Guide · 5 min
Stamps or points: which one fits your business?
Stamps count the things people buy. Points count the money they spend. If nearly everything you sell costs about the same, use stamps, because they are far easier to explain. If your prices vary a lot, use points, so a big order earns more than a small one.
This is the first real choice you make when you set up a programme, and there is a simple way to decide.
What each one counts
A stamp counts a thing. Buy a coffee, get a stamp. Buy three coffees at once, get three stamps.
A point counts money. Spend a dollar, earn a set number of points.
That is the whole difference, and it is what decides which suits you.
When stamps work
Stamps work when you mostly sell one kind of thing at about the same price.
A cafe is the clearest case. Nearly every sale is a coffee. One coffee, one stamp. Everyone is treated the same, because everyone is buying much the same thing.
Stamps have a second benefit that is easy to miss. “Buy five coffees, get one free” is a sentence your customer can repeat to a friend and get right. That is advertising you are not paying for, and points programmes almost never manage it.
When points work better
Points work better when what people buy varies a lot in price.
Say you sell $4 coffees and $28 breakfasts. Stamps now cause a problem, and it goes one of two ways.
If a stamp is for a coffee, the breakfast customers earn nothing at all, even though they spend the most.
If a stamp is for any sale, the $28 breakfast earns exactly what the $4 coffee earns. Your biggest spenders get your worst deal, and they are the customers you least want to lose.
Points solve both, because they follow the money.
How to choose
Look at a normal week of sales and ask one question. Are most of them about the same size?
If they are, use stamps. Being easy to explain is worth more than being perfectly fair.
If your prices are all over the place, use points.
If you are somewhere in between, take the simpler one. A programme people understand beats one that is fairer on paper.
Pick one and stay with it
You cannot run both, and changing later is not a small job. People will have built up stamps or points under the old rules and they will notice. Treat a switch as starting again, not as changing a setting.
Common questions
Can I run stamps and points at the same time?
No. You pick one. That limit is a good thing, because a programme running two kinds of credit at once is one your customers cannot explain to each other.
If someone buys three coffees at once, do they get three stamps?
Yes, if your rule gives a stamp per coffee. Stamps follow what people buy, not how many times they walk in.
Which do most cafes use?
Stamps, and for a good reason rather than habit. In a cafe most sales are about the same size, which is exactly when stamps work.
Related terms
- StampOne step towards a reward, earned by buying something the business has chosen.
- PointsLoyalty credit that counts the money spent, rather than the things bought.
- Average transaction valueAverage spend per sale, before margin.
- Earn rateHow quickly a customer builds up credit towards a reward.
- Gross marginThe share of a sale left after the direct cost of what you sold.