Do you have a loyalty or rewards program? 🤔

[ElisabethB]

Hey everyone! 👋
How many of you have a customer loyalty or rewards program? Do you have any tips or advice for folks who are just getting started? Reply and share what has worked - or not worked - for your business! 

[drenn]

When I launched my loyalty program I did so with my top customers to work out and see how the program worked with people who would be eager to help test the program if you will. With Square’s loyalty program it was quite easy to set up and get going but you always want to make sure. 

then I started signing everybody - which now I have scaled back on, more focusing on locals (I get a fair share of tourists). 

square recently launched a Beta test for points with invoices, so I do try to lure tourists into becoming online regulars with the loyalty program now as well. 

on my end I’m looking at trying to get as many people to sign up that I think will become regular customers, of course there I’ve got no crystal ball at work so it becomes a shot in the dark at times. 

[repopgifts]

We use the square loyalty program. The options have really improved since we started using it years ago. I love that you can adjust it to your specific needs. 

Here are a few things we do-

-name the rewards something fun that fits with your business, we cater to nerds so our customers earn "Experience points" or XP each time they visit, when they have enough points they "Level Up" to earn the reward.

-we give double rewards during special events

-we set our rewards to never expire, this gives more incentive for customers that are from out of town and visit once or twice a year to join

I would love to see additional options for rewards settings, for instance the ability to reward people for how long they've been a member of our rewards program, or to set certain products for bonus rewards, etc..

When we have special events the promotional reward setting in square only applies to the customers first transaction, sometimes we have customers that bring visitors and we allow them to have a "shared experience" but the setting doesn't allow promotional points for more than one transaction per customer, so we need to change the setting completely, I would love the option to allow unlimited promotional rewards.

[thestorehouse]

As a small brick and mortar business of 52 years we are trying to survive and offer incentives.  The customers love the program and the discounts we offer with the program.  We have been using the loyalty program for almost a full year.  We like it but feel there are a few things that could be improved.  We love the new feature of double points options.  Just wish I could attach the double points to a specific item from time to time.  As far as I  can see in the options its only double points across the board.  Also, when I sign someone up for the first time on a "double points day" they don't get double points for their purchase.  Seems odd.  

Also, hoping the fees don't increase.  It can become really expensive per month if too many people use the program.

[thorne816]

I love the loyalty program because I cant message my customers. I even had customer leave items and can call or text from our system. I offer $5 Coupon for Every $40 spent. My coupons do not expire. It lets me keep track of how often customer return.

[JUYBoutique20]

My customers love our loyalty program.  They receive $5.00 off once they hit 100 points.  They earn 1 point per dollar amount.  I would love to be able to do double points upon sign up or for a special event if that's possible.  I'll have to look more into it.

[thorne816]

I will have to look into that. Every time I reset the point value. It seems like it resets customer points. Have you noticed that on your Square Loyalty Program.

[Doran]

Yes, I have a rewards and a referral program.  

I announced in my newsletter and at the cash register.  

For the first year, I really passed out points.  In the newsletter, and during sales... ie double points days.  

For referrals, I used to give a discount but now I give points.  

I do x amount of points are xx dollars off your next purchase.  I don't have any rules about things that count or don't.  They can bank points and then use them however they want.  I've never had anyone abuse the system and ultimately I see people spend more because of points.  Today I had a lady who had enough points for a free booster and she ended up buying a lip booster and getting the eye one free plus her regular facial.  

Educate clients on how they can use the points system and make it easy.  The more exclusions and rules the fewer people will see the value.  

[jimpatton]

Elisabeth, we have a Reward's program for our gift shop and now with Square I can capture emails with ease and it does bring people back to the store just for their reward.

Jim

[TCSlaguna]

We do not have a loyalty program yet, but are very interested in starting one. I would love to know how much discount people do after hitting a certain dollar amount. What restrictions do you put in place? 

[repopgifts]

We do a point for each visit over $5, then give a $2 reward for 5 points or they can "let it ride" and get a $5 reward for 10 points.  We do restrict to 4 points/day because we let people get points from the purchase their out of town friends they brought in make.

[thestorehouse]

We do for every $1.50 spent you get a point.  Level one reward is 150 points and you get $5.00 off.  Level two reward is 250 points and you get 20% off.  We have double loyalty points on our slowest day of the week Tuesday, and its seems to have helped.

