Recommendations for Setting up your Square Loyalty Program

[martina_a]

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.

[Chad]

Hey @4ob! Just for clarification, would you like to see a coupon as a reward automatically printed out when the customer reaches the star threshold? 

[homeprogreen]

Personally I think that would complicate the program. The way it is set up now the customers can wait until they want to use their discount they earned without having to worry about actually keeping track of a paper coupon. It would be nice to have the option of of adding a coupon to a customer's receipt in Square register if I wanted to give them a bonus

[4ob]

No actually I would like a coupon printed on the receipt giving the customer 5% of their purchase ( in whole numbers) as a coupon to be used between certain dates. Example if Sally purchased 78.94 then she would receive a 4.00 off coupon on the bottom of her receipt good for 2 weeks good in 7 days from purchase date   

[lilychiang]

@4ob - The functionality that you are looking for exists today if you are subscribed to Square Marketing. 

When you create a promotional marketing campaign (one that includes a discount or coupon), you will have the option of adding the coupon to their digital receipts during the “Audience” step of the campaign creation flow. At this time, discounts in receipts must accompany an email campaign.

[homeprogreen]

I am already paying 60 dollars a month for the Square register and another 25.00 dollars a month for Square Loyalty. Adding another fee per month for Square Marketing on top of the % processor fees is getting carried away. Marketing or Loyalty should be included with Square Register since we pay the same processing fees as the people who use the free version 

[4ob]

Yes but now it seems that you are statring to nickle and dime us for things that if increase sales then it increase's squares bottom line as well.

[Tom]

Hey @homeprogreen and @4ob, thank you for taking the time to bring this up.

I can certainly see how paying an additional subscription fee is not a welcome change. If I may, I wanted to offer more context: this decision was made to allow us to keep improving Square Loyalty and to improve the features that help your business grow.

With Square Loyalty, you have features that that drive sales, repeatedly encourage your customers to visit your business, and track those behaviors with analytics.

We're taking feedback on the subscription pricing seriously and I'll be surfacing your posts to the appropriate team members. While we do not have any other pricing or subscription packages to offer at this time, please don't hesitate to let us know anything else comes up.

[4ob]

we have been with you guys and trying to hang for the long haul but there are a few other companiesthat see what your doing and are knocking on the door. Again, anything that brings more customers is a plus for all of us and thats the "working together" program. If I want to receive the deposits the next day then charge, if I want something that you provide that I want then charge me but if it helps move both agendas, well thats not something to chatge for. My opinion

[NewMoonBooks]

Very excited to see that we can now choose categories to exclude from our loyalty program, it was the one thing that made us unsubscribe...now a question for you. If I have a category named "candles" and a modifier for a blessing that adds an extra amount onto the regular price of the candle. Will we be able to exclude items with modifiers attached or will we need another category for candles with no modifier to be included in the loyalty program?

[Chad]

Hello @NewMoonBooks, I can help with this. 

Just for clarification when setting a loyalty program up by categories, it's more like your rewarding your customers for shopping in this category. Now any item that is listed in this category will count towards a loyalty star regardless of modifiers or variations applied at the time of the sale. 

So if you only wanted certain items with out modifiers to be eligible you might have to create a stripped down duplicate version of the item and create a category named reward items to assign it to. 

If you still have questions let me know! 😄

[barkpark_chi]

Currently we offer a reward program we manage ourselves. However, I'd like to simply the process. I'm looking at the different ways to customize. Hoping you can clarify if this will work. 

We offer 1 point for every $1 spent. Once customers hit 100 points, they can a $5 off reward. 

If we were to continue this offer, is this the correct set up? 

Also, is there a way to customize redemptions? For example, rewards can't be used on food (we're a pet store) bc margins are super low on food, sale/ promotional items, and special order products. From what I can tell, we need to select every category but food? 

is there a simpler way? 

[puka]

Hey @barkpark_chi 👋🏼

Great question! If I'm understanding you correctly, you would actually want to set your Amount per Star to be $1 as this is the amount the customer has to spend to earn a star. That should fulfill the 1:1 rule you were looking for. Your Stars for Reward would then be set to 100 as this is how many stars they have to earn in order to receive the $5 off reward.

As far as the second half of your question, you are correct in that you would just select every category that is eligible for the discount. Just exclude the "Food" category and you're good to go 👍🏼

On another note, a good trick I came across is to have a visible sign outlining your Loyalty program to encourage your customers to join and help them understand how it works. A great example is @pessosices who has a detailed sign next to his register so they can easily see it at checkout. You can check it out in his post where he reviews the new Square Register (second picture).

Hope that helps! If not, feel free to let us know and we can help get you in the right direction.

