Florist Loyalty Programme: Reward the Date, Not Stamps

A florist loyalty programme rewards customers for coming back, but flower buying runs on occasions rather than habits, so a stamp card borrowed from a coffee shop asks for a frequency your customers may simply not have. The scheme that earns its keep is built around the dates your customers already buy for.

Somewhere in your town there is a loyalty card with three stamps on it, in a drawer, belonging to a man who buys flowers twice a year and both times in a hurry. He bought in February for his wife and in March for his mother, and the card wanted ten purchases before it gave anything back.

He is not disloyal. He is a normal flower customer, and the card was not badly designed. It was designed for a different trade.

Related: Florist Customer Retention: Win Repeat Business

Why a coffee shop stamp card stalls in a flower shop

Because it rewards frequency, and frequency is the one thing a date driven customer has no reason to give. A coffee customer can visit eleven times in a fortnight without changing their life. A flower customer's next purchase is attached to a date that has not arrived yet, so a card paying out on the tenth visit is a promise the calendar will not keep.

A coffee shop sells a habit. A florist sells an occasion, and occasions do not respond to being nagged.

That sounds like bad news for loyalty and it is the opposite. Your customers' buying is not random, it is scheduled by birthdays, anniversaries and Mother's Day rather than by lunchtimes. Look at what you learn in ninety seconds at the counter: who is buying, what they chose, who it is for, and the date it has to land. A stamp card records none of it.

Which loyalty programme shape fits your shop?

There are two, and the real choice is whether you hold customer details at all. A counter card records nothing and rewards repeat visits. An occasion scheme records a name and a date and rewards you for remembering it. Points, tiers and a regulars' perk are variations on those two, not separate species.

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The familiar formats, sorted by which shape they really are:

• Stamp card. Buy a set number, get one free. Records nothing, understood instantly, rewards frequency.
• Points on spend. Rewards value rather than visit count, so it has to hold details.
• Regulars' perk. A standing benefit for members, such as first refusal on a delivery slot.
• Tiers. Better perks for bigger accounts. Sensible for corporate work, overcomplicated over a counter.
• Occasion list. You keep the date, and the reward is a member price when they order for it.

Count your own weekly regulars honestly. If offices or a hotel reception nearby give you real weekly trade, a card is honest work. If your busiest weeks are the ones the calendar chose, it is decoration.

Imagine two customers on one Tuesday. The first collects a desk arrangement every Friday for the same reception and would fill a card by autumn. The second has bought twice, both for the same anniversary, and will still be on stamp two in four years.

Related: Flower Subscription Business: How to Start One

What does an occasion scheme owe your customers?

More than a stamp card does, because writing down a name and a date means you are holding personal information. Two things follow: a data protection fee to check, and a rule about what you may send them.

ICO guidance states that under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations, organisations, including sole traders, that use personal information need to pay a data protection fee to the Information Commissioner's Office unless they are exempt. Check your own use against the ICO's published exemptions.

Then the messages. ICO guidance on the PECR electronic mail marketing rules states you must not send marketing emails or texts to individuals without specific consent. The exception is an existing customer who bought, or negotiated to buy, a similar product or service from you in the past, and to whom you gave a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message you have sent.

In counter terms: ask, and write down what they said. A tick on the order pad tells you later whether a reminder was invited. Then keep the fields to the job. Our rule of thumb is that a reminder list needs four things:

• the customer's name
• one contact route, the one they said they wanted
• the date
• what they bought last time

Not the recipient's address or the card message, which belong on the order. Move only those four into a spreadsheet or an email tool, and check its current account and data settings first.

Related: Email Marketing for Florists That Customers Open

How should you word the reward?

So the condition sits where the offer sits. Free carries a legal meaning, and a reward that needs nine full price purchases behind it or a minimum spend on the day is a conditional offer rather than a gift.

The word carries a legal test. Paragraph 23 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act treats it as unfair in all circumstances to describe a product as gratis, free, without charge or similar if the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of responding to the commercial practice and of collecting or paying for delivery of the item.

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Free is not a tone of voice. It is a description, and a description has to be accurate.

So if the reward has strings, print the strings, and our house rule is to print them in the same size as the promise. Then size the reward against your own numbers: it has to feel worth having and still leave the purchases behind it profitable, which is a margin question first.

Related: Florist Profit Margins: What You Actually Keep

How do you launch it and keep it running?

By asking every customer, in one sentence, at the moment they are happiest with you, which is while you are wrapping.

The line matters less than the habit, but it should say what will arrive. Something like: would you like me to note the date, and I will send a reminder nearer the time, which you can stop whenever you like. Promise only what you will do.

Pick a lead time you can deliver on and treat your first choice as an experiment rather than a rule. Too early is noise. Too late reminds someone of a date they have already missed.

Then make it visible where people already look: the counter, the order confirmation, the window before a big date. Planning those posts is what LocalBrandHub is built for, with a social calendar and ready made seasonal campaigns. The scheme itself stays with you.

Related: Florist Reminder Marketing: Getting the Date Right

How do you know whether it is working?

Count the two numbers the scheme itself produces: how many customers joined, and how many claimed a reward. The gap between them is the finding, but it cannot say why: out of reach and not worth having look identical in a count. Ask the members who never claimed.

Be honest about what your records can answer. A stamp card cannot tell you whether members spend more than everyone else, because it never recorded what anybody spent. That answer needs the sale sitting beside the name in your till, a bigger decision than a loyalty card.

Judge it across a full run of your selling occasions. A date driven scheme looks asleep in November and busy in February for reasons unrelated to your design.

A loyalty scheme is not a discount you hand out. It is a promise to remember something, and remembering is the cheapest thing in your shop.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good loyalty programme for a florist?

The one that matches how your customers buy. Real weekly trade from offices nearby makes a stamp card cheap and honest. Customers who appear two or three times a year for named occasions are better served by a scheme that remembers those dates.

Do I need to register with the ICO to run a florist loyalty scheme?

It depends on whether you keep customer details. A paper card carrying nothing but stamps holds none. Once you record names, contact details and dates, ICO guidance states that organisations, including sole traders, that use personal information need to pay a data protection fee unless they are exempt.

Can I text or email customers about their loyalty rewards?

Only with the right permission. ICO guidance on the PECR electronic mail marketing rules states you must not send marketing emails or texts to individuals without specific consent, unless they are an existing customer who bought a similar product or service from you and you gave them a simple way to opt out both when you collected their details and in every message.

Are loyalty cards worth it for florists?

They are cheap and instantly understood. The catch is that a card rewards frequency, so for someone who buys twice a year the reward sits out of reach. Cards suit counter regulars, not occasional buyers.

How should I word a free bouquet offer?

Put the condition next to the promise. Our house rule is to print it in the same size. Paragraph 23 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act treats describing a product as gratis, free, without charge or similar as unfair in all circumstances if the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of responding and of collecting or paying for delivery of the item.

Where to start this week

Sources

• ICO, Guide to PECR: Electronic mail marketing (ico.org.uk)
• ICO, Data protection fee (ico.org.uk)
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, Schedule 20 paragraph 23 (legislation.gov.uk)