You don't need a marketing budget or a consultant to start a loyalty scheme. Most small businesses do fine with a simple stamp card, as long as a few decisions are made with care. This guide goes through them in order.
Why bother with a loyalty scheme?
Your regulars are already your best customers. A loyalty card won't turn a passer-by into one, but it does give people who like you a reason to come back a bit sooner, and to pick you over the place next door when they're in two minds.
It's also a thank-you that customers can see. Someone who is seven stamps into a nine-stamp card has a small, concrete reason to return.
What it costs you is the rewards you give away, plus whatever you pay for the cards or the app. The steps below are mostly about keeping that cost sensible.
Step 1: Pick the type of scheme
For most independent businesses a stamp card is the right starting point: one stamp per visit or qualifying purchase, and a reward when the card is full. Customers get it straight away and staff don't need training.
Points schemes (a point per dollar) and tiered schemes (silver, gold and so on) suit businesses with big differences in spend and a till system that can track it. If that isn't you, start with stamps.
Step 2: Choose the reward and the number of stamps
The reward that usually works best is a free version of what people already buy most: the coffee, the loaf, the haircut. It feels generous, and it costs you what the item costs to make rather than what you charge for it.
Then work backwards from how often a regular visits. If a good customer comes in twice a week, a 10-stamp card fills in about five weeks. If they come once a month, 10 stamps would take most of a year, so ask for fewer. Aim for a card a regular can finish in a month or two.
Step 3: Decide between paper and digital
Paper cards are cheap and familiar, but they get lost, they're easy to fake with a similar stamp, and they tell you nothing about who uses them.
A digital card deals with those problems. With RewardForge you print one QR code, and customers scan it to join and get a card on their phone. When they visit, your staff scan a code on the customer's phone to add a stamp. There's no app for customers to download.
Step 4: Launch it, and keep mentioning it
The most important part of launching is asking. Put the QR code by the till where people wait, and for the first few weeks ask every customer whether they'd like to join.
Think about giving everyone a stamp on the day they join. A card that has already been started feels closer to finished.
Step 5: Check how it's going
After a month or so, look at who has joined and how far they've got. In RewardForge you can see each customer's stamps, rewards and last visit in the customer list.
If lots of people stall after two or three stamps, the card may be too long or the reward not tempting enough. If rewards are being claimed faster than you'd like, add a stamp or two.
Common mistakes
- Making it complicated: if you can't explain it in one sentence, simplify it.
- Asking for too many stamps: a card that takes months to fill gets forgotten.
- Not telling anyone: a poster on its own isn't enough. Staff need to mention it.
- Never looking at the results: a quick check every few weeks tells you whether anything needs changing.
- Changing the rules mid-card: if you make the card longer, let existing customers finish on the old terms.
Trying it with RewardForge
If you'd like to try a digital stamp card, RewardForge is free for 30 days and you don't need to give payment details to start. After that it's $27.49 a month.