Digital loyalty card for a barber shop or salon
A cafe wants you in more often this week. A barber wants you back a week sooner than you were going to come. That is a different problem, and it needs a different reward, because the thing you are trying to move is the gap rather than the frequency.
The gap is the whole business
Take a customer who comes every six weeks and spends twenty pounds. That is roughly eight and a half visits a year, so about £173. Pull the gap in to five weeks and it is ten and a half visits, about £208. You have not sold anything new, changed your prices or found a customer. You have moved one number.
| Gap between visits | Visits a year | Spend a year | Against a six week gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Four weeks | 13.0 | £260 | plus £87 |
| Five weeks | 10.4 | £208 | plus £35 |
| Six weeks | 8.7 | £173 | the baseline |
| Eight weeks | 6.5 | £130 | minus £43 |
Thirty five pounds a year from one customer does not sound like much until you multiply it by everybody on your list. It is also worth noticing the bottom row: a customer drifting from six weeks to eight costs you more than a reward ever will.
So reward the gap, not the spend
The reward that works here is one with a deadline attached. Money off if you rebook within five weeks moves the exact number that matters. A points balance that accumulates over a year does not, because there is nothing in it that says come back sooner.
- Points per pound still earn their keep, because baskets vary a lot between a dry cut and a colour, and a stamp card treats those as the same visit.
- The reward that changes behaviour is time limited. Something waiting that expires in a fortnight is a reason to book; a balance is not.
- Reward the rebooking rather than the visit where you can. The strongest moment to ask is while they are still in the chair.
The one you cannot see without a programme
Every appointment business has a group of customers who have quietly drifted past their normal gap and have not booked. They have not gone anywhere else yet and they are not thinking about you. Nobody notices them, because nothing in a diary shows an appointment that was not made.
A loyalty programme that records every visit can tell you who they are: this customer normally comes every six weeks and it has been eleven. That list, and a reason to come back, is worth more to a salon than any amount of discounting to people who were coming anyway.
What not to do
Do not discount the service itself as the standing reward. A salon that trains its customers to wait for money off has cut its prices with extra steps. Reward with something that costs you less than it is worth: a treatment add on, a product, a priority slot.
Related
- How generous should a loyalty card reward be?
- Which loyalty card reward costs you least
- When a loyalty card app pays for itself
Written for shopkeepers rather than for a search engine. The arithmetic here is yours to check, and if a figure looks wrong for your trade, tell us and we will correct it.