as the first 100 people to buy a product when it first comes out.

These memberships give your company the opportunity to provide the most interested and excited segments of your audience with early access to products, news, content, special features, or anything else. Further, by identifying the inner circle of your users, you can gain important insights and feedback on what matters most to them.

With these types of insider memberships, your company can easily maintain and enhance your brand’s enthusiasm and ambassadorship. You can even grant that inner circle of users access to an NFT-gated peer-to-peer community space where they can interact with other members, encourage product feedback, and help shape the company’s future. By using NFTs for memberships, you can not only forge strong connections with the community that has invested the most in what your business creates, but also make your business a community-driven business.

Grant NFT holders early or exclusive access

Once you implement an NFT-based membership, several possibilities arise. One is granting early or exclusive access. For example, a brand like Nike could offer subscription-based NFTs that give members access to early sneakers. Members who purchase a particular shoe can even access a meet-and-greet, or AMA, with the designer.

And this doesn’t even have to be limited to online events. NFTs are an incredibly flexible, cross-platform infrastructure that enable seamless in-person community gathering experiences by serving as tickets. The same NFT that allowed a member to participate in an exclusive AMA video call with a sneaker designer could also give them access to a personal tour of the design lab.

Give members a voice

Businesses can also use NFTs to give members a say in business decisions. After taking those entry steps, Nike could later give members who participated in various drops (which could be known based on the NFTs they have) the opportunity to peek behind the curtain and vote on potential designs that are under development. Steps like these would allow Nike to deepen engagement with a core community in ways that are mutually beneficial: Members would have greater access and influence over decision-making, and Nike would drive excitement and sales.

A third form of deeper integration could be members gaining more and more influence over the direction of projects. For example, your Nike membership NFT can track your participation in drops and style voting, and Nike can determine that members who meet certain engagement criteria can access discussions with product and design teams, strategy sessions, and more. This would create further community and company alignment and recognize the contributions of community celebrities.

Nike could also offer members different ways to deepen their involvement with the company, according to their specific interests. Some may be interested in participating in design decisions, while others may prefer to act as brand ambassadors, but all can be rewarded for their active community membership. The possibilities are huge, and it’s all made possible by every member with an NFT.

Build engagement between communities

As more and more companies integrate NFTs to make membership more central to their business, community partnerships will also provide opportunities. For example, brands and their communities may offer promotions to holders of NFTs from other companies whose communities have similar interests. What especially excites me is that this kind of community integration can be done in ways that are much more human and much less data-intrusive than current customer acquisition approaches.

This shift to a membership-based business model can be transformative. I expect that some companies will slowly move into these waters, while others will go as far as the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) model, so that their companies are wholly owned and operated by the community. What’s exciting is that NFT-based memberships give businesses the flexibility to experiment with how deeply they can engage their communities in their business, and to adapt over time.

To me, it is the human factor that has suffered the most from the growth of so many of our industries, while in our society trust in companies has eroded significantly. Memberships are a powerful tool to enable businesses to become more community-oriented and reverse this course. That’s the double bottom line that I believe NFTs enable, even as they open up new avenues for economic growth for businesses, and I’m proud to be able to build that future.

Julien Genestoux is founder and CEO of Unlock protocol.