Choosing the Right Loyalty Scheme for Your App
When you set out on the wonderful project-journey of creating your shiny new app, one of the first and most important questions to answer is which type of recurring loyalty you’re going to offer. This is an important question as the loyalty scheme you choose will ultimately sit at the heart of your strategy to keep customers coming back. This article will help you find out which is the best for you by diving into a few of the Pros and Cons of each and exploring some of the scenarios they thrive in.
The Case for Stamp Cards
Stamp Cards are often associated with Coffee Shops and while they are an undeniably good match, it may not be the best one going. Stamp Cards often excel at rewarding customers for purchasing a specific product or product type, for example, if I purchase a Flat White six times, I can get a free Coffee on my next visit, awesome! But what about our daily tea drinkers? Or the chap that pops in for a post-work cookie twice a week? These are still loyal customers and yet they are not rewarded by Coffee-exclusive Stamp Cards.
Why Loyalty Points Can Offer More Flexibility
While you could offer multiple stamp cards for coffee, pastries and teas, this risks feeling clunky or overcomplicated, the journey to the prize is not so clear now - a clean and straightforward loyalty program that keeps customers coming back is the ideal goal here. This is where loyalty points start to thrive - they offer an added element of flexibility and autonomy that benefits all customers, allowing them the opportunity to be rewarded for their own tastes and to redeem their rewards against the products they really love.
Customising Your Loyalty Points System
Loyalty Points give the merchant some autonomy too and one element of this is setting the earning velocity - be it 5 points, 10 points, or 20 points per pound or dollar spent, you can ensure that the customer gets rewarded in accordance with their spend, so that everyone’s happy. You can take it a step further too and allow specific audiences, like students or local businesses, to earn more points, or even create double point days to tackle low footfall on sleepy Mondays. The point (pun intended… sorry) is that you can decide and they can enjoy.
Balancing Gamification with Loyalty
Now you might be thinking that it seems obvious, points are clearly the answer! Well, let’s not celebrate just yet. Points are great for making sure that everyone is getting something, but you might argue that they don’t create the same experience of gamification in a way that Stamp Cards really can. With Loyalty Points we often notice two prevalent customer behaviours, the savers and the spenders - while the savers like to stack up their points and redeem them in one lump sum, the spenders like to use their points right away and save that sweet 50p off their next order. What does that mean? It means that some customers are definitely saving up and driving towards that big reward, but others may simply use their points like a bonus Ad Hoc perk, so what to do then?
The Stamp Card’s Clear Objective
The Stamp Card provides a clear finish line, an easy to understand objective that is established by you, the merchant. Perhaps 10 stamps are needed to get the free sandwich, beer, coffee, ramen, or smoothie, or even 5 stamps, and you can then make the reward bigger or smaller in accordance with the spend required to earn it. Maybe the reward is actually a £5 voucher that is redeemable against the entire basket and each stamp is granted for spending £5 too. It seems then that both Stamp Cards and Loyalty Points offer unique benefits based on the different configurations and business types that utilise them.
Finding the Best of Both Worlds
Ah! But don’t we all love having the best of worlds? Some customers decided just that and have created a Stamp Card purely for hot drinks while also running loyalty points against their other food and drink offerings, nice! With so much flexibility in your options it can be easy to get caught up in the specifics, but ultimately the goal here is to create a fun incentive that your customers will love you for. The best way to do that is to have a reasonably generous offer (everyone loves a freebie) and to make it broadly applicable.
Loyalty Programs vs. Membership Programs
Much like the ongoing debate between Loyalty Programs and Membership Programs,the choice between Stamp Cards and Loyalty Points ultimately depends on your business needs and customer preferences. Stamp Cards offer a clear, gamified reward system, while Loyalty Points provide flexibility for both merchants and customers. While points and stamps fit well within traditional loyalty programs, membership models often prioritise exclusive offers, personalised perks, and tiered pricing—eliminating the need for points or stamp cards altogether.
Conclusion: Crafting the Right Program for Your Business
Whether you decide on Points, Stamps, a Membership Program, or something else entirely, we can talk you through the array of options when setting up your loyalty perks to ensure an appealing, easy-to-understand program that keeps customers coming back for more!
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