# How to price a stamp card without losing money

Work from what the reward costs you to make, not what you sell it for. Then work out what that is as a share of what the customer spent getting there. Under about 5 cents in every dollar is normal, and cheaper than most advertising.

Source: https://fidella.app/guides/how-to-price-a-stamp-card
Last reviewed: 2026-08-31

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Most loyalty programmes are priced by looking at the venue down the road. That
number encodes somebody else's margins, ticket sizes and visit frequency.

## Step one: what the reward actually costs you

Not the menu price. The input cost. A $5.50 flat white with $1.65 of beans,
milk, cup and marginal labour costs you $1.65 to give away, not $5.50.

Getting this wrong in the pessimistic direction is the single most common reason
an owner decides loyalty is too expensive.

## Step two: what the customer spent to get there

Threshold times average ticket. Ten stamps at a $6 average is $60 of revenue.

## Step three: express it as a percentage

$1.65 against $60 is 2.75 percent of revenue. That is your programme cost.

Compare it against what you pay for a customer through any other channel. It is
difficult to lose that comparison, because most advertising buys attention
rather than a repeat visit, and this only pays out when the visits actually
happened.

## The bands worth knowing

Under 3 percent is cheap. Three to 5 percent is normal and comfortable. Above
about 8 percent you are either being very generous deliberately, in which case
fine, or you have mispriced something.

## Two adjustments most people miss

**Not everyone finishes.** Some proportion of issued stamps never reach a
reward, which lowers the real cost. Do not build your plan on it. If a lot goes unused, it usually means people
gave up. You have saved the money and lost the repeat visits you were paying
for.

**The reward is bought at your cost, not sold at your price.** A customer
redeeming a free coffee often buys something alongside it. That attach spend is
real and it is why measured programme cost usually lands below the arithmetic.

## The failure mode to avoid

Cheapening the reward to make the numbers work. A reward nobody wants costs you
nothing and earns you nothing. If the maths is tight, raise the threshold and
keep the reward worth having.