Focus Your Efforts with Rewards Programs

Posted On 30 April 2020

Last updated on April 9th, 2024

There are so many great rewards programs out there! It can be tempting to sign up for all of them. We could sign up for all of them – they are free to join, after all! Should we join all of them, no. I can’t tell you how many loyalty programs I have signed up with over the years. Some I have forgotten about or stopped using when I moved to a new place.

Ok, so now we have all these reward programs. How are they going to benefit me? To get the most out of your loyalty programs, you must focus your attention on just a few. I would rather have 3 loyalty programs with $500 on each, than 500 loyalty programs with $3 on each!

Since I write from my own experience, I will share the ways that we use our reward programs, and some of the things that we do to maximize these loyalty points.

Learn the Rules of the Rewards Program

Companies do not have rewards programs to just give you money. They set the programs up to encourage (bribe) you to keep shopping with them and build customer loyalty.

Not all rewards programs are the same. There are vast differences in the programs. Some will only allow you to get the sale price on items. Others will allow you to redeem your points for free stuff. And there are others that will pay you cash!

In order to maximize your rewards, you must learn the rules of the game. I wrote another post about learning the rules, which you can read here.

Be Selective

I limit my rewards programs to the ones that will benefit me the most. If there is a loyalty program that pays me back 50% of what I spent, yet the company is located only in another area that I never go to, it would be useless to me.

The most important aspect to a loyalty program for me is that I like what the company has to offer. Would I buy from that store even if there was no loyalty program? If the answer is yes, then a loyalty program makes it even better!

A store must be accessible for us to get to. If the closest store is 10 hours away, I have little incentive to get their loyalty program. We do use some programs for stores that are an hour or two away. These are not our main stores, though.

After the first two criteria are met, I look for the most lucrative rewards program. We go with the ones that pay the best. Sometimes stores will offer a special deal once per month, and if there are special deals, we take them!

Single Use Programs

We have signed up for some rewards programs knowing that we would probably never use that program again. Why would we sign up? 10% off our first purchase! I’ll take any deal I can get. I keep the card, though, so it can be used if we ever happen to be back in that area again and visit that store.

Most of the stores in this category are ones that we went to when we were on vacation. The store will not have my loyalty, but I will accept their discount. We might even shop at that store again in the future.

Periodically Look for Better Rewards Programs

Call me strange, but I enjoy comparing loyalty programs. I like to see what other companies have to offer. Sometimes there can even be better programs! Before I’ll switch programs, they must meet my criteria.

Just because there is a better program does not mean that I will abandon the other program. The priority of the programs might just change for me.

Double Dipping is the Best

This does not apply to dipping chips! How do you double-dip with rewards programs? By using a rewards credit card to pay for a purchase on which we get store rewards!

A word of caution. If you are using a credit card to get the rewards or cash back, make sure that you pay that card off every month, otherwise there is no benefit to using the credit card.

Play Favorites

Pick your rewards programs and stick with them to build massive point balances. It doesn’t matter if it is a grocery store, airline, hotel, gas station, or credit card. The only way to build a mountain of points is to keep using the same rewards program repeatedly.

One of the rewards programs I wrote about is the Save-On More Rewards. It is our go-to grocery store. While I wrote specifically about Save-On, the principles of how we maximize the rewards program can be used with any rewards program.

I look at the loyalty programs as games. It is fun to see just how much we can get by spending as little as possible just by being creative. Go out there and see how much fun you can have earning points by getting the things you need to get anyway!