# 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.

Source: https://fidella.app/guides/launching-to-your-existing-regulars
Last reviewed: 2026-08-31

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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.