How to start a loyalty program in five steps

A loyalty program comes down to five decisions. Most of them take an afternoon. Only one needs anything technical, the link with your till, and for some tills and webshops that link already exists.

Puntjes is in beta, so there is no sign-up button yet. You email us from the pricing section on the homepage, and we set up your account. After that, the five steps are yours.

1. Decide what earns points

The earn rule says what a purchase is worth: a whole number of points per euro, and a minimum amount if you want one. One point per euro from five euro is a simple start. Puntjes rounds down, so a purchase of 12.80 euro earns 12 points, and a bottle of water for 1.50 euro earns nothing.

You can change the rule later. Points your customers already earned stay as they are; only purchases after the change follow the new rule. With more than one shop, you can give one shop a rule of its own, and the others keep the rule for all shops.

2. Choose your first rewards

A reward is a discount, as a fixed amount or a percentage, or a free product. Each one has a price in points. Give it a stock when you only have twenty to give away, and a first and a last day when it belongs to a season.

Make the first reward reachable within a few visits. A customer who redeems something in the first month has seen the program work. One who needs a year of purchases may forget the card exists.

3. Connect your till or your webshop

Points follow purchases, so Puntjes has to hear about each one. Your till or your webshop sends it through the Puntjes API. Every purchase carries a key of its own: when the till sends the same purchase twice after a network hiccup, Puntjes counts it once.

The link needs an API client from the admin portal, under API clients. You make it yourself, or the company that sets up the link makes it for you.

• On a Casanova till, ITReflex sets up the link, for the till and for the ITReflex webshop.
• In a webshop built by F-REDDIE, Puntjes is already inside.
• Any other till or webshop can talk to the API directly. Its developer finds every call in the Puntjes API documentation.

4. Give your customers their card

There is no sign-up form for customers. A customer joins when your till or your webshop adds them, or when you add them yourself in the admin portal. Every customer gets a loyalty card, and it comes in two forms:

• In the phone. Switch on "Automatically email the wallet pass to new customers", and every new customer with an email address receives the card by email, ready for Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
• On paper. Puntjes generates card codes in batches, and a print shop turns them into cards. You link a card to a customer when you add them, at the till or in the admin portal.

Both forms point at the same balance. A signup bonus gives every new customer a few points on day one, so the first look at the card does not show a zero.

5. Plan a first campaign, then watch the numbers

A campaign adds points on top of the earn rule for a while: double points on Tuesdays this month, or 50 extra points on one product. The product campaign works when your till sends the products of each purchase along with the total.

Some plans also include customer moments. Those are gifts on a birthday, on a first purchase, on every tenth purchase, or for a customer who has not been in for a few months. Birthday and win-back gifts go out by email, to customers who agreed to receive your emails.

After a month, open the dashboard. It shows how many customers bought something, how many points went out and how many came back in, and which rewards were redeemed most. When nobody has redeemed anything yet, the first reward is probably too far away. Lower its price, and watch the next month.