It's been a while since we last discussed how to get a loyalty program started at your night club with a bit of creativity and as little as a few cardboard sheets. During the last year we've seen first hand how several venues have started loyalty programs with different objectives ranging from creating a sense of community --we've seen this mostly in the Techno scene-- to maximizing customer recurrence and extracting the most value from initial acquisition costs.

Today we'll look at how adding a bit of subtle gamification can have an impact on your Loyalty Club, especially in how it increases average spend and gets your regulars to become high quality public relations staff.

Gamification in Loyalty Programs

As you probably already know, gamification is the integration of game-like elements, such as rewards or challenges into non-game contexts, generally to increase engagement or motivation. You probably have seen some examples of it in other contexts like language learning apps or fitness clubs. Most gamification strategies include introducing relatively frequent rewards and a clear increasing path of achievements.

In our context of loyalty programs for night clubs we can see that: - Introducing rewards increases average spend in several ways. For instance, if you give out virtual points to customers just for showing up early at an event, you'll likely get more attendance during the first slow hours. - Establishing a clear path of achievements compliments rewards by giving them actual meaning for attendees. For instance you could give out a small discount in exchange for some points, or a fixed discount for everyone with more than a set number of points (think 2€-off drinks for members with more than 100 points).

Both of these strategies obviously require an investment to implement, basically in terms of keeping track of how many points are on each membership card and the cost of achievements themselves. The good part is that the general loyalty program strategy is known to work, so you just need to figure out how many points to give out with each reward and how much each point will be worth to maximize return on investment.

Adding a Social Component to Turn Customers into Advocates

Once you have a working points and rewards-based loyalty program you can take it to the next level by encouraging your attendees to discuss their achievements. For instance, in addition to providing a discount solely based on points, you could define tiers or groups of members based on the kinds of events they go to the most and how much they do.

Say your club hosts a karaoke night on Thursdays, a mainstream party on Fridays and a 90s-vibe event on Sundays. As part of your membership program you could give out personalized badges every time a member comes to one of the events. By crafting eye-catching badges and displaying them in an attractive showcase you can get your members to compare with each other and fight for the first place among their friend group. They could even come in on a night they initially didn't plan to just because they are one event away from making it 10 times to the 90s party.

How all of this can be implemented

As we discussed on our previous post, each club has it's own audience and you probably know them better than anyone so every loyalty program should be customized to your specific use case. We're big fans of starting simple and seeing what works best for your attendees: you could begin by handing out paper cards and stickers for points, and experiment with different rewards to see what works best.

However, as your membership base grows management starts to get time consuming and repetitive so it might be best to look for a digital solution that let's you automate away as much as possible. At FesteaPay, we provide a platform tailored to night clubs that allows you to move your loyalty program into the digital age without giving up your brand identity and staying close to your customers. We customize the look and feel of the whole experience for guests, including digital membership cards, and allow for different ways of accumulating points and giving out rewards to fit your needs. Our technology also gives you plenty of room to grow: from automated analytics and segmentation to generate effective campaigns to a full-featured cashless system. Get in touch with us today to discover how we can assist you in getting started!