Who should get a VIP card: choosing your best customers without offending the rest
A VIP card for customers: how to pick your best ones by visits over 90 days, which perks to give, how to invite them and what to tell those who missed out.
Give VIP cards to customers based on numbers, not gut feeling: by visits or spend over the last 90 days, roughly to your top 10 to 20% of customers. Invite them personally, give them two or three perks that cost you little, and review the list once a quarter. Everyone else only needs to know one thing: VIP status is within reach.
VIP card for customers: choosing in three steps
1. Pull the numbers for 90 days. If you have a digital loyalty card, Rewardly analytics shows each customer's spend and visits over the last 30 days, their average purchase, when they were last in, and a list of every visit with its date, from which you can also count ninety days. Without it, use your POS report if it records customers. Ninety days is long enough to see a habit and short enough not to pick people who have stopped coming.
2. Sort and draw a line. Treat a cutoff around the top 10 to 20% as a practical rule, not a research finding. In a small café that might be thirty people, in a boutique ten. What matters is that VIP stays special.
3. Go through the list yourself. Remove isolated spikes, such as a single large purchase for a company party. Add the person you know comes every week but whom the card has not caught yet.
Perks that do not cost much
Cost nothing: priority booking, a first look at new stock or a new menu, a members only evening, staff who remember their name and usual order.
Cost little: a small birthday gift, a taste of something new, free gift wrapping in December.
Do not make a percentage discount the main perk. It also applies to purchases that would have happened anyway. Why that is expensive is explained in How many stamps on a loyalty card.
The invitation, and the answer to "why not me?"
Suggested wording for the invitation, ideally said in person at the counter and then sent:
You visit us more than anyone, and we want to say thank you. We would like to invite you to become one of our VIP customers. You can add the card to your phone with a single tap.
When a regular asks why they did not get the card:
VIP goes to the people who have visited us most often over the last three months. You could be one of them at the next review.
A rule you can explain in one sentence does not offend. What offends is the feeling that it is all the owner's friends.
The quarterly review
Every three months, repeat the first two steps. Anyone who has dropped below the line gets no reproach, just a sentence: "We reassign VIP every quarter based on visits. You could be back among them at the next review." Anyone new gets an invitation. If you use tiers, the invite only VIP cards page shows that the system can move a customer up to a higher tier automatically once they reach a set spend or number of visits, and lets them know with a notification.
How to roll out the card itself in your business is covered in How to introduce a digital membership card. Which numbers to track every month is in 5 loyalty program numbers to check monthly. To see how a card could look, design one with our free loyalty card maker.
Checklist before you send invitations
- I have visit or spend numbers for the last 90 days.
- The line sits around the top 10 to 20%, and I can explain it in one sentence.
- I have removed isolated spikes and added people I know.
- I have two or three perks, most of which cost nothing.
- The date of the next review, three months from now, is in my calendar.
Invite your best customers to a VIP card, try Rewardly for €0
Live in 2 minutes, with no upfront payment.
