The hard part of starting is not the tool: it is deciding how many stamps and what you give away. These six setups are defensible answers, with the reasoning beside them so you can disagree on purpose.
With near-daily visits, ten stamps fill in a fortnight. The head-start stamp means the card is never handed over empty, and the reward at five holds the middle.
Built for coffee shops, bakeries, juice bars.
Everyday coffee
Club card
At one visit a fortnight, eight stamps is four months: long. The dessert at four cuts that road in half and is what stops the card being abandoned.
Built for restaurants, pizzerias.
The table that returns
Club card
Six monthly appointments is half a year of custom, which is about what you can ask for in an appointment trade. No intermediate reward: each visit is already valuable here, and splitting it cheapens it.
Built for barbershops, beauty salons, nail salons, pet groomers.
The monthly appointment
Club card
When people come four times a year, a ten-stamp card is science fiction. Five with a head start puts the goal four visits away: a year, which is a promise you can keep.
Built for spas, tattoo studios, florists.
Few visits, high ticket
Club card
Built for kiosk mode with a cap of one stamp a day. Eight stamps and no intermediate reward, because every interruption costs: what matters here is that stamping does not slow the queue.
Built for ice cream shops, bars, corner shops.
With a queue at the counter
Club card
Two head-start stamps and six in total: the card is born a third of the way along. It is the setup with the most evidence behind it when the problem is not attracting people but keeping the habit alive.
Built for gyms, car washes.
Back into the habit
Club card
Each takes a couple of minutes to create and adapts to your shop. The one thing worth thinking through first is the stamp count: once customers are collecting, it stays put.
Create my free card