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Recommendations for Setting up your Square Loyalty Program

Selecting the right Loyalty program for your business is critical for success. We have listed a few core principles below to help you create a successful Loyalty program. 

 

Overview

Consider the following factors when determining the program that will work best for your business:

 

  • Your business’ average transaction size
  • How often your customers return to your business and
  • How long it takes them to do so

 

There are a few core principles to follow when creating a successful Loyalty program:

 

  • Most transactions qualify for a star - We recommend at least 80% of your transactions be eligible for a star. We see some sellers prefer to set strict rules for earning a star in order to incentivize customers to purchase more. However, our data suggests that doing so actually discourages customers from becoming engaged in your Loyalty program and creates a negative perception.

 

  • Customers can earn a reward in a timely manner - We suggest settings with which loyal customers earn a reward within 30 days of enrolling. Longer than that, we find buyers are more likely to forget they’re enrolled in a Loyalty program, and thus don’t make a point to return to the business. 

 

  • Offer a meaningful reward - Our research indicates that customers have greater satisfaction and are more likely to continue engaging a Loyalty program if the reward is worth at least 50% of your average ticket value, and 10% of what they spent to earn the reward. Your customers have expressed their loyalty for your business, why not make the reward for doing so worth it?

 

 

Below we explain how to use these principles in action.

 

Visit Programs

Visit-based programs are best if your customers visit your business at least once per week. We often see this in businesses with low-priced items.

 

You can use this equation to determine the values needed to reward your customers in a timely fashion:

 

Average customer return time (Days) x (Number of stars required to earn a reward - 1) = Time to Reward.


For example, a cafe wants to reward their customers after earning 5 stars. Their customers return every 3 days. Their time to reward (upon enrolling and getting their first star) is 12 days.

 

Spend Programs

Spend-based programs are best if your customers visit your business once a month, or even less frequently. This usually includes businesses with high-priced items, luxury services, or very long sales cycles.

 

You can use this equation to determine the values needed to reward your customers in a timely fashion:

 

Average customer return time (days) x (Purchase requirement to earn a star x (Number of stars required to earn a reward Stars to reward - 1) )/Average transaction size = Time to Reward

 

For example, a salon would like to reward clients for spending $100 or more on services. Their clients come in every 2 months for styling, and spend $75 per visit on average.  The salon might consider a 4-star program where clients earn a star every $25 spent.

 

Item/Category Programs

Item-based programs are best if you have a particular item you’d like to promote, such as a high-margin item or a best-seller. They take longer to set up but can be well worth it if you are conscious of the margin you get out of your digital rewards program.

 

 

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Get started with a free trial of Square Loyalty today.

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55 REPLIES 55

i dont like how the system only allows one reward redemption per transaction. 

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Square

Thanks for the feedback, @toyota40runner. While this isn't something that's currently available with Loyalty, we'll pass on your thoughts and update here if that changes in the future. Let us know if you have any other questions!

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How do you fix the issue if my customer receive 1 star/point for every $10 they spend, and when they claim it they can only use again 1 star/point even if they accumulated $20 in rewards. The system does not apply the total points earned to the order they wish to use their points on. ONLY one!!!! What do we do inthie case? The system seems useless on all counts. Customers are **bleep**ed off, and I cant even manually give them a discount becasue it will screw up the count, etc.

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Square Champion

I believe the default setting is that a customer can only redeem 1 reward per transaction. There isn’t a way to change it that I am aware of. 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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Alumni

Hey @agolubev1 !

 

Thanks for taking the time to post here and share your feedback. A little bit about myself, I’m the Product Marketing Manager for Square Loyalty, so I work closely with our Product Team and talk with subscribers all the time. Having said that, being able to apply multiple rewards to a single transaction is definitely a request I’ve heard. While I don’t have an immediate solution for this exact functionality, I am happy to extend early access to our multi-tiered rewards feature. This would be a great work-around for what you’re experiencing since you’d be able to set up linearly increasing rewards (ie: $10 for 10 points, $20 for 20 points, $30 for 30 points etc). If you’d be interested, just comment on this thread. Also, please keep the feedback coming. We love hearing how we can improve our product to serve y’all better!  

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Does the loyalty program charge a monthly fee?

Does customer use his/her phone number for identification to get reward?

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Yea it's $25 a month.  Can keep track of customers by name or number.

