Comparisons
What each alternative is genuinely good at, and where it costs you. If one of these tells you to stay where you are, that is the comparison doing its job.
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Paper punch cards
Digital loyalty compared with paper punch cards
Paper punch cards are cheaper to start, need no setup, and work when the power is out. Digital cards survive a lost wallet, can be measured, and cannot be forged with a borrowed stamp. If you only want to reward regulars and never want to know who they are, paper is genuinely fine.
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No loyalty programme
Fidella compared with doing nothing
Doing nothing is free, adds no complexity, and is genuinely right for some businesses. It stops being right when you cannot tell a regular from a first-timer, cannot tell who has stopped coming, and have started asking questions your records cannot answer.
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Building your own
Should you build your own loyalty app?
Build it yourself if loyalty is the thing you sell, or if you need something no product does. For a cafe or a shop it is almost never worth it. Building it is the cheap part. Keeping it working, year after year, is the part that never stops costing you.