Loyalty programs and stored balance for cafes

A loyalty program isn’t a stamp count on a photocopied card — it’s a balance tied to the customer record: points, stamps or a prepaid amount, accumulating and running down on the same record. This article covers how that balance is kept, and when and with what permission a guest gets contacted about it.

Why a paper card falls short

On a paper loyalty card, the stamp count depends on staff memory or on the guest not losing the card; the business has no idea how many customers are close to a reward or whose balance is running low. Once the card is tied digitally to the customer record, that information doesn’t disappear: how many points, stamps or how much prepaid balance a given guest holds sits on one record.

Points, stamps, prepaid balance — one structure, three faces

For a coffee shop, “buy 9, get the 10th free” is a stamp counter; for a restaurant, earning a percentage of spend back as points is a different model; for a business that lets a guest top up in advance and spend it down, it’s a prepaid balance. All three are the same structure wearing different faces: a balance tied to the customer record, with movements that go up and down.

Bringing a guest back: bulk messaging and consent

Reaching a guest whose balance has run low, or who hasn’t visited in a while, means sending a bulk message — and that send depends on consent obtained beforehand. Any business that wants to send a commercial electronic message (SMS, email, call) must register with Turkey’s Message Management System (İYS) and may only message recipients who have given consent; when a recipient exercises their right to opt out, sending to them must stop (source: ticaret.gov.tr on İYS, iys.org.tr). The consent ledger keeps that opt-in/opt-out record per customer; when a bulk message goes out, the system automatically drops any recipient without consent from the list.

Loyalty membership consent is separate from marketing consent

Turkey’s Personal Data Protection Board has issued decisions stressing that consent given to join a loyalty or card program should be treated separately from consent to receive marketing communications (source: KVKK decision 2019/198). In practice, this means a customer’s consent to join a loyalty program does not automatically amount to permission to send them campaign messages; the two purposes need their own disclosure text and their own consent record.

How long a balance stays valid

Whether points or stamps expire on a fixed date, or never expire at all, is part of how a campaign is designed: some businesses keep points valid for a year, others never expire them. Whichever rule you pick, a guest needs to be told in advance when a balance will lapse; a balance that quietly resets to zero damages a guest’s trust in the business more than the loyalty program itself ever built up. A prepaid balance is different: since it represents money the guest already paid in, it’s expected to be held indefinitely, with a clear rule set in advance for how a refund request against it gets handled.

Example

A café’s loyalty program has 1,200 enrolled customers; 340 of them have had no balance movement in the last 60 days — in other words, no visit in 60 days. The business wants to send those 340 people a bulk message along the lines of “your balance is waiting, come see us.” Checking the consent ledger, 265 of the 340 have commercial-message consent on file; 75 either never gave consent or previously opted out. The bulk message goes out to the 265, and the remaining 75 are dropped from the send list automatically, with the reason visible in the report.

How it works in Rotenta

1. In Loyalty and Balance, a points, stamp or prepaid balance type is defined; every movement writes onto the balance on the guest’s card in Customers.
2. Consent text for loyalty membership and for marketing communication are kept as separate records in Consent Management; one does not automatically approve the other.
3. When a bulk message is prepared, Bulk Messaging checks the target list against the consent ledger; any recipient without consent, or who has opted out, is dropped from the send list automatically.
4. The send result is logged per recipient; an opt-out request from a recipient is marked on the consent ledger.
5. Customers with a shrinking balance, or no recent activity, can be pulled up as a filtered list in Customers.

For how review tracking runs alongside loyalty, see reviews and reputation management; for the order and till flow, read bringing online orders and the till into one flow. Our cafe and restaurant software hub has the broader picture.

Frequently asked questions

Can we run points, stamps and prepaid balance at the same time?

Yes, different balance types can be defined for different campaigns; each shows up separately on the same customer card.

Can we automatically send a campaign message to a customer who joined the loyalty program?

No. Membership consent and marketing consent are kept separate; sending a campaign message needs its own commercial-message consent on file.

Could a message go out to a customer who never gave consent, by mistake?

No. When a bulk message goes out, the system checks the target list against the consent ledger and automatically drops any recipient without consent, or who has opted out.

What happens when a customer exercises their opt-out right?

The opt-out request is recorded on the consent ledger, and that recipient is automatically excluded from every commercial send afterwards.

How do we see customers whose balance has run out or who haven’t visited in a while?

Customers can show a list filtered by balance status; consent status is checked separately before a bulk message goes out to that list. Reach out for setup details.