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Mobile Loyalty

Loyalty Card Offers: Designing A Good One

Written by 
Admin
 - 
March 31, 2013

Once you have chosen to implement the Stamp Me loyalty card app, or another loyalty program in your business, one of the first things you'll need to consider is what your loyalty offer should be.

You may already have a paper loyalty card in place and depending on your service or product, it may be very obvious what it should be. Such as 'Buy 6 Coffees Get 1 Free'.

However, from our experience, many of you are considering a loyalty offer for the first time.

Here are some insider tips about how to design a good loyalty card offer:

Keep Loyalty Simple

The key is to keep it simple, easy to understand and with the reward attainable. It needs to be a common product or service that many of your customers are purchasing.

The alternative is to make the qualifying purchase value based such as:

'Spend Over $15 x 4 Visits and Get..."

tips for designing a reward program

What About The Actual Reward?

Many of our businesses also get caught up worrying about what reward they should give.

We've even seen husband and wife owners fall out, arguing over whether it should be a small or medium serve and 'what happens if someone takes a large?'

This misses the point. It is the fact that you have committed a loyal customer to 6 previous visits, (providing 6 times the profit) and not the incremental cost difference on a small or medium serve.

Put yourself in your customers shoes. We all like simplicity and so the easier it is to understand the better. It's easy to explain and easy to implement.

Some Examples of Good Loyalty Offers From Our App:

• Buy 6 Coffees Get 1 Free

Have 8 Car Washes Get 1 Free

Have 4 Hair Cut & Styles and Receive 25% Off Your 5th

Buy 5 Burgers Get Your 6th Free

5 x Paid Visits and Get 1 Free Drink

Spend Over $30 x 4 visits and Receive $15 Voucher

Best reward Apps

Useful Tips To Design Your Reward:

Make it achievable. If a customer has to buy 30 coffees to get one, does this seem immediately achievable to the customer? Is it even worth it in their eyes? The answer is no! Customers simply will not be motivated to keep purchasing to reach the end reward. Quicker, short-term rewards that seem achievable are best.

Don't always put a tight deadline or timeframe on offers. Sometimes a short-lived reward offer is a great way to motivate people to buy quickly, especially if it is achievable in their eyes. However it can be detrimental to your customer loyalty if offers expire before they can properly use it. It also depends on the nature of your business. For example, if you're a salon, it would not be wise to have a reward offer of "buy 3 haircuts, get one for free" but apply a one month expiry date. Most people would only get a hair cut every few months at the least. Rewards like this make you look hungry for business and makes the customer seem just like dollar symbols.

Make it enticing. Instead of offering simply a coffee for a customers repeated loyalty, for example, how about a free mug, branded merch. or something with perceived higher value than what they have been buying? Even better - offer an exciting experience-based reward such as a masterclass, a tab with a friend and so on... Experiences can often cost you as a business less!

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