Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Square Loyalty 🌟

[cspillane]

On Thursday, February 23, the Square Loyalty team hosted a Q&A (@cspillane, @seiderman, and @lornaz) alongside Square small business evangelist and former Super Seller, @Pesso (former owner of Pesso’s Ices & Ice Cream with 5+ years of experience using Square Loyalty at his business).

We heard what’s working well for your business, as well as ways we can better serve your needs.

[cspillane]

Hi @Kramersfarm!

Thanks for joining our online event. To get the ball rolling, check out this Getting Started guide for an overview of how Square Loyalty works + a step-by-step walkthrough of setting up your program. This FAQ page also has some good Q&A in it. Once you get going, we're here to help answer any questions you have along the way. 🙂

[WineCurmudgeon]

I know there has been some talk about loyalty tiers. Where are we with that feature? I use Loyalty to reward customer purchases. I also have a "Rewards Club" for my very best customers. Rewards Club members get invited to special events, special limited releases, etc. Right now I create a mailing list sorted by total dollars spent to select my Rewards Club members. It would be great if we could set up a tier with some criteria. At a minimum it should be based on total dollars spent. Total dollars spent within the last 12 or 24 months would be even better. I'm interested in how to better manage my Rewards Club, even if it's not in Loyalty.

Thanks,

Bob

Flying Otter Winery

[grovetealounge]

Ohhhh this is an interesting idea! I could get on board with this

[pfillery]

This feature is actually in Beta. Its a new beta program so probably wont be available for awhile...

[cspillane]

Hi @WineCurmudgeon,

Thank you for joining us today! We are working on Status Tiers as I’m writing this message to you, 🙂 and it was recently moved to Beta testing in the US. You have a great use case. Let me know if you’d like to be added to the testing group. If not, stay tuned for the feature launch later this year. We'll be sure to communicate it broadly.

[BrightSetEnt]

Thank you for hosting this Q&A session. I own an entertainment agency and have been curious about setting up a loyalty program based on referrals. Would the Square Loyalty Program work if past clients were referring new clients or does it only work for repeat clients?

[cspillane]

Hi @BrightSetEnt,

Thanks for sharing your feedback. At this time we don’t offer the ability to trade points for customer referrals, but it’s something we’ve heard before and definitely something we’re keeping in mind for the future!

[abbykslone]

Looking forward to this Q&A. I have a question/feature that I was hoping square could add. We would like to be able to erase all loyalty points from our customers without have to go through each profile one by one. OR have the loyalty point system set up for two different loyalty points. We are a seasonal business so our products change as the seasons change and it would be nice if square loyalty could help us pivot as well. 

[lornaz]

Hi @abbykslone! Thank you for sharing your feature requests.Right now we do not support the ability to bulk adjust or erase Loyalty points. However, we do allow for point expiration; I know this may not solve your use case entirely but you can set your points to expire after a set amount of time, which may help a little bit with seasonality. Unfortunately we also do not have the ability to allow multiple Loyalty programs per seller. We do not currently have a timeline for when this functionality will be available but if that changes, we’ll be sure to post in Seller Community. Thank you again for your feedback and let us know if you have any additional questions!

[bradrsi]

I tried a refund to an invoice recently and I do not think the loyalty points deducted from the customer.  Can you please confirm if this is working or not?  

[seiderman]

Hi @bradrsi, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’re currently investigating with our engineering team. Will follow up when we know more.

[bradrsi]

Thank you! 

[bradrsi]

Also, this may not fall under this category.  When I started using Square, i had over 20,000 existing loyalty customers that I had integrated into our new account.  These were already opted in for texting and emailing in our old POS system.  I should have immediately had access to email or text them from square without them having to visit our location or sign up again.  Square is hurting itself because I am paying other services to reach out to those existing customers instead of square.  It makes ZERO sense to me.  

[seiderman]

At least currently, all customers have to re-opt in through either a Loyalty check-in, or digital receipts (email only) in order to be considered a marketable contact within Square’s Text Message Marketing solution. This is different from email based contact migrations, as they are considered marketable as soon as they’re imported. While restrictive, this is currently the only way we’re able to verify that these contacts have viewed and agreed to the proper legal disclosure and consent. However, we’re aware this can be extremely limiting for businesses switching over to Square, especially if they have a large established list of customers (like yourself). As a result, we’re looking into a number of improvements in the transfer / migration process to ease the process of making these contacts reachable within Square sooner. While I don’t have a specific timeline to share, we’ll definitely reach out as we make progress.

[bradrsi]

Thank you!

[bradrsi]

And another thing that may not belong on this thread is that it also makes no sense at all that a coupon with a barcode cannot be on a printed receipt.  POS systems were offering that 10 years ago.  ALL major retailers use this feature and square doesn't even offer it.  

[grovetealounge]

I agree! This would be great to have!

[rtfulk]

@bradrsi That is a great suggestion, I second having the ability to print a barcode on the receipt.

[MNEMULLC]

We'd like to participate to learn more about this! Please send us the link/info!

Thanks in advance!

[seiderman]

Hey @MNEMULLC, thanks for your interest! This conversation will take place in writing within this thread. If you have any specific questions about Square Loyalty, please reply below. Otherwise, here's a link with general information and video tutorial on how to get set up: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6465-square-loyalty-get-started-guide

[grovetealounge]

We really love the loyalty program! It offers quite a bit of flexibility as is. But would be nice to see an option for people to redeem points for a free "modifier" (like syrup, milk, custom add-on, etc that costs money) or a free "drink upgrade" (like from small to medium, or medium to large).

I would also love any insight into the following things...

1. What would you guys consider best practice for loyalty programs? We are competing with the likes of Starbucks, Biggby, Panera Bread, etc.

2. Along those lines...best ratio of money spent to points earned? Or money spent by customer compared to the value they receive in the perk they redeem it for?

3. Recommendation as to how much a loyalty program should cost us? Right now, we aim to keep our incurred cost (our COGS + labor) for someone redeeming their loyalty rewards to about 3% of the total amount the customer spent to earn those points.  The retail value of the food/drink being redeemed for is about 5-6% of what the total $ amount the customer had to spend to earn said rewards. Some numbers to clarify...

Customer spends $100, they earn 100 points

Customer redeems all 100 points for a free breakfast item

Our COGS on that breakfast item, at most, should be $3

The full retail value of that breakfast item if the customer were to just buy it outright should be somewhere between $5 & $6

Just curious if you guys have any insight as to whether or not those ratios and value of the redeemed item are in line with best practices for structuring loyalty programs? Or if we're too high or too low in any of those metrics?

4. Additionally, any input on best practices for how many reward tiers we should shoot for (too many gets overwhelming and bloated, too few maybe makes it not seem robust enough to be worth it)?  Or how far/close together we should spread those tiers apart from each other?

Ultimately, it would be nice to see whether or not we are keeping our loyalty program competitive and desirable for customers while ensuring we aren't giving away the barn (so to speak).

One last thing - do we have an update on when Weebly will have the capability for customers to SPEND/REDEEM their loyalty points when buying online? Right now they can only EARN points - not spend them.  I'm confused as to why that is and it causes quite a bit of frustration with our customer base.  If we want to be competitive within our market and hold our own against the coffee/cafe franchises this feature update is critical

Thanks for taking the time to read through and address all my questions!