Many believe that promotion only extends to big budget adverts and discounts in the supermarket with many forgetting what for me is a marketing masterstroke: the loyalty card.

It appears to be a win-win situation all round: the customer gets a discount and feels valued by the company whilst the company gets the holy grail that is a loyal customer and reams upon reams of data about the spending habits of their customers.

This sounds absolutely brilliant in theory but things like this that work ‘in theory’ but don’t often translate in the real world but it seems that loyalty cards do actually work.

An early form of a loyalty scheme that was actually popular was Green Shield Stamps which was founded in 1958 (and you thought loyalty schemes were recent) with shoppers at certain stores getting given stamps that could be redeemed in catalogues for household goods – unsurprisingly it took off.

The scheme ended in 1991 but four years later we were given probably the most notable loyalty scheme to date: the Tesco Clubcard.

The scheme currently has 20 million active users and it works. Tesco are the UK’s largest supermarket, this may not all be due to the Clubcard but I would imagine it helped.

If you still don’t believe that loyalty schemes work take this recent experience from my family: we got some Tesco Clubcard vouchers so did three weeks shopping there and haven’t looked back, shopping there to build up more points – I told you it works.

Now companies aren’t blind to the benefits of loyalty scheme and most big companies worth their salt have their own loyalty schemes for their customers and I’m sure they reap the benefits.

The loyalty scheme is one of the greatest marketing ideas and long may it continue.

Do comment your thoughts below.