Nick wrote recently about loyalty schemes at coffee shops whereby customers are encouraged to use a loyalty card to qualify for a free cup. We know that this type of promotion works as the multiple coffee shops have been running schemes like this for years.

For the past 18 months my wife and I have been running a magazine loyalty card promotion in our store. We offer a free magazine up to £4 when they buy 11 over an 8-week period. It has been a surprise how many of our customers take their normal weekly magazine as the free copy.

What the promotion has done is given magazine customers a distinct incentive to buy all of their magazines from us. Our staff have been trained to offer a card to any customer buying a magazine if they have not presented one. For each magazine purchased we stamp one of the boxes printed on the reverse with our shop name. Simple.

After 18 months we have issued over a thousand cards and we have a loyal band of magazine customers benefiting from the scheme. Some of them are filling a couple of cards a month and spending across the rest of the shop as well.

I wont claim this as my idea because I picked it up from the Australian Newsagency Blog here.