[barkpark_chi]

@puka I'm not a fan of this service. I don't see why customers needed to re-register and if you didnt respond fast enought with the phone number the loyalty screen clears on its own. Overall, customers have profiles already — no need to duplicate and annoy customers. Can you refer me to someone about requesting that I'm not charged $25 this month? I've already cancelled subscription.

[pessosices]

Hey @barkpark_chi,

I feel your pain and frustration with the Loyalty Screen clearing on it's own on the new Square Register - that's something that they are working on and should (hopefully) be fixed soon so it's closer to what it's like on the iPad. We've been getting around that in the meantime by bringing the customer over to the register and telling them that the screen will pop up so they should be ready - and it's been working!

For the duplicate profile thing you're talking about, the reason for that is that they need to agree to the terms and sign up for the loyalty program. It's super simple, they just type in their phone number, and that's it! No extra steps needed. If they pay cash, they have to put in their number each time, but if they pay with the same credit/debit/gift cards then they just enter their number once and that's it.

We had been doing paper punch card for 13 years and switched over to the Square Loyalty in August and the new Registers in November, and although there are some kinks, it's already improved a lot since we've started, and it's only getting better.

We absolutely love it, and the most important thing is that the customers love it even more!

Hope this helps,
Pesso

[barkpark_chi]

@pessosices if a customer is signing up for our rewards program (how we collect their data using paper sign up slips) to then have them sign up for the new square program is the duplicate work i'm referring to. 

@puka I guest I would be interested to know, if we only had customers just signing up through the square loyalty what data do you collect from these customers and are they populated into the customer directory? My concern about this is, if the screen disappears too fast how does my customer still receive his or her stars? Also, our sign up program allows us to capture basic customer data (full name/ phone number / email), pet type (cat or dog plus their names for personalized marketing). their pet's birthday (for a promotional campaign), and interest in our other services (dog walking, pet sitting, etc). Can we customize the sign up? If we could, I'd be open to re-evaluting this program. 

[pessosices]

@barkpark_chi What sign up program and process are you using now?

[puka]

To my understanding, only the contact information that the customer provides to receive their receipt is collected so that they can enroll via SMS or email. Once enrolled, the Loyalty account is linked to their phone number (they can choose to link a payment card as well). Your Customer Directory will identify potential duplicate profiles if two or more customers share the same email address and/or phone number so if they already have profile with you with the same number, their Loyalty points should automatically be linked to that profile.

You can add your customers directly within your app during a sale if you'd like to move away from the paper sign up. While there isn't a way to customize it and add a field for Pet Type and Name, there is a Notes field within the form where you can include that information. There is also a birthday field included if you'd like to use that for their pet's birthday. If you'd rather continue using paper to avoid slowing down your checkout process, you can always add this information later and manually tie the transaction back to them by pressing Add Customer when viewing the receipt in your online Dashboard.

You can also place them in your own custom customer groups based on the list of interests they stated (i.e. dog walking group, pet sitting group, etc.). These groups come in handy if you'd like to start using our Email Marketing feature to send specific information to those types of customers such as upcoming events or promos. To create a new group within your app: tap Customers > All Customers > Choose a customer > Edit Personal Information > Create Group. You can also do this within your Square Dashboard.

If your customer misses the ability to claim their star at checkout, you can always manually add it for them through the app. They will receive a text whenever they've earned a star or reward which will also link them to a page where they can view their Loyalty status online at any time.

[barkpark_chi]

@puka if that's all you collect (phone/email) for the square loyalty program then we still need to continue what we're doing to create customer accounts. my hope was that we could customize the sign up process on your end (square) to simply our data collection for a complete customer directory resource. 

overall, we're already putting into practice everything else you mentioned. its just alot of work. hoping your service was going to help simplify matters but it appears we still need to continue our practices. 

[pessosices]

@barkpark_chi I believe you could also have your customers complete the transaction, sign up for the loyalty, and then immediately afterwards go into the Customer Directory, find the person by phone number, and fill out the customer profile with all of the pieces of informatoin you need. Cool thing about that is that it will show up on the customer facing display so they can add in all that information themselves right into the square customer directory!

Please correct me if I'm wrong, @puka

[puka]

Really sorry to hear that the experience is not what you expected, @barkpark_chi. We do appreciate your feedback though and will make sure to bring it up to the Loyalty team. As @pessosices mentioned (appreciate your insights here!), we are continuously looking to improve the experience for our Sellers. Hopefully, his comment offers some clarity on the features you're having issues with.

If you'd still like to move away from using Loyalty, unsubscribing within your Square Dashboard should stop your monthly payments without issue. If you are within your free trial period, you will still have access until the 30 days expire. You can always reach out to our Support team to confirm as well. 🤙🏼

[homeprogreen]

@puka Is it possible to set certain items in a category to be not discountable instead of the whole category?  I have some items that don’t carry enough margin to allow discounts but they’re located in category with other items that are