Café, gym, cinema, car washNo database, no newsletter
Digital customer loyalty for everyone whose guests come back.
Café, gym, cinema, car wash, lunch counter: customer loyalty pays off anywhere there is enough throughput and someone can come back. What is expensive is not the guest who never comes — it is the one who stops coming. Replacing them costs five to seven times what keeping them does, by a retail rule of thumb.
What is missing is a reason for the next visit — and a way to count it that is not made of paper. Which one fits you does not depend on your size. It depends on how people pay at your place.
- Customer loyalty
- Loyalty card
- Rewards programme
- Regulars
Tap the card. It does what it says.
They come back. Ten coffees bought, the eleventh is on the house. Stamped after paying. Tap a field — you are holding the stamp.
More on loyalty cards →You see what happened. The rest you know better.
01 · What you need
Four things, and you already have most of them.
01
A device you already own.
A phone, a tablet, a laptop. The counter is designed for a phone — portrait and one-handed.
02
Ten minutes.
To decide what you give. No more — you set a card up once.
03
A notice with a code.
Your guest scans it with the camera they already carry. You print the notice yourself.
04
One staff member.
Who can tap a button. They only see their counter, not your figures.
02 · The four kinds
Which one fits your business?
Size is not what decides it — rhythm is. Where the same thing is bought often, you collect: coffee, kebab, a haircut. Where people pay up front, you draw down: ten sessions, ten washes, ten lunches. And where nobody knows when the next visit will be, vouchers and punch cards carry it — a cinema gives away more tickets than it could ever collect stamps for. Two kinds at once is the normal case, not the exception.
03 · Side by side
And the guest sees them on one page.
Two kinds at once does not mean two apps for your guest, and not two cards in their wallet. They see everything they hold with you, one under the other — and each kind says in its own words where it stands.
One collection, three kinds: collected, paid up front, and an amount drawn down.
04 · Boundaries
What it is not.
- Not a customer database. I store what a guest needs to sign up: their email address, and a name if they give one.
- No marketing emails in your name. There is no newsletter, and I am not building one.
- No analytics telling you what to do. You see what happened. The rest you know better.
- No leaderboard of your guests. Every guest is a guest, not a value in a table.
05 · Questions
What owners ask first.
Is a loyalty programme worth it for a small shop?
If your guests come back, yes — and for a reason that is easy to miss: what is expensive is not the guest who never comes, but the regular who stops coming. Retail has a rule of thumb that winning a new customer costs several times what it costs to keep an existing one — five to seven times, depending on the source. That is not a number I measured, it is a rule of thumb from the trade. What you get here is a reason for the eleventh visit and a way to count it that is not made of paper.
How do I get guests to actually fill the card?
Give them a head start. In a widely cited study (Nunes & Drèze, 2006) half the customers got a card with eight empty fields, the other half a card with ten fields of which two were already stamped. Both had to buy eight times — and still, almost twice as many filled the second card. You can do this here without any setting: make the card slightly bigger and stamp the first fields right when a guest picks it up.
Do I have to collect customer data?
Only the minimum. Your guest signs in with an email address and a code; there is no password. If they have no phone, you add them at the counter by name.
Can I offer several kinds of card at once?
Yes. A guest sees everything they hold with you on one page: the loyalty card for coffee, the punch card for lunch and the voucher from their birthday.
How do my guests get the card?
Every business gets its own page with all its cards. Your guest scans the notice or taps a card there, enters their email address and confirms with a code. Then the card is in their wallet.
What it costs: nothing during the pilot.
I am looking for businesses to join in. Whoever starts now is one of the first and talks directly to the person building it.
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