When Your Regulars Bring the New Guests: Giftable Rewards

Acquiring a new guest through advertising costs money, and a little more of it every year. Meanwhile your best channel is sitting at the counter: the regular who already tells people where they go for coffee.

The trouble with word of mouth is that it is hard to hold on to. A giftable reward solves exactly that: it gives your guest a concrete thing to pass on, and it gets their friend through your door.

How it works

The process is simple, and what matters in it is who pays for what.

1. Your guest redeems a reward out of their own points, not for themselves but as a gift.
2. They get a code and send it to a friend, optionally with a short message.
3. The friend claims the code. If they were not a member yet, this is how they join your program.
4. They come in and redeem the reward.

There are two deadlines in it, both deliberate. If nobody claims the code within a week, the gift expires and the points go back to the sender, so nothing is lost. Once claimed, they have a month to actually redeem it.

Why it does not cost you extra

This is the important part, and it is worth working through honestly.

A gifted reward costs the same in points as any other redemption, and on your side it has the same real cost. It is not an additional expense, it is the same expense landing somewhere else: not in the hands of a regular who was coming back anyway, but in the hands of someone who has never been in.

So it is not free, but here is the difference: for a reward cost you were already carrying, you get a new guest instead of rewarding someone who is already yours. In the ROI calculation this is the line item that appears least often, even though it returns the most.

This is not a referral scheme, and that is good news

Worth clarifying, because the two are easy to confuse. Nobody is being paid for bringing someone in. Gifting is your guest’s own decision, out of their own points, and you promise nothing in return.

That is better than the classic “bring a friend, get five hundred points” construction for several reasons:

• It cannot be gamed. There is nothing to pay out to fake accounts.
• It is more credible. The friend sees that someone spent points they had earned on them, not that they are being processed by a campaign.
• There is nothing to administer. No one has to prove afterwards who brought whom.

If you do want to respond to it, from the Pro plan upward you can set an automated rule that sends a thank-you message to the member whose gift brought in a new guest. That is a message, not a point credit, which is precisely why it does not distort anything.

What makes people actually use it

The option alone is not enough. Three things have to be true.

Have a reward that stands on its own. A coffee, a pastry, a cocktail. Anything that only applies alongside a larger purchase is awkward to give away, because the recipient has to spend to use it.

Keep it reachable in points. If your cheapest reward takes twenty visits, nobody will give it away. We covered pricing rewards in its own article, but the point is the same here: keep the first reward close.

Mention it. Most of your guests do not know this exists. One sentence at the counter to somebody who has just redeemed something is enough, or a message ahead of the seasons when people are giving gifts anyway.

Two things to watch

The per-customer cap applies to gifts too. If a reward is set to once per customer, someone who has already redeemed it for themselves cannot gift it. That is deliberate, because otherwise the cap could be bypassed in a single step. If you intend a reward to be given away, give it a higher per-customer limit.

Watch your customer allowance. Every gift claimed by a new person adds a member to your program. If your plan’s allowance is full, the new guest cannot join, the gift expires and the sender gets their points back. That is the built-in safeguard working, but it is an awkward moment, so it is worth checking your plan in time.

Measure whether it brings anyone

Your analytics show new sign-ups per week and per month. If you start actively mentioning gifting, that curve should move.

One more thing to watch: how many of those new members come back a second time. A gift gets them in once, but from there your job is the same as with any new guest, which is giving them a reason to return. A gift opens a door; it does not keep anyone.

Summary

A giftable reward is word of mouth in a form you can hold. Your regular gives something from their own points to someone they know, who joins your program to claim it and walks through your door. It is not an extra reward cost for you, it is the same cost landing where it is worth the most.

Your part is small: have a reward that stands on its own and is easy to reach, mention it at the counter, and check your new sign-ups every month. Your guests handle the rest.

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With Revino’s giftable rewards the sender pays from their own points, an unclaimed gift returns to them after a week, and the new guest joins your program by claiming it. Try it free with a 7-day trial!