The second visit is the hardest. After the third, more than 4 in 5 members keep coming
Data from 27,641 new loyalty members: 63% come back a second time, but after the third visit 82% keep coming. Where you win regulars and how to do it.
A new loyalty member walks out with a fresh card in their phone. Will they be back? We followed 27,641 new loyalty members at 175 businesses on Rewardly through their first six months and checked, visit by visit, how many came back one more time.
Why it matters for your revenue: every repeat visit is a sale. Rewardly's clients see 30% more repeat visits and 2.5 times higher customer value on average, and café Ráno in Bratislava reports 32% more revenue six months after moving to Rewardly.
The short answer
- 63.3% of new members came back for a second visit within six months.
- After the second visit, 78.7% came a third time.
- After the third visit, 81.8% came again, so more than 4 in 5.
- The chance keeps rising: 88.4% after the tenth visit and 91.2% after the twentieth.
The biggest step is the very first one. About one in three new members did not come back within six months. Members who made it to a third visit, on the other hand, were very likely to keep coming. That makes the second visit the best place to put your effort.
Half of new members carry almost all the visits
About half of new members (49.8%) reached a third visit. Those members made 89% of all visits new members made in their first six months, a typical 7 visits each.
Example in euros: 100 new members make about 580 visits in their first six months. At an average purchase of €5 that is about €2,890, and about €2,570 of it comes from the half who came at least three times.
The same pattern in almost every business
This is not one big café pulling the average. We looked at the 60 businesses with at least 100 new members each. In the typical business, 65.2% of new members came back after the first visit, and 80.6% came again after the third. In 59 of the 60 businesses, the chance of another visit was higher after the third visit than after the first.
The pattern also holds across types of business:
- Cafés and matcha bars: 66.5% came back after the first visit, 82.7% after the third.
- Restaurants and bistros: 61.5% and 79.5%.
- Beauty, nails and fitness: 60.2% and 82.4%.
Members who visit often are partly simply people who like your place, so a third visit does not by itself make someone a regular. But wherever we looked, the step from the first to the second visit was the one where most members were lost, and the one with the most room to win.
What this means for you
- Plan for the second visit on day one. Tell new members what is waiting for them next time, for example how close their first reward already is.
- Keep the first reward within reach. A short stamp card gives a new member a reason to come back soon. See how to set up loyalty rewards that work.
- Remind members who have not come back. In food and drink, the typical second visit comes after 11 to 18 days, as we showed in how soon loyalty members come back. If someone has not been back after that, a friendly reminder may be worth trying.
- Recognise members who reach a third visit. They are on their way to becoming regulars, and regulars are where most of your visits come from, as shown in one fifth of members make two thirds of visits.
How Rewardly helps you win the second visit
- The card is in their phone from the first visit. It sits in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, so a new member always has it with them when they pass by.
- Reminders go out on their own. Rewardly can send a push notification automatically to members who have not visited for a while.
- You see who comes back. Rewardly analytics shows how many members return and how often, so you can see whether your second visit ideas work.
About the data
- Anonymised scans in the Rewardly scanner. New members made their first visit between May 2025 and March 2026, and we counted their visits in the six months after that first visit, so every member had the same time to come back. A visit is a card scanned on a given day. No business is named or identifiable.
- Only businesses that scan cards in the Rewardly app are included, leaving out accounts with gaps in tracking, one business with a different scanning practice and probable staff test cards. Types of business with fewer than five businesses are not shown separately.
- The figures describe how members behave. Members who reach many visits are partly people who would visit often anyway, so the numbers do not show that one visit causes the next, and this is not a before and after comparison.
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