 

another thing I don't like about it is that you can make it an infinite amount of stars per reward like 1000 stars or something.  I would like to use to to keep track of referrals.  Could work perfect if it didn't have both of these limitations.

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(1) If I have 3 stores, do I pay $25 monthly program fee for each store?

(2) Can customer collect rewards from all 3 stores and redeem the reward at any store?

(3) What infomation is used to identify the customer?  Do we use the customer's phone number as 

his/her account ID?

(4) Will customer be notified once he/she reach the reward stars to redeem?

 

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @amymaMTH,

 

The pricing is $25 per month, per location, so in this case you would pay that fee for each store if you have them setup as different locations. 

 

Once you create your loyalty program, you can pick which locations participate. Your customers will be able to earn stars and redeem rewards at any of the locations that you picked to participate.

 

The phone number that your customer provides is what is used to track and earn the loyalty rewards, and customers will be notified via text message when they earn a reward. 

 

Here's a couple of articles that go through a lot of the frequently asked questions for the loyalty program and getting set up: 

 

Getting Started with Square Loyalty

Create a Loyalty Program with Square

 

I hope this information helps. Let me know if you have more questions! 

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I am writing to follow up on the discussion about the loyalty points program. 

 

Did I read correctly the fee is $25 a month per location? So, If I have three locations set up for three different farmer markets I would need to be $75 a month? This is REALLY expensive!! 

 

So, does square have a suggestion on how to set things up so that I can offer a loyalty program with also having the ability to track transactions and data based on where the transaction is happening?

 

Maybe I am using location wrong? But seriously, $75 a month for a loyalty program is cost prohibitive for a small start-up business.

 

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Alumni

Hi @GabrielKey123 - It sounds like you aren't a current subscriber of the Loyalty program, so I wanted to let you know that if you are a new subscriber, the Loyalty program pricing has actually changed. You can find the pricing model for new subscribers here (and there are some other FAQs in the article too): https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6462

 

The pricing model is now based upon how many loyalty visits (both new and returning customers) that a business sees rather than across locations. I'm not sure where this puts you in terms of cost per month, but please let me know any feedback you have. Our Loyalty team is very open to hearing from customers as to how this change affects their business. 

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Admin

Thanks for helping out with this question and for pointing this out, @toyota40runner. I'll be sure to surface your experience with our Product Liaison team. We're always working to improve based on seller feedback!

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Is it possible to set up "intangible" rewards? For instance, with my current rewards progam, after a certain amount spent, a customer can earn a free tshirts (which we don't sell). 

Michelle Leddy
Owner, BRRZAAR Cafe & Frozen Dessert Bar
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Admin

Hey @brrzaar — welcome to the seller community and thanks for bringing this up!

 

At this time, you'll need to select and item or category from your item library as a reward. Would creating a item strictly for rewards purposes and naming it "Free Reward T-shirt" work okay for your business?

 

If that doesn't get you where you need to be, please reply with a bit more information on why it's important to bypass this step and I'll be sure to surface your feedback with our Product Liaison team. 🙂

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Can I shut off the automatic SMS messaging tied to the loyalty program? I want to provide my customers a simple way to earn loyalty rewards without them feeling like I'm stepping into their private world by texting their phone.

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Square

Hi @justin1. I definitely understand your concern  - you don't want to feel like your spamming your customers! While we we don't current offer an alternate method for informing folks of reward statuses, I'm happy to share your feedback. Customers should only get a notifications when they get their first star, and then when they get a reward. So when they do get a text, it will most likely be for something free! 😀


Sean
he/him/his
Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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Square Champion

I have a few customers that prefer not to receive text messages. Since you can't turn that off the easy work around is to have them give you their home phone  number since most landlines can't receive text messages. That way you are still able to track their rewards but they aren't bothered by text messages 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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How does a business track customer loyalty stars?  Is there a card they receive or do you simply rely on stored data in the Square somehow?

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Alumni

@FishersReStore Square loyalty automatically tracks the stars for you customers based on their phone number. Customers don't need to worry about carrying a card everytime they come into your shop. All they have to do is key in their phone number at the end of the transaction. For credit card payments, we automatically link the cards to your customers' loyalty account. This way, your customers don't need to key in their phone number for every transaction.

 

If you wanted to view your customer's loyalty status, you can view them and edit status on the customer profile in the POS App. Visit Customers and search by phone number.

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I would like to see a coupn on the bottom of the receipt for  $ ?.?? based on the amount of the sale.

 

Tim 

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