142% is the kind of number that gets skipped past, because a percentage with no arithmetic behind it is just a claim. So here is the arithmetic. Revenue growth from a loyalty programme is not a single effect - it is four separate terms in one equation, and once you can name them you can work out what your own store would get, and which term is the one you are currently leaving at zero.
Start With the Equation, Not the Percentage
Store revenue over a year is customers multiplied by orders per customer multiplied by average order value. Three terms, and every growth tactic you have ever run moves exactly one of them. Paid acquisition moves the first. A bundle or a free-shipping threshold moves the third. Almost nothing moves the second, which is why so many stores end up buying the same customer twice.
A loyalty programme is unusual because it touches all three at once, from opposite directions. Referrals add customers at a cost you only pay when the customer actually arrives. Points and reminders add orders per customer. Tier benefits and redemption thresholds nudge average order value. None of those movements is dramatic on its own. What makes the compound number large is that they multiply rather than add - a ten percent improvement in each of three terms is not a thirty percent improvement, it is thirty-three, and that gap widens every quarter you keep them running.
Growth that comes from acquisition resets every month. Growth that comes from retention carries forward, and that is the whole difference.
Why the Second Term Is the One That Compounds
There is a structural reason orders per customer is worth more than the other two terms. A customer you acquired in January is still in the base in June; a customer you acquire in June is not in the base for January. Every improvement in repeat rate applies to the customers you already paid for, plus every customer you add afterwards, for as long as they stay. That is why loyalty revenue curves look flat for a quarter and then steepen - you are not watching a campaign, you are watching an accumulating base, and the base only starts to show once several months of it have stacked up.
Revenue contribution by loyalty mechanic, compounding over 12 months.
Where Each Term Actually Moves
- Customers - a referral programme pays out only when the friend joins or places a first order, so acquisition cost is fixed and known in advance rather than bid up in an auction, and MYLO's referral analytics show you the funnel from click to signup to purchase, along with which members are actually referring.
- Orders per customer - a visible points balance, a checkout reminder for members with points unspent, an expiry warning with the exact dates, a birthday coupon once a year and an SMS campaign aimed at members who have never redeemed all produce orders that would not otherwise have happened.
- Average order value - a minimum cart value to redeem, a minimum spend on welcome and birthday coupons, free shipping attached to a tier rather than to an order, and a lifetime-spend threshold for the next tier all give the member a reason to add one more item rather than fewer.
Notice how few of these are discounts. A discount moves average order value once and lowers margin every time it fires. A threshold moves average order value and costs nothing when the member clears it on their own. Most of the revenue in a well-set-up programme comes from the second category, which is also why programmes that are built purely as a sliding discount ladder rarely produce a compound number - they buy the same orders they were going to get, more expensively.
Working Out Your Own Number
You do not need hundreds of stores of data to estimate this. Take last year: how many customers ordered more than once, and what share of revenue did they represent? That share is your current second term. Then take the mechanics above and ask which of them exist in your store today. Most stores find they have some version of the third term, none of the first, and nothing at all on the second - no reason to return, no reminder, no deadline. That is where the headroom is, and it is usually the largest single gap on the list.
Then measure the right thing. MYLO records every order the store takes, member or not, so the dashboard can show the club's share of total revenue as a real percentage rather than an estimate - and next to it, sales by loyalty level and points actually spent versus points issued. Watch those three across a reporting period with Compare switched on, and you are watching the equation move in real time. The headline percentage belongs to whoever earned it. The mechanism underneath is available to any store willing to work on the term everyone else ignores.