Should I advertise the launch?

Not initially. Advertising brings people who do not yet visit you, which is a much harder job than converting people who already do.

How long should the push last?

Two weeks of deliberate effort, then it becomes routine. A launch that requires permanent effort was not a launch.

How to launch a loyalty programme to the regulars you already have

Launch to the people already coming in, not to strangers. Give your staff one sentence to say when they hand over an order. Put the code where people are waiting. Fifty regulars who use it beats five hundred sign-ups who never come back.

The instinct is to treat a loyalty launch as an acquisition campaign. It is not. It is a conversion campaign aimed at people already standing in your venue.

Why regulars first

They already come. You are not persuading them to change behaviour, only to record behaviour they were going to exhibit anyway. That is a far easier ask, and it fills the programme with exactly the people whose retention is worth something.

A programme with fifty engaged regulars tells you useful things. One with five hundred dormant signups from a competition tells you nothing.

The one sentence

Give staff a single line to say as they hand an order over. Something like this: “We’ve got a stamp card now. It’s the code on the counter. Ninth coffee is on us.”

One sentence, said by a person, at the moment of handover. It outperforms every piece of signage by a wide margin, and it costs nothing.

Placement

Where somebody is already standing still with nothing to do. The counter by the till, the table, the pickup point. A code on the door gets walked past.

Give the first visit a reason

A joining bonus converts “I’ll do it next time” into “I’ll do it now”. Consider delaying the grant by a few hours so it rewards somebody who is still engaged later rather than somebody who scanned and left.

Two weeks, then stop pushing

Make it deliberate for a fortnight: staff mentioning it, codes in place, someone checking signups daily. After that it should be routine.

If signups collapse the moment you stop pushing, the problem is placement or the staff line, not customer appetite.

What to watch

Not signup count. The share of your regulars who joined, and how many reach a first reward. Those tell you whether it is working.