What the numbers actually say.
Posts with their own arithmetic in them. Where a figure comes from somewhere else, this blog names the source and what it measured.
Latest
Written on a date, and dated on purpose.
The guides and the loyalty-program library are maintained: when something changes, they are corrected. These posts are not. Each one says what was true when it was written, and carries the date so you can judge it.
- Mechanics
How loyalty programs work
Every loyalty program is the same four parts in a different order: a qualifying event, a ledger, a threshold and a redemption. Change one and you have a different program. Change none and you have a different brand.
Read the post - Definitions
Loyalty scheme, program or membership
Scheme and program are the same arrangement in British and American English. A membership is a different arrangement: the customer pays to join, and that single fact changes who is carrying the risk.
Read the post - Decisions
Which type of loyalty program to choose
The type is decided by three things you already know: how often the same person comes back, what a visit is worth, and whether your till can talk to the program. Most local businesses land on stamps.
Read the post - Money
What a loyalty program returns
A loyalty program returns money through four mechanisms, and three of them can be written as a sum. The break-even is one division: program cost divided by gross margin per visit is the number of extra visits it has to buy.
Read the post - The sceptical case
Do loyalty programs actually work?
A loyalty program either changes what people do or discounts what they were already doing. Most of the argument about whether they work is really an argument about which of those is happening, and you can settle it with your own numbers in ninety days.
Read the post - Program design
Designing a loyalty program that changes behavior
Five parameters decide whether a program changes behavior or subsidizes it: the qualifying event, the threshold, the starting balance, whether the count is visible, and the expiry. All five are set before any software is bought.
Read the post - Naming
How to name a loyalty program
The name is the least important decision in a loyalty program and the one that gets argued about longest. Four patterns cover almost every good name, and three tests kill almost every bad one.
Read the post - Rollout
How to build a loyalty program
Most loyalty programs are built in the wrong order: software first, reward last. Reverse it. The reward and the threshold are the only decisions that cost money, and both can be tested on ten people before anything is bought.
Read the post - The card itself
How to make loyalty cards
Paper cards cost per unit and cannot be corrected. Browser cards cost nothing and can. Wallet passes do both and also reach the lock screen. The choice is mostly about what happens when you change the offer.
Read the post - Choosing the reward
How to reward customer loyalty
Reward with something you make, not something you buy. A made item costs you its ingredients; a gift card costs you its face value, and the customer values both about the same.
Read the post - Money
What a loyalty program actually costs
Software is the smallest number in a loyalty budget. The one that matters is the cost of goods on the rewards you hand over, and it is the only line that grows when the program succeeds.
Read the post - Migration runbook
Move a paper stamp card to QR in a weekend
You cannot invalidate the paper cards already sitting in customers' wallets, so the migration is a dual run with an end date you say out loud. The rest is one weekend of decisions, one printed poster, and a sentence staff can say without thinking.
Read the post - Launch and promotion
How to promote a loyalty program
Promotion for a loyalty program starts at the till, not in an inbox. The sentence a member of staff says while handing over the coffee reaches more of the right people than any channel you could buy, and it is the only one that works before you have a list.
Read the post - Choosing a tool
Loyalty software, apps and card apps compared
A loyalty engine, a consumer loyalty app and a digital card product share a category name and almost nothing else. The costly mistake is not overpaying, it is buying the one that assumes a developer you do not have or a relationship you thought you owned.
Read the post - Buying checklist
Ten things to check before buying loyalty software
Ten questions, each with the answer that should end the conversation. Three of them decide things you cannot renegotiate once your customer list lives inside somebody's product.
Read the post - Small business
Loyalty software without an IT budget
A ranked list of vendors would be out of date by spring. This is the method instead: what the four kinds of free actually cost, how to budget effort rather than money, and what a two-week trial can genuinely prove.
