Loyalty Program Calculator
Before printing stamp cards, check whether the reward pays for itself. Type your average ticket, your gross margin, what the reward costs you and how often customers come today. The calculator shows how many extra visits each member has to make for the program to break even, and the monthly result if visits rise a little or a lot.
- Free
- No sign-up
- Runs in your browser
Result
Fill in the ticket, the margin, the reward, the customers and the visits to see the break-even.
Assumes every earned reward is redeemed and that ticket and margin stay the same. The scenario steps are a grid to read your result against, not a forecast.
Monthly result by scenario
| Scenario | Visits per member | Extra margin | Reward cost | Monthly result |
|---|
Extra margin is what the additional visits bring in. Reward cost is paid on every visit of a member, including the ones that would have happened anyway.
How the break-even is worked out
What a visit is worth
Margin per visit = average ticket × gross margin. It is what a visit leaves after the cost of what was sold, and it is the money that pays for the reward.
What the reward costs per visit
A reward earned every N visits costs reward ÷ N on each visit. The calculator assumes every earned reward is redeemed, which is the careful way to plan.
Rewards are paid on visits you already had
Members earn the reward on all their visits, not only on the extra ones. That is why a program that changes nothing is a pure cost: you give rewards for visits that would have happened anyway.
Break-even
The program breaks even when the margin of the extra visits covers the rewards given on all visits. Any fixed monthly cost is spread over the members and has to be covered too.
Scenarios
The table shows the monthly result with no change, at break-even, with 10, 25 and 50 percent more visits, and with your own estimate. Those steps are fixed points to compare against, not a prediction of what a program achieves.
What this leaves out
New customers the program may bring, members spending more or less per visit, rewards that are never redeemed and customers who would have left without it. Each of them can move the result either way.
Formulas
- Margin per visit
- average ticket × gross margin
- Reward cost per visit
- reward cost ÷ visits to earn a reward
- Members
- customers per month × share who join
- Break-even visits
- (visits today × margin per visit + fixed cost ÷ members) ÷ (margin per visit - reward cost per visit)
- Monthly result
- members × (visits - visits today) × margin per visit - members × visits × reward cost per visit - fixed cost
A reason to come back starts with being easy to find
VISU does not run points or stamp cards. VISU Local gives your business a free page with address, map, hours and phone, and a dynamic VISU QR for the counter or the receipt keeps your page, your menu or your chat one scan away.
Create your free pageSee VISU LocalHow to use it
- Type your average ticket and your gross margin: together they say what one visit is worth.
- Type what the reward costs you and how many visits it takes to earn one.
- Type how many customers you have in a month, the share you expect to join and how often they come today.
- Read the extra visits needed to break even. Add your own estimate of visits with the program to see the monthly result, and compare the scenarios in the table.
Examples
A stamp card in a coffee shop
Made-up numbers to show the maths: average ticket $20.00, gross margin 60%, a reward that costs $6.00 every 10 visits, 400 customers a month and 30% of them joining. A visit leaves $12.00 of margin and the reward costs $0.60 per visit. With 2 visits a month today, each of the 120 members has to reach 2.11 visits a month to break even: 5.3% more.
If nothing changes
With the same numbers and no change in visits, the program costs $144.00 a month: rewards given for visits that would have happened anyway.
If members come a little more often
With the same numbers, members who come 2.3 times a month instead of 2 leave a monthly result of $266.40. At 10% more visits the result is $129.60 a month.
Questions
How do I know if a loyalty program pays off?
Compare what the extra visits bring in with what the rewards cost. Rewards are paid on every visit of a member, so the program pays off only when members come more often than the break-even number the calculator shows.
What is the break-even of a loyalty program?
The number of visits per member at which the margin from the additional visits equals the cost of the rewards, plus any fixed cost. Below it the program loses money every month. Above it, it adds profit.
What do I use as reward cost?
What the reward costs you to give, not its selling price: the ingredients and packaging of the free item, or the amount of the discount.
Why does the program lose money if nothing changes?
Members earn rewards on the visits they were already making. With no extra visits there is no extra margin, only the cost of the rewards.
Why does the calculator say the reward never pays?
When the reward costs more per visit than the margin of a visit, every visit of a member loses money and more visits only make it worse. Lower the reward cost or raise the number of visits needed to earn it.
Are the 10, 25 and 50 percent scenarios a forecast?
No. They are fixed steps to read your result against. How much a loyalty program changes behavior depends on your business and your customers, so type your own estimate to see its result.
Are my numbers stored?
No. The maths runs in your browser. Your ticket, margin and customer numbers are not uploaded, are not added to the page address and are not saved.