Loyalty programme examples that work, and what you can copy from them

A loyalty scale gets copied quickly, and it ages quickly. The terms published by Starbucks France state ten Stars per euro spent in participating stores, when the customer pays with their Starbucks card: the payment condition often gets lost along the way, and so does the date of the last change.

So here, one source per example: the brand's own page. Every figure quoted below comes from a public page of the brand, consulted in September 2026. If you want to take inspiration from them, reopen the page before copying, these scales change.

And that is already the first lesson. These brands write their rule in black and white, online and in store. A customer who does not know how much is left to go stops thinking about it.

The scale fits in one sentence: ten Stars per euro spent in participating stores, provided you pay with your Starbucks card. What changes everything is what comes next. There is not one reward but a ladder. 300 Stars for a doughnut, a cake pop or a pastry. 400 for a filter coffee, a hot tea or a biscuit. 500 for a latte or a cappuccino. 600 for a tea latte, a mocha, a hot chocolate or a macchiato. 700 for a club sandwich, a toastie, or beans and capsules to take home. 1,000 for an item from the shop. From 1,500 Stars over twelve months, the customer moves up to Gold level, which entitles them to a drink voucher on their birthday.

What carries over: the ladder. The customer reaches something early, and sees what they would earn by carrying on. A neighbourhood café does the same thing without a catalogue: the pastry on the fifth visit, the drink on the tenth, the meal deal on the fifteenth. Three steps are enough.

What does not carry over: the expiry date. Since June 2026, Starbucks Stars are valid for six months. A chain can live with this kind of rule, it has the volume and the software to manage it. In a local business, a balance that disappears is discovered at the counter, and it is always a regular who discovers it.

The bakery chain's rules are displayed on its website. The card costs €1, joining gives 20 welcome points, one euro spent is worth one point, and 60 points give €3 off, €4 for under-25s. A surprise is planned for the birthday.

Look closely at the first figure. The customer starts at 20 points out of 60, a third of the way done before their first purchase. A blank card gets put away and forgotten. A card that is already part-filled makes people want to finish it. That is exactly what Digikart's welcome bonus does, from the Plus plan.

What does not carry over: charging for the card. A chain present in hundreds of towns can ask for €1 without losing out. At the counter of an independent bakery, that euro makes people hesitate, and a hesitation while you hand back change rarely ends in a sign-up. The under-25 price raises the same kind of problem: it forces you to check someone's age just as the queue grows.

The coffee chain's programme announces two things on its page: €2 off from the second visit, then a free drink of your choice every 120 “pépites” (nuggets). A second gauge also unlocks statuses. The page also states that a minority of locations do not take part in the national programme.

The second-visit gift deserves a closer look. The hardest step in a loyalty programme is not the tenth visit, it is the second. The customer tried, liked it, and then life gets in the way. Placing a first reward very early, even a tiny one, is precisely what gets them over that step.

What does not carry over: two counters in parallel. At the counter, you have one sentence and the time it takes to ring up a sale. One gauge, one reward, one rule the customer can repeat to their neighbour. As soon as two systems need explaining, the team stops offering the card, and a programme nobody offers recruits nobody.

The card is free, and its published benefits have almost nothing to do with a percentage. A free coffee or tea on every visit in stores that have a restaurant, except at a few locations where it still costs €1 for members. Exchanges on purchases for 365 days without a receipt, provided the card was shown at the time of purchase. 14 days to exchange an item damaged during transport or assembly. And lifetime replacement of the FRAKTA bag.

The free drink costs very little and gets talked about at the table. That is the real lesson: a reward in product or service leaves a stronger mark than a discount, and it protects your margin instead of eating into it. The florist who offers gift wrapping, the hairdresser who offers the treatment, the wine merchant who offers the tasting all do better than 10% off the bill.

What does not carry over: taking back a purchase for a year. That takes cash flow and an after-sales service that can keep up. Note the limit, by the way: IKEA replaces the receipt, not the card, which must have been shown at purchase. The idea behind it, though, carries over very well: remove an obstacle. The customer who has lost their receipt or changed phones must not leave empty-handed.

The terms of the Picard & Nous programme are public, and they are worth reading. Points are counted per €10 bracket started, after discounts and excluding delivery charges. They are only awarded for the first purchase of the day on each sales channel. And the points balance is reset to zero every 1 February.

Nothing in there is dishonest, everything is written down. For a brand of this size, capping points is an accounting decision that makes sense. But put yourself in the customer's shoes for a second: before knowing what they earn, they have to remember a bracket, a daily cap and a cut-off date.

The lesson for a neighbourhood shop is the reverse image. Every rule you add is paid for in understanding, and so in sign-ups. If your programme needs a paragraph of exceptions, it is too complicated. And above all, the annual reset is not something to copy: it punishes exactly the customers you wanted to keep.

Putting these five programmes together, what a local business can borrow comes down to six points: a displayed scale the customer can repeat, a reward in your own product rather than a percentage, a first tier reachable in a few weeks, a card that starts off part-filled, a gesture from the second visit, a little something on the birthday.

What is better left to the chains also comes down to six points: reward catalogues, stacked statuses, expiry dates, daily caps, paid-for cards, terms full of exceptions.

The difference is not a question of means, it is a question of role. A chain manages a margin across millions of receipts, and its rules are there first and foremost to cap a cost. You are building a habit among a few hundred people you know by sight. You can say “two more to go” as you hand back the change, and no app does better than that.

The test before launching: explain your programme in one sentence to a customer in a hurry, on a Friday at 12:30. If you cannot, remove a rule and try again. Our article on the 10 mistakes of loyalty programmes goes through the pitfalls that come up most often.

None of the above requires a budget. With Digikart's free plan, you create a digital loyalty card in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, with no app for your customers to install, with stamps or with points based on the amount spent, one reward, the poster and the counter QR. Unlimited customers, no bank card.

The two mechanics spotted above come with the Plus plan: up to three tiers in a cycle, for the ladder seen at Starbucks, and the welcome bonus, for the card that starts off part-filled. The Pro plan adds what runs by itself: the birthday reward, the win-back of inactive customers and unlimited notifications (the Plus plan sends 3 a month), with no billed SMS. The prices are public, like the rules we have just discussed.

What remains is the part you cannot buy: write your rule in one sentence, display it at the counter, and give the team the sentence to say. “Do you have our card? It's free, it lives in your phone, and the tenth coffee is on us.” The FAQ answers the rest, from the customer without a smartphone to scanning time.