Read the post - Integrations
Connecting loyalty to your POS and CRM
POS integration is the most oversold feature in loyalty software. You need it when the qualifying event is a unit of spend, because the till is the only thing that knows the amount. A program that counts visits does not need it at all.
Read the post - Platform choice
Shopify loyalty apps vs standalone platforms
An embedded app wins on setup and at checkout, because the store already knows who the customer is and can discount the basket. A standalone wins the moment the program has to work somewhere the Shopify checkout is not.
Read the post - Buyer and beneficiary
Loyalty software for B2B and B2C
B2C loyalty software tracks a person. B2B loyalty software tracks an account with several people inside it, one of whom signs the invoice and none of whom necessarily receives the reward. That gap is a procurement problem before it is a software problem.
Read the post - Food service
Restaurant loyalty programs and the daypart problem
A restaurant runs two or three businesses out of one kitchen, and a single undifferentiated stamp card subsidizes whichever one already works. The daypart decides the threshold, the reward and the redemption rule.
Read the post - Café economics
Coffee shop stamp cards vs points
For a cafe, stamps beat points because the ticket is small and uniform, so points add arithmetic without adding fairness. The exception is a wide menu, and there is a number that tells you when you have one.
Read the post - By business type
Retail loyalty programs and the margin problem
A shop cannot fund a free item the way a cafe funds a free coffee. At a 40% gross margin every pound you give away at cost looks like £1.67 to the customer, against four pounds in hospitality, and the rewards that survive that are credit, access and the one item on your shelves with the widest gap between price and cost.
Read the post - Appointment trades
Salon and barber loyalty on a schedule
A cut every six weeks makes a ten-visit card a fourteen-month commitment, and nobody finishes one. Appointment businesses need a short card, an early reward, or a program that rewards the rebook rather than the visit.
Read the post - Borrowed mechanics
What small businesses can learn from bank rewards
A bank reward program is paid for by the merchant, not by the customer collecting it. That one fact decides which parts a shop can copy and which will quietly take the margin off every sale.
Read the post - Business customers
B2B loyalty programs without discounting
A discount given to a business customer is permanent, because the next purchase order is written against the last price paid. Rebates in arrears, service tiers, training, extended terms and allocation buy the same repeat business and leave the invoice line alone.
Read the post - Online stores
Loyalty programs for online-only businesses
An online store knows exactly who every customer is and has nowhere to ask them to join. The program has to live on the order confirmation, the account page and the post-purchase email, and for a small store credit beats points on every measure except one.
Read the post - Paid membership
Paid loyalty and membership programs
A paid membership works when the customer can recover the fee inside a month they can picture, and visits often enough that recovery is not hypothetical. Below roughly weekly, the arithmetic fails for both sides.
Read the post - Measuring results
Loyalty program metrics that matter
Six numbers describe a loyalty program honestly and four popular ones describe nothing. The most useful early signal is not how many people joined, it is how many of them came back for a second stamp.
Read the post - Diagnosis
Common loyalty program mistakes
Almost every failed loyalty program failed in one of eight ways, and six of them were decided before any software was bought. Each has a symptom you can see from the till and a fix that is either an adjustment or a restart.
Read the post - Deflation
AI in loyalty programs
A shop with two hundred customers does not have enough data for a model to beat a rule. Churn scoring at that size is a date comparison. Two things a language model genuinely does help with, and both are writing, not predicting.
Read the post - Dated on purpose
Loyalty program trends in 2026
Six shifts, written as observations rather than forecasts: wallets replacing apps, the retreat from downloads, paid tiers at small scale, the consent squeeze, AI-generated content flooding search, and rewards moving back from currency to product.
Read the post - For customers
How to earn loyalty points and rewards
A loyalty point is a currency issued by a shop, and like any currency its value is set by whoever issues it. Knowing what yours is worth in pence takes one division and changes which cards are worth carrying.
Read the post
Run the program these posts are about.
A digital stamp card your staff control, your customers keep in the browser, and you can read from your own dashboard.