How to Set Up a Digital Loyalty Stamp Card | Redcat

Most operators who put off launching a loyalty scheme are not put off by the idea. They are put off by the assumed hassle: new hardware, a separate system, staff training, another login, another supplier to chase. Fair enough. That is what a lot of loyalty rollouts have looked like.

In practice, setting up a digital stamp card is mostly decision making rather than configuration. Get the decisions right and the technical set up is short. Get them wrong and no amount of configuration will rescue it. If you are still weighing up whether to move off paper at all, start with how paper and digital stamp cards compare.

Here is the order to work through it.

Before you configure anything: three decisions

1. Decide what earns a stamp

The simplest rule is one stamp per transaction, and for most cafes and fast casual sites that is the right answer. It is instantly understandable and impossible to argue about at the counter.

The alternatives are a stamp per qualifying product, which suits operators with a clear hero item such as coffee, or a stamp per minimum spend, which protects margin where basket sizes vary a lot. Minimum spend rules are the most likely to cause friction, because somebody will always be forty pence short and unhappy about it.

Pick one rule. Resist the temptation to build exceptions in at launch.

2. Decide how many stamps to a reward

This is the setting that determines whether the scheme works, and it should be calculated rather than guessed. Start from how often a typical customer visits, then set the card so the reward is roughly six to eight weeks away.

For a cafe with weekly regulars, that means six to eight stamps. For a lunchtime QSR where customers visit two or three times a week, ten stamps is reasonable. Beyond ten and the goal becomes abstract for most people. Below five and you are discounting customers who were coming regardless.

3. Decide what the reward actually is

Choose something with a high perceived value and a low cost to you. A free hot drink is the classic example for a reason: customers value it at menu price and it costs you very little to serve.

Avoid percentage discounts. They are harder to understand, they scale badly against large orders, and they feel less like a reward than a free item does. Also decide up front whether the reward expires, and be consistent about it. Reward rules that change mid scheme create the disputes you were trying to avoid.

Step one: check what your POS can already do

Before you speak to a loyalty supplier, find out what is already available inside the system you are paying for. A lot of operators buy a standalone loyalty product and then discover their POS had the functionality sitting behind a settings menu.

This matters more than it sounds. Loyalty built into the POS applies stamps automatically against the transaction. Loyalty bolted on beside it requires somebody to do something extra at the till, and that something extra is where schemes fail.

Step two: decide how customers collect

There are three broad models and they are not equally good in a queue.

• QR scan at the point of purchase. The customer scans, the stamp lands, the transaction continues. Lowest friction and the right default for counter service.
• Phone number or email lookup at the till. Workable, but it adds several seconds and a data entry error to every transaction.
• App based collection. Strong for large brands with existing app adoption, poor for anybody asking for a download at the counter.

If you serve at a counter and your queue matters, choose QR. Everything else is a compromise you will feel at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.

Step three: set the rules in your back office

This is the part everyone dreads and it is usually the quickest. You are entering the three decisions you have already made: the earn rule, the number of stamps, and the reward. Add site level settings if the scheme should run differently across locations, and set your start date.

Then test it properly before launch. Run a full cycle yourself on a real till: collect the stamps, hit the threshold, redeem the reward, and check it appears correctly in reporting. Do this at a quiet moment on a live site rather than only in a test environment, because the thing that breaks is almost never the rule and almost always the till flow around it.

Step four: brief your team, properly

This is the step most operators skip and it is the one that determines uptake. Your staff need three things: to know the scheme exists, to know exactly what to say, and to know why they should bother saying it.

Give them one sentence they can repeat without thinking about it. Something along the lines of asking whether the customer is collecting stamps, delivered while the order is being rung through rather than after payment. Put a prompt somewhere they will see it, whether that is on the till screen or a customer facing display.

And tell them what it is for. Teams prompt more consistently when they understand the scheme is about bringing regulars back rather than being another thing management has added to their shift.

Step five: tell your customers it exists

A loyalty scheme nobody knows about performs exactly as well as no loyalty scheme. Keep the launch simple: signage at the counter, a line on your website, a post on your social channels, and a mention on receipts if your system supports it.

The counter is where almost all of your enrolments will come from. Everything else supports it.

Step six: review it after thirty days

Put a date in the diary before you launch. At thirty days, look at four things:

• How many customers enrolled, and whether that number is still growing or has flattened
• How many went on to collect a second stamp, which tells you whether the first interaction landed
• How enrolment splits across your sites, which usually reveals a staffing or briefing gap rather than a customer difference
• Whether anyone has redeemed yet, and if not, whether the reward is simply too far away

A single site sitting well below the others is almost never a customer problem. It is a prompt problem, and it is fixable in a shift.

Setting up digital stamp cards with Redcat

If you are already running Redcat POS, most of the above is already handled. Digital stamp cards sit inside the same platform that runs your EPOS, kitchen management and online ordering, so stamps apply automatically against qualifying transactions and redemptions are recognised at the till without staff intervention.

Rules are configured once in the Redcat back office and applied across every site, so multi site operators are not relying on each location to run the scheme the same way. Collection and redemption data flows into the same reporting you already use, which means the thirty day review is a report rather than a spreadsheet exercise.

Set up is handled by the Redcat team and schemes are typically live within days. There is no separate system to manage and no additional login for your staff to remember. Existing Redcat customers can also follow the step by step setup guide in the help centre.

The mistakes worth avoiding

Three things account for most disappointing launches. Setting the reward too far away, so nobody builds momentum. Adding earn rule exceptions at launch, so nobody at the counter can explain the scheme. And launching without briefing the team, so enrolment depends entirely on whoever happens to be enthusiastic.

None of those are technical problems. Which is the point. The set up is the easy part. The decisions in front of it are the work.