Our Terminology
Two words carry more weight on this site than any others: Pool and Reach. Both get used constantly, and both deserve a precise definition rather than an assumed one. This article is that definition — read it once, and every Pools page and the pricing page will make a lot more sense.
What Is a Pool?
A Pool is a time-bounded reward contract between a retailer and a group of customers. Every pool — regardless of which of Gamma’s eight reward models it runs — defines the same five things:
- Who can take part
- For how long it runs
- How the reward grows — fixed, community-maturing, or incremental
- When the reward becomes redeemable — instantly, or only once the pool closes
- Where the reward can be spent
That’s it. A single-visit Individual Instant Reward is a pool. A multi-week Community Deposit is a pool. They differ enormously in mechanic, but structurally they’re the same kind of object — which is exactly why one pricing model can describe all eight of them.
The Properties That Actually Set the Price
Open any Pools page and you’ll see the same handful of numbers repeated. Here’s what each one means:
Tier. Every pool prices itself against how many of your clients can take part — a small ladder of client-count ceilings, rising as your community grows. Cross the top of the ladder and pricing moves to Custom, set specifically for your account.
Period. How often the pool bills. The two community pools — Community Purchase and Community Deposit — run on a 2-week cycle, matching how a seasonal pool naturally opens and closes. Every other service bills monthly.
Price. The base cost for your tier and period — the number everything else in this list is a variation on.
Direct Credit add-on. Any pool can layer Direct Credit on top, for an extra 25% of that pool’s own price at your tier. It’s optional, and it’s the same 25% at every tier.
Max investment per client. A ceiling per client, per pool — not on the pool’s total. If a client puts in more than this during the pool’s active period, the excess isn’t counted toward their reward. A pool’s real total is simply the sum of every participating client’s own contribution, each counted up to this ceiling.
Offers per month. How many active offers your tier can run, surfaced to clients browsing nearby.
Notification Reach. How many of your own clients a broadcast can reach at your tier — worth its own section, because it’s the one people misread most often.
Notification Reach, Precisely
Notification Reach is the total number of your own clients reachable through Gamma’s three communication channels combined:
- In-App notifications
- Push notifications
Here’s the part that matters for planning a campaign: a retailer picks one channel per campaign, not all three at once. Reach isn’t three separate pools of clients stacked on top of each other — it’s a single ceiling that applies to whichever one channel you choose to run that particular campaign through. Pick Push, and you can reach up to your tier’s Notification Reach number via Push. Pick Email instead for the same campaign, and the same ceiling applies there.
Cost is the other half of that decision. Push and In-App never cost anything, at any tier — Gamma pays no per-message fee for either. Email carries a small, tier-based cost per broadcast, because sending email at scale has a real marginal cost behind it. So the actual choice a retailer makes per campaign is simple: Push or In-App for a free, immediate nudge, or Email when the message needs more room than a notification banner gives it — and either way, the same Notification Reach ceiling is what tells you how many clients that campaign can land with.
The One Rule Worth Remembering
Every other number on a Pools page follows from two decisions: which service, and which tier. Pick those, and the period, the Direct Credit surcharge, the max investment ceiling, the offers allowance, and the Notification Reach are all already determined — nothing to configure separately, nothing to guess. The full pricing table lays out every tier for every service side by side, if you want to see where your own community currently sits on the ladder.