Set up Check-In Loyalty Rewards - Smart Digital Punch Card

Check-In Rewards (also called Frequency-Based Rewards or Loyalty Rewards) reward customers based on the number of visits they make. Visits are recorded when a customer checks in or redeems a reward. This is a sophisticated version of a digital punch card, which you can customize to offer better rewards to frequent visitors.

Why Choose Digital Check-In Rewards?

Compared to paper punch cards, digital Check-In Rewards offer a number of benefits:

  • Create a continuous chain of automated rewards
  • Flexible reward scheduling
  • Real-time tracking of reward usage
  • Automated emails to bring customers back
  • Insight into your most loyal customers
  • Built-in tools to collect customer feedback

đź”’ Note: Check-In Rewards are currently only available for brick-and-mortar businesses.

You can access this feature from the Birthday Club Dashboard.

How the Loyalty Rewards System Works

The Loyalty Rewards system combines all reward activity into one seamless flow. Here’s how it works:

  1. A customer signs up for your Birthday Club and receives a signup reward.
  2. They visit your location and redeem the reward.
  3. That redemption triggers the next check-in reward email, prompting them to visit again and earn more rewards.
  4. The customer may also receive additional rewards (e.g. anniversary or flash sale rewards).
  5. Each visit and redemption counts toward the total number of visits in the loyalty cycle.
  6. You don't need to offer a reward for every visit, e.g. you could offer a reward only for 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th visits.
  7. Milestone rewards for 25th, 50th, and 100th visits provide strong motivation to customers to come back more frequently. Some of our customers who saw their sales grow rapidly offered a $100 gift card or dinner for a family of 4 for their 100th visit.

The cycle of loyalty rewards

Various rewards can keep the cycle going

Setting Up the Check-In Reward Cycle

The system is built around a 10-visit cycle, where you define which visits are rewarded.

You can:

  • Add check-in emails (for visits without a reward)
  • Add rewards (e.g., for visit #5 and #10)

As long as the customer continues to check in or redeem rewards, they move forward in the cycle. After 10 visits, the cycle resets automatically and starts again.

Additionally you can add milestone rewards for the 25th, 50th, or even 100th visit.

Set up Check-in Rewards

Preventing Drop-Offs (Avoiding a “Broken Chain”)

Check-In Rewards are designed to keep your customers engaged.

  • Check-in emails never expire. Customers can check in at any time to continue progressing.
  • Reward emails can expire, based on your settings. If a customer misses the expiration, they won’t be able to redeem and may drop out of the cycle.

To prevent this, Birthday Club will automatically send a check-in email when the last reward expires. That allows the customer to resume the loyalty cycle with a new visit.

How Visits Are Recorded and Confirmed

We’ve built safeguards to ensure rewards are only earned through legitimate visits. Birthday Club uses three mechanisms:

  1. Time-Based Restrictions: Customers can only check in or redeem once every x hours (configurable in Reward Options).
  2. Location Verification: The system checks the customer’s phone location. If they are not near your business, check-in is blocked. (Contact support@riiwards.com to enable geolocation-based check-in.)
  3. Check-in Confirmation Required (Visit Confirmation): If enabled, visits must be confirmed by a manager using the Mobile Dashboard app before the next email is sent.

To learn about the visit confirmation, please see the article Confim Customers Visits via Mobile Dashboard.


Set Confirmation Required in Reward Options
Set minimum time between redemptions