How to set up a free digital loyalty card for your shop

Step 1 — Decide the reward before you touch any software

This is the only decision that really matters, and it comes down to two numbers: how many visits earn a reward, and what the reward is.

The mistake almost everyone makes is copying a café’s card into a business that doesn’t work like a café. Ten stamps is perfect for somewhere people visit twice a week and meaningless for somewhere they visit twice a year. Work backwards from how often your customers actually come in:

These are starting points, not laws — adjust them to what you actually see in your own books.

The rule underneath the table: if the reward is more than about six months away, people stop believing in it. For a low-frequency business that means keeping the stamp count small and making the reward genuinely worth the wait — a full treatment rather than 10% off. For a café it means the opposite: the reward can be modest, because it arrives often enough to stay real.

One more thing worth deciding now: what the reward costs you. A free coffee costs a café very little and still feels like a proper prize. A free haircut costs a salon an hour of chair time. Pick something with a high perceived value and a low marginal cost, and you can afford to be generous.

Step 2 — Skip the app

Every step between your customer and their card is a place they drop off, and asking someone to install an app at the till is the biggest step there is. Unlock the phone, find the app store, search, download, wait, create an account, accept permissions — all with two people queuing behind them.

A link-based card avoids the whole thing. Your customer scans a QR code, the card opens in their browser, and it lives in every email you send them afterwards. Nothing to install, no password to forget, works on any phone.

More on this: Digital loyalty card with no app — what to look for →

Step 3 — Create the card (about ten minutes)

With the reward decided, the setup itself is short. In Myndel you enter your shop name, upload a logo, pick your colours, and set the two numbers from step 1. That’s the card built — you get a QR code at the end of it, ready to print.

Everything your customer sees is yours: your name, your logo, your colours. Worth checking on any tool you try, because plenty of free tiers put the provider’s branding on the card instead.

Step 4 — Put the QR code where people already stand still

A QR code only works if someone is standing in front of it with a free hand. The counter while you take payment is the obvious spot; so is the mirror station in a salon, the waiting area in a studio, or the back of the receipt.

Print it larger than feels necessary, and put one sentence next to it — “Scan for your loyalty card” — so nobody has to guess what it does.

Step 5 — Get the first stamp right

The first sign-up is the only moment that needs anything from you, and it’s a sentence: “We’ve got a loyalty card now — scan that and it takes about thirty seconds.”

The customer fills in their own details on their own phone. You don’t type anything, and you don’t hold up the queue. From then on, adding a stamp is one tap on your phone while they’re paying.

Step 6 — Switch on the automatic emails

This is the step people skip, and it’s the one that does the work.

A stamp count sitting in someone’s browser doesn’t bring them back. The email does — the one that says they’re two visits from a free coffee, or that their reward is waiting. Three are worth having on from day one:

In Myndel these are on by default and send themselves. On other tools, check carefully whether they are included, because automated emails are the most commonly metered part of a free plan.

Your customer list is yours

The people who sign up to your card are your customers, and the list of them — names, contact details, consent status, how often they come in — is one of the more valuable things your business owns. It is worth being clear from the start about who controls it.

Before you commit to any free tool

Five things worth checking, whichever one you choose:

What the first month looks like

Sign-ups depend almost entirely on whether the card gets mentioned. The shops that get traction are the ones where every member of staff says the sentence in step 5 at every till — not the ones with the nicest QR code.

Watch two things. First, how many customers sign up as a share of the people you served, because if that is low the ask is not happening at the counter. Second, how many come back for a second stamp — a card with one stamp on it is a customer who has not returned yet. The rewards themselves will not start landing until roughly the interval in the step 1 table, so give it that long before you judge it.

What this costs

Myndel is €0 a month during early access. Unlimited customers, automatic stamp and reminder emails, your own branding on the card, and no credit card to sign up.

That is not a trial with a countdown on it. Myndel is free while we build it alongside the shops using it — their feedback decides what gets built next, which is worth more to us right now than their subscription. Paid plans will come later, for businesses that want more than the basics. When they do, two things hold.

If that still does not quite settle it, that is fair. Promises about future pricing are the cheapest thing a software company makes, and you have no real way to hold anyone to one. Which is exactly why the section above matters more than this one: your customer list is yours, and you can ask for all of it at any time. You don’t have to trust that we won’t change. You only have to be able to leave if we do.