I'm branching out a little bit today, talking about marketing in general.  If you live in and around the Brantford area, you've probably heard about the Blue Dog Cafe, and if you haven't, you should get out from the rock you've been living under and check it out.  So despite where we're going in the bottom half of this post, I want to say before hand that the Blue Dog is one of my favorite places to escape the office for a few hours and get some work done in a laid back cafe environment.

Like many cafes, the Blue Dog has a loyalty program. This is where things make my internal marketer flip his lid a little bit. It is your standard "buy x number of drinks, get one free" program, with one important exception. You need an individual card for each drink you purchase.  So, if I go one day and buy a small coffee, I need a new loyalty card for that. If I go the next day and order a medium coffee, I need another card. If I order a large coffee the next time I need yet another card, and so on and so forth. So unless you are the type of person who orders the exact same thing every single time without fail, it can become a huge hassle to keep track of 20 different cards in your wallet or purse.

Now don't get me wrong, I totally get where management is coming from -- if I had to hazard a guess, I would speculate that they are looking to avoid the individual who will buy all small coffees and then trade in their free drink for the most expensive large specialty drink on the menu. I don't have detailed demographic information, so this may be a valid concern that could cause the cafe to lose money, however the typical crowd that goes to an establishment like the Blue Dog isn't price motivated... if they were, they'd likely balk at spending three to four dollars on a specialty coffee or beverage in the first place.

However,  it would be relatively easy to group drinks into categories or sizes and bring the total loyalty card combination possibility down to a reasonable level (perhaps small, medium, and large cards for example).  Currently, I don't even bother with it most of the time I'm there because if I did, I'd end up with 10 - 20 different cards in my wallet.  What irks me about the situation is not that I'm missing out on a free drink every now and then (while that does make me a little sad!), I'm more bothered by the purpose of a loyalty program and how the Blue Dog's system isn't accomplishing that purpose.

Loyalty programs are developed to, if you can believe it, instill loyalty in the customer.  If you boil loyalty down to its most basic element, it will result in a choice of Business A over Business B. Sure, there are a lot of fuzzy feelings associated with loyalty,  and as a business owner, I can vouch for the satisfaction in a job well done and a customer who will be fiercely loyal to your company because of the great job you've done for them.  However,  looking at it from a purely economical standpoint, loyalty results in more revenue for your business at the end of the day.

The current loyalty program there is extremely inconvenient for anyone who doesn't drink the same thing consistently, and as such I (and others I've spoken with) often don't even bother with it.  As a result, when making a decision of what cafe to go to (and sometimes I go elsewhere), the loyalty program has no bearing on the decision... but if it was doing the job right, it would.

To sum it up in a sentence: I like the Blue Dog a lot, but the loyalty program drives my marketing side nuts.

Editor's Note: I also love the Blue Dog, but this drives me nuts... I have about 8 different cards in my wallet, including one for "medium latte with flavor shot" and another for plain "medium latte". Are you kidding me? Why not do what nearly ALL OTHER loyalty programs do, and assign a dollar value to the 'free drink' at the end of the card? Make it something reasonable, like $3 max. Or "any small beverage". Or, if they wanted to go the really easy route, why not just offer a "small medium coffee or tea" (or a coffee/tea of any size, really)? That would make it easier on the baristas, the management, AND the clientele. It's pure logic, coupled with a knowledge of other loyalty programs that actually work.