[Lilmac36]

yes i have the program 

[MommaT]

We do have a loyalty program. Key ito making it work; is to ask everyone if they have a card, followed up by offering one if they do not.

We also always give our customers two punches on their first use to encourage them to keep coming back. 

[DinaLRosenberg]

HI- we use Square Loyalty and our customers do love it. We offer freebies and a big discount after a certain amount of points.. square makes it super easy to create and manage a loyalty program.

[LukeNieuw]

I adopted Square's Loyalty program in 2020 and it has been nothing short of amazing and now the backbone of our promotions. 

We give 10% back on every $ spent. May sound crazy but wait for the stats.

We give 100 "Whisky Bucks" for every $1 spent. Our golf course is called Whisky Run hence "Whisky Bucks". I like the points # to be bigger because it's more fun, gets a better reaction and seems to have more perceived value in my opinion. 

When I first started, Square's stats had loyalty members spending on avg 30% more than non. And I wanted our customers to see rewards quickly. So we went with 10% because I believed that would maximize opt-ins and by squares avg we would still net us 20% if we had avg results.

I do not restrict what gets points or what can be rewarded. The rewards are $ discount, so 5,000 Whisky Bucks gets you a $5 reward. Meaning they would have to spend $50 to get $5 reward (10%).

In the first year we saw avg spend by loyalty club members was 188% MORE than non-loyalty and avg # of visits was 7.5 to 1.5! 

I thought it might be a fluke being the first year but in 2021 we did BETTER! Avg spend was 207% more and avg # of visits went to 11 vs 1.7 for loyalty members. So it was no fluke. More visits and higher avg spend. This stuff works.

Overall revenue has increased year over year and it's just a phenomenal flow of signups and redemption, working online and in person. 

I can't say enough about it. I'm all-in.

[HC_Charlie]

Awesome response by your customers! I'd love to see that much engagement from our Loyalty over non-Loyalty shoppers. Way to go!

[OzoGeeks]

Yes we do 

[OldCoder]

We have little card we give to locals at the point of sale (resort community) good for one free thing after purchase of 6. Tourists get other cards good for 15% off our web store that we, a franchise-ette, get a percentage of the proceeds of the sales using out promo code so they can reload if they want when they get back home. 

[shopfybr]

Yes, we've had a loyalty program since we started and our customers love it. Our is every $200 spent earns a $10 reward. Also great to see the loyalty reports and track our best customers.

[HC_Charlie]

I've been using Square Loyalty for several years now and I love how easy it is to sign-up customers. I've recently begun to think about rebranding our program to make some changes. First, here's how we have setup the program now:

We modeled our first version after a physical "punch card" so we call it our Digital Punch Card/Program. For every $10 spend we give a "punch" to their digital card. We have rewards set-up to give the following:

• 3 punches: Free greeting card (retail value of $3.95)
• 5 punches: Free mini chocolate bar (retail value of $2.95)
• 7 punches: Free bar of goats milk soap (retail value of $6.25)
• 9 punches: 10% off your purchase

The only change I really made when I first started the program was change the way punches were given...I started out giving punches per visit, so with each visit customers would earn one punch (no matter how much they spent). This wasn't rewarding customers for spending more, but the biggest reason I changed this to dollar-amount based rewards is this...when customers finished their purchase they would see on the Register customer facing screen "you earned one punch today" so sign up for our loyalty program. I would get more declines because I think people didn't think just one punch was worth anything. BUT when I changed the earning portion of the program, the screen would tell people "you earned three punches today". I got more signups because people didn't want to "lose" those three punches vs. just one punch.  (my average ticket value is about $35)

I'm currently working on a rebranding of our loyalty program. I never really liked referring to the rewards as "punches"; it just doesn't sound good to me since it's digital and not physically "punching" a paper card. I think I'm going to refer to it as a "VIP Program" so it sounds more special and exclusive. I also plan to add another tier of rewards which would give customers the option to "donate" 10 points for a $10 charity donation. I find some customers never redeem their rewards, so I'm thinking they may want to donate them. In turn I would pick a charity and then send in a monthly amount of those donations. It would allow us to give back to our community and also create another means of social media engagement. I'd love to hear about other people who may have a charitable donation component to their Rewards Program and how it worked for you.