Mug Club 2.0

Craft Brewers Modify Loyalty Programs to Sow Deeper Relationships

- Kerby Meyers

David Dionne figures there are at least a dozen taprooms and brewpubs within a half-hour’s drive of his home in Nashua, N.H., an old textile mill town close to the Massachusetts border. When he’s thirsty for a beer, however, he usually heads about an hour east to the Smutty nose Brewing Company in Hampton, N.H., or the Portsmouth Brewery a bit farther up the Atlantic coast in Portsmouth. And while the main attraction for Dionne at the sibling breweries is the Smutty nose Baltic Porter, their Imperial Pint Club exerts considerable sway.

“I’ve weighed a lot of pros and cons of a lot of mug clubs at other breweries in the area, but I always decide to stick with this one,” says Dionne.

Which means that for 18 years, since the company first started a pint club, Dionne has been rewarded for his loyalty to the brewery. The program’s current iteration, rolled out early this summer, offers those who pony up a $50 membership fee 20-ounce imperial pint pours, complimentary tastings, discounts on retail purchases, and invitations to limited-access parties in July and December. It replaced a three-tier program that was only a few years old but, according to the brewery’s communication specialist Doug Horner, belied a cardinal rule of good service: keep it simple.

“Our goal with the Imperial Pint Club is to energize and reward our most loyal customers, especially since we’ve decided that we really want to focus on our home market,” Horner says.