What to look for in a loyalty programme

Eight things decide whether a loyalty programme is worth running, and only one of them is the monthly price. Settle these first, then compare products, and the comparison gets much shorter.

1. What it costs, and on what unit. Per shop, per location, per order and per active customer behave completely differently as you grow. The unit matters more than the opening figure.
2. What you ask the customer to do. Every step between the counter and a joined member loses people. An app install is the biggest step there is.
3. Whether it fits the till you already own. A programme that requires a new till is not a loyalty decision, it is a till decision wearing a disguise.
4. Whether you can take your members with you. Ask how the export works before you sign, not after.
5. Whether the reward maths works at your margin. A reward that costs more than the visit it buys is a discount with extra steps.
6. How often it will message your customers. The person who pays for a loyalty programme becoming a mailing list is your customer, and they pay in goodwill.
7. Whether it tells you if it is working. Points issued is activity. Customers returning is the result.
8. What leaving costs. Contract length, hardware to return, and whether the programme is yours or theirs.

Six of those have their own guide, written about running a scheme rather than about buying one, with arithmetic you can check against your own figures:

• What a digital loyalty card costs a small business. Two costs, and shops usually only think about the first one.
• Will a digital loyalty card work with my till?. This is the question that stops most shops, and the answer is nearly always yes.
• Digital stamp card or points: which suits your shop. One decision, made in five minutes, and it shapes everything after it.
• How to start a digital loyalty card for a small business. Starting one is five decisions and an afternoon.
• How generous should a loyalty card reward be?. Two numbers decide a points scheme: what a pound earns, and how many points buy a reward.
• A digital loyalty card with no app to download. The hardest thing a loyalty scheme ever asks of a customer is the very first thing: install something.
• What unspent loyalty card points are worth on your books. Every point you have issued and not yet honoured is a promise to give something away.
• Digital loyalty card for a cafe: how to set it up. A cafe is the easiest place in retail to run a loyalty programme and the easiest place to run one badly.
• Digital loyalty card for a convenience store. Convenience is the hardest place to run a loyalty programme, for one reason that has nothing to do with technology: a large share of what you sell makes you almost nothing.
• Digital loyalty card for a barber shop or salon. A cafe wants you in more often this week.
• When a loyalty card app pays for itself. Every loyalty pitch talks about retention and lifetime value.
• Which loyalty card reward costs you least. There are four kinds of reward and they are not interchangeable.
• Switching digital loyalty card providers. The worst moment to find out what a loyalty provider will let you take away is the day you want to leave.

What loyalty platforms actually charge

Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page. Where a vendor publishes nothing, that is what it says. None of these numbers came from a comparison blog.

The billing unit column is the one worth reading twice. Per location and per order behave completely differently as a business grows, and it is where an apparently cheap platform becomes an expensive one.

Weighing one of these against us

These are the platforms shops ask us about by name. Each page says what they do better than us as well as where we are cheaper, because a comparison that only flatters the person who wrote it is no use to anybody choosing.

• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Square Loyalty
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Perkstar
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Stamp Me
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Loyalzoo
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Airship
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Toast UK
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Piggy
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with White Label Loyalty
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Stampede
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Como
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Spark Loyalty
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Remy Rewards
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with StampClub
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Loyalty Magnet
• Valence Easy Loyalty compared with Stampet

If one of these is out of date about your product, tell us and we will correct it with the date we read it.