How many stamps should a loyalty card have?
Almost every stamp card has ten boxes, for no better reason than that ten is a round number and the cards come printed that way. The right number depends on how often your customers visit and what a reward costs you, and for a lot of businesses ten is quietly wrong.
Start your free trial →Work back from time, not from the number
The useful question is how long a customer should take to fill the card, not how many boxes it has. Somewhere between six weeks and four months keeps the reward close enough to feel real — so divide that by your visit frequency and the number falls out on its own.
Match the discount to your margin
A ten-stamp card is roughly a 10% discount to a regular, and an eight-stamp card is 12.5%. Decide what you can afford to give a returning customer first, then pick the number that produces it, rather than choosing ten and discovering the rate afterwards.
Too long is worse than too generous
A card that takes a year to fill does nothing, because nobody changes today's decision for a reward that distant. If your visit cycle is slow, a shorter card with a smaller reward beats a long card with a big one every time.
Start with the calendar, not the card
The number of stamps is a consequence of two things you already know: how often your customers come, and how long a reward can be away before it stops mattering.
The second is fairly consistent across trades — somewhere between six weeks and four months. Closer than six weeks and you are giving away margin on visits that were already happening. Further than four months and the reward is too abstract to influence a decision today.
So: stamps ≈ target weeks ÷ weeks between visits.
What that gives, by trade
| Business | Typical gap | Sensible card |
|---|---|---|
| Café, lunch spot | 2–4 days | 10 stamps (≈ 3–6 weeks) |
| Gym or studio | 2–4 days | 10 visits (≈ 3–5 weeks) |
| Dry cleaner | 2–3 weeks | 8 stamps (≈ 4 months) |
| Barbershop | 4 weeks | 6 stamps (≈ 6 months) |
| Nail salon | 3 weeks | 6 stamps (≈ 4 months) |
| Pet groomer | 8 weeks | 5 stamps (≈ 10 months) |
| Tattoo studio | 3+ months | 4 sittings, no expiry |
Note how badly the default fits the lower half of that table. A ten-stamp card in a pet grooming salon is a reward roughly a year and a half away, which is indistinguishable from no scheme at all.
Then check the margin
The other constraint is what the card costs you. A card of n stamps where the reward is one free item is approximately a 1/n discount to a customer who completes it:
- 5 stamps → 20%
- 6 stamps → 16.7%
- 8 stamps → 12.5%
- 10 stamps → 10%
- 12 stamps → 8.3%
If 20% is more than you can give away, a five-stamp card is not affordable no matter how well it fits your cycle — and the answer is a smaller reward rather than more boxes. A groomer might offer a free nail trim after five visits rather than a free groom after twelve.
The slow-cycle fix
For businesses with long gaps, do not stretch the card. Instead:
- Shorten it to four or five stamps.
- Shrink the reward to an add-on rather than the main service.
- Do not expire the stamps, because a card that resets between visits is worse than nothing.
Review it once
After a month or two, look at how many customers are actually finishing cards. If almost nobody is, the card is too long. If almost everybody is on their first visit back, it is too short and you are discounting people who never left.
The questions everyone asks
Is ten stamps a good default?
For daily and weekly businesses like cafés and lunch spots, yes — ten visits is two to four weeks, which is close enough to motivate. For anything on a monthly or longer cycle, ten visits can be most of a year, and the reward is too distant to influence anything.
What number should a barbershop or salon use?
Usually five or six. At a four-week cycle, six stamps is roughly half a year, which is about the limit of what feels attainable. Ten would be nearly a year away and would be ignored by most clients, even though it is the number printed on every card you can buy.
Should the reward be a free item or a discount?
A free item, almost always. It is easier to state, feels larger than the equivalent discount, and costs you the item rather than the price. "The tenth is free" also survives being explained by a new member of staff, which a percentage rarely does.
Can I change the number later?
You can, and it is worth reviewing after a month or two once you can see how many customers are actually finishing cards. Change it for new cards rather than mid-card if you can — customers notice a goalpost moving far more than they notice the goalpost being in a different place from the start.
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