Questions about Loyalty program's "Per Visit" option

[brandonhenley]

The loyalty program is working excellently for my ice cream business but I'm having an issue with the "per visit" program option, since it's not actually "per visit" it's "per purchase". My intention, and original understanding based on the wording, was that each customer could earn up to 1 star per day (or at least in a decently long timeframe such as 6 hours), but instead many are catching on to the fact that they can buy each item separately and get a star for each.

My highest-selling item is only $2.99 and you get a reward at 10 stars, so people attempting to "game" the system make the program not worth it. You can tell them it's 1 star per visit, but if they buy things separately with the same credit card you can't even stop them from receiving extra stars except to go back and manually remove them, which will never work during peak season.

Any chance of making the "Per Visit" option truly per visit with some sort of time limit? If not, does anyone have any ideas to approximate what I'm trying to achieve under the current system or have a better idea for how I should handle it?

Thanks!

[#2]

We have that concern as well but we have made sure to price out our loyalty program to make sure it's valuable to the customer without being a major cost to us. We have 6 different reward options but each item comes out to be about 10%-12% of the retail price of what they paid. So if they purchased $50 they get a reward worth ~$5. Our cost of goods is only 30% of that so it is kinda scary knowing some people have thousands of points they could dump in one day but those are also the customers we see every day and have a relationship with. 

[pessosices · Accepted solution]

Hey there!

I can definitely see how people would try to game the system with a per-visit program.

What's your reward right now?

We're also an ice cream store and because of all that, we went with a Category Based. We set up 1 star for each item in our main categories - Ice Cream, Gelato, Italian Ice, Shakes, Sundaes, etc. - and we did Buy 12 get $4 off the next item. This way our customers get credit for any item they buy, and get $4 off any item that they want, not just a Free item that we pick - more flexibility is awesome.

So maybe doing something similar to that might work?

It all depends on what you want to accomplish. 

Best of luck and let me know if you have any more questions!

[brandonhenley]

Our reward is actually a spin of our prize wheel, which could get you anything from a free ice cream cone to a free $20 gift card. Customers seem to enjoy the fun of it, but I'm going to take your ideas into consideration since they may work out better for us and I certainly appreciate the time you took to reply!

[pessosices]

That's so clever! I love it!

Hey, if it works for you and is fun for the customers, and is a great talking point, then that's awesome!

[FIXCoffeebar]

Can you please change the Square Loyalty program so as to limit it to ONE reward a day please

[offsetcoffee]

Hi everyone, any thoughts on being able to limit transactions to accrue points to just 1 transaction per day? I tried to reduce this in the settings and it told me it needs a minimum of 2. The issue we are running into is we now have customers splitting transaction as they get 1 point per transaction, so essentially they are doubling their points. Thanks in advance!

[pessosices]

Hey @offsetcoffee - that’s definitely a major downside of doing points per visit. I don’t structure my program based on visits, and I don’t recommend folks to do it either. We do points per item, and points per $_ spent works really well too to avoid folks taking advantage. 

[FIXCoffeebar]

Thanks.

I wasn't clear we actually do award points based on $ value of sale.

Didn't think the system could award points per item (as I asked for that function some time back). How do you do that please.

[FIXCoffeebar]

We have been allowing customers to collect awards during Covid, however we turned off the ability to use them as we were only just surviving and could not afford to give away "free drinks".

Now things are starting to look better we would like to turn the rewards back on however there appears to be no way of narrowing the system down such that customers can only use one reward a day ( or even a number of rewards per week). If we cannot do this it is feasible that we could have days where we take little money but just give away tons of free drinks.  

Is there anyway to to limit the system currently, or could Square easily add these simple features please.

Many thanks

[ashc]

Hey @FIXCoffeebar,

I moved your post to an existing thread with some seller discussion on limiting Loyalty points redemptions.

There's not a way to limit daily/weekly use exactly like you're looking for here- but @pessosices offered a suggestion above on doing points per item or $ spent to avoid excessive points being used here that may be helpful.

[FIXCoffeebar]

Thank you.

So how do we ask Square to implement the suggested changes to the loyalty program please?

[augustalan]

We have that concern as well but we have made sure to price out our loyalty program to make sure it's valuable to the customer without being a major cost to us. We have 6 different reward options but each item comes out to be about 10%-12% of the retail price of what they paid. So if they purchased $50 they get a reward worth ~$5. Our cost of goods is only 30% of that so it is kinda scary knowing some people have thousands of points they could dump in one day but those are also the customers we see every day and have a relationship with. 

[wnsapparel]

Is there a way to set up the square loyalty to a way that a customer can only receiver 1 star per day and not per transaction?  I have customers who will purchase something and receive a star and then come back the say day and get another one.  I'd like them to only be able to receive one per day!

[TATGOD]

This is a great question. I have a coffee shop and would like to reward customers who frequent often in a week. Some guests close out a tab three or four times over the course of the day. A 'purchase per day' system would work better for me.

[wnsapparel]

Yes!  Square please make this possible!  

[dragonflyfarm]

SO frustrated at customers taking advantage and splitting up their items into different transactions so they can use a reward for each one (because our 10% off maxes out at $20).... Square PLEASE make a limit option on so we don't have to personally cut customers off from using more than one reward a day.