The 10 mistakes that kill a loyalty programme

Twenty visits for a free coffee: nobody will get to the end, and a card seen as unreachable is abandoned in the first week. The customer does that calculation instinctively, even if they never put it into words.

The fix: aim for a reward a regular can reach in one to two months. In most businesses, that gives a threshold around ten visits. An earlier first tier (5 visits, small reward) builds momentum from the start.

A token discount after ten visits sends the opposite message from the one intended: the customer suddenly measures how little their loyalty is worth. Better no programme at all than an insulting one.

The fix: give a product, not a percentage: a coffee, a pastry, a treatment, a starter. The real cost to you is low (your cost price), the perceived value is full (the displayed price). The healthy order of magnitude: roughly one visit free out of ten.

Every installation step melts sign-ups away: downloading, creating an account, confirming an email. The customer at the counter has neither the time nor the inclination, and their phone is already full of apps.

The fix: go through the wallet already in the phone. A card in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet is added by scanning a QR, once, with no account and no download. Signing up fits in the time it takes to pay.

An SMS costs money on every send, which forces a choice between staying silent and paying. And it lands in the same thread as personal messages: many customers experience it as an intrusion.

The fix: favour notifications tied to the Wallet card. They cost nothing to send, appear with the card, and stay in their place, that of a message from a shop. You then communicate when it is useful, not when the budget allows.

Without measurement, there is no knowing whether the programme works: how many active cards, how many rewards claimed, how many customers dropped off. You then carry on out of habit with something that produces nothing, or abandon something that was working.

The fix: choose a system that counts every visit and shows it on a dashboard. Three figures are enough to steer: sign-ups, return rate, rewards claimed.

The paper card lives at the bottom of a bag or in a second wallet. The day the customer does not have it on them, the stamp is skipped, frustration sets in, and the programme dies a slow death.

The fix: house the card where the customer already looks several times a day, their phone. A Wallet card is always on them, updates by itself and shows the approaching reward, which keeps the desire to come back alive.

A programme nobody hears about does not exist. Relying on the team's reflex alone, on a hectic day, dooms the launch.

The fix: a poster with a QR code next to the till, visible while the customer waits or pays. It is the best spot in the shop: the customer scans while you take payment, without slowing the queue. The poster works all day, without tiring and without forgetting.

Double points on Tuesdays excluding promotions, reward valid for a month except on hot drinks: if the rule does not fit in one sentence, the customer switches off, and so does your team.

The fix: one rule, one sentence. “10 visits, a free coffee” or “1 euro spent = 1 point, a free dessert at 150 points”. The subtleties can come later, once the programme is running well.

Many programmes stop at the moment they should begin: the customer signs up, then nothing. With no news, the card gets forgotten, even in a phone.

The fix: show signs of life at the right moments. A birthday word, a gentle nudge after a few weeks' absence, a flash offer on a quiet day. Automated, these gestures require no daily work, and they are what bring people back.

If the team does not offer the card, the programme plateaus at a few curious customers. And if the owner is the only one who believes in it, it runs out of steam within weeks.

The fix: a simple instruction (offer the card at every payment, with a standard sentence) and a tool that adds no burden: a two-second scan, or automatic credit through the connected till. When confirming a visit costs the team nothing, they play along.

All these mistakes tell the same story: a loyalty programme fails when it demands effort, from the customer (finding a card, installing an app, understanding a rule) or from the merchant (paying for SMS, chasing by hand, re-entering data). It succeeds when everything is frictionless, on both sides of the counter.

That is the principle that guided the design of Digikart: a card in the Wallet with no app, a two-second scan, notifications with no billed SMS, automations for birthdays and inactive customers. The free plan lets you check all of this with real customers; the full approach is described on the why Digikart page.