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. Most schemes lose more people there than anywhere else.
Why the app is the problem
Standing at a counter with a queue behind them, a customer is asked to open an app store, find the right app among the near misses, wait for a download, create an account and verify an email. That is a minute and a half in the best case, and the staff member has other people to serve. Most people say they will do it later, and later never arrives.
The three ways round it
| Route | What the customer does | Where the card lives | Works offline? |
|---|---|---|---|
| A downloaded app | Installs, registers, verifies | The app | Yes |
| A wallet pass | Taps a link, adds to Apple or Google Wallet | The phone's wallet | Yes |
| A browser card | Scans a QR code and enters a name | A saved page in the browser | Not usually |
The second and third both avoid the app store. A wallet pass survives a flat battery better and sits beside their boarding passes. A browser card is faster to join and easier to change, because the shop can alter what it shows without asking anybody to update anything.
The number that decides everything
Time from asking to joined. If it is under a minute, staff will offer it to everybody, because it does not hold up the queue. If it is over two minutes they will stop offering it by the end of the first week, whatever they told you in the briefing.
So the sign-up route is not a technical preference. It is the difference between a scheme with two thousand members and a scheme with sixty.
What good looks like at the counter
- A printed sign with a QR code, so the customer uses their own phone and their own camera and staff do nothing.
- A reward given at the moment of joining, so the first experience is receiving something rather than filling in a form.
- Nothing asked for beyond a name and one way to reach them. Every extra field costs sign-ups, and a birthday can be collected later by somebody who has already joined.
And the one thing to check before you buy
Ask to see the sign-up on a phone, with a stopwatch running, before you sign anything. Not a demo of the dashboard. The thing your customer does, on the pavement, at the counter, in the rain.
Related
- Will a digital loyalty card work with my till?
- How to start a digital loyalty card for a small business
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.