Maybe I’m biased because my parents own Small Batch Jam Co. But regardless, there is a job to be done here.

On top of developing a social strategy for the jam company, I have also been working on various consumer-facing deliverables, such as social media content, blog posts, signage, and direct mail marketing pieces.

But for now, I’ll highlight one of the main ideas that has come to fruition and proven to be successful.

After opening our second retail store in our hometown of Pacifica, CA, we were met with a massive warm welcome from the community, and we wanted to reward our loyal customers when they came in to buy jams and jellies as Christmas gifts.

To do this, once customers bought 10 jars or more, we would give them a 10% discount on their entire purchase. They’re supporting us, so we support them back!

But 10% can add up to a lot of money, and on top of that, we have been met with a higher-than-comfortable volume of people who request discounts on purchases of 3-4 jars, or ask if they get a discount. Mentally, I think “lol no”, but if I say that aloud, we get bad Yelp reviews.

While this was just the initial decision on our part to reward customers who clearly support us, I knew that this was not entirely sustainable. Small businesses don’t survive off of giving mass amounts of discounts, just like corporate giants don’t give big discounts on all of their products at all times.

So, how could we reward our devoted customers while also reframing what their loyalty means, in a more meaningful way?

After walking to the coffee shop 3 doors down from our store in Pacifica to buy my coffee and get a hole punch in my stamp card, I had a revelation.

Why don’t we start a loyalty program?

After doing some mental math, I concluded that a loyalty program is an extremely simple solution to a variety of nuanced problems that can be complex when combined together. After pitching my family on the idea and breaking down how it solves multiple problems that we wanted to address, I made…

The Small Batch Jam Co Loyalty Card! (image to the left)

So, how does it work?

For every item customers purchase, they get a stamp (aside from the 3.4oz jars, they have to buy two of those).

After the customers purchase 12 items, whether it's a 6.5oz jar of standard or reserve collection, syrup, mug, shirt, sweatshirt, or sample pack, they are able to redeem their stamp card for any 6.5oz standard collection jar. But let’s do some math to prove why this is an improvement:

Theoretically, if someone were to buy 12 of our 6.5oz standard collection flavors (meaning they didn’t get any stamps from items that cost more), that would be $9 X 12 jars = $108

Before, we would oblige them with a 10% discount, meaning it would actually be $97.20

Now: With the stamp card, since there are no more discounts, they would have the opportunity to get a 13th jar free of charge. This means they’re getting 13 jars for the price of 12.

Rather than the jar being 9/10th the price, now they are 12/13th the price, so what does that look like?

108/13 = 8.31 per jar Whereas…. 97.20/12 = 8.10 per jar

So sure, that’s only a 21 cent difference between transactions, but that’s just from the consumer’s perspective. When you take into account the fact that a straight up 10% discount is taking money from the jam company directly, that doesn’t take into account the cost of production. So really, the only loss we experience is the cost of production, which is definitely less than the $9 retail price.

So rather than giving up $10.80 by giving a direct percentage discount, we lose maybe $4-6 depending on the flavor. Savings!!!

But another benefit of this format is that rather than there being a 10 jar minimum to get a discount, the minimum is 1 (or two 3.4oz). In turn, this opens the door for people who are loyal to us over the span of an entire year rather than all at once. Before that, someone could have boy a jar a day for 12 days in a row, but we had no system to track that. Therefore, the truly loyal customers we have get to reap the benefits of a loyalty program but don’t have to buy it all at once!

TL;DR The loyalty program reduces financial loss, AND makes rewarding loyalty more accessible for everyone! Yay!!!