How-To Guides5 min read·May 10, 2026

How to Set Up a Milestone Campaign on Blinko

Learn how to set up a Milestone Campaign on Blinko to recognise your most loyal customers at key visit thresholds, anniversaries, and community moments — building the kind of loyalty money can't buy.

Blinko Team

Blinko Local

There's a particular kind of loyalty that no discount program can manufacture: the feeling of being genuinely recognised by a business you love. A customer who receives a message saying "You've visited 25 times — you're officially one of our most loyal regulars, and we want to celebrate that" doesn't just redeem the reward. They tell people. They feel ownership over the relationship. They become the kind of customer who defends your business when someone criticises it online. A Milestone Campaign is how you create that feeling at scale. Here's how to set one up.

Campaign Setup Guides· 6 guides

← Discount Coupon

What is a Milestone Campaign?

A Milestone Campaign fires automatically when a follower reaches a specific achievement — a visit count, an anniversary of following your business, or a community-wide moment you choose to celebrate.

Unlike a stamp card, which rewards every completed cycle, a Milestone Campaign marks a singular achievement. It says: this customer has done something worth acknowledging. The reward is secondary to the recognition — but both matter.

Three milestone types:

Type	Trigger	Example
Visit count	Customer reaches their Nth check-in	10th visit, 25th visit, 50th visit
Follower anniversary	N months/years since first check-in	6-month regular, 1-year anniversary
Community milestone	A date or number you define for the whole audience	Your business's 5th birthday, 1,000th follower

When to use it

A Milestone Campaign is most powerful when:

You have a growing base of regulars — customers who visit frequently enough to accumulate meaningful visit counts
You want to create a VIP tier feel without the complexity of a formal tiered program
You're approaching a business anniversary or community milestone and want to celebrate it with your followers
You've noticed that certain customers visit very frequently and you want to acknowledge them specifically — not with a generic offer, but with a message that says we see you
You want to generate word-of-mouth — customers who feel recognised are significantly more likely to mention your business to others

For businesses just getting started with Blinko (fewer than 50 followers), set up your stamp card and welcome offer first. Milestone Campaigns work best when you have enough customers to regularly hit the thresholds you set.

What you'll get

Benefit	Detail
Recognition at scale	Every loyal customer gets acknowledged automatically — you don't have to remember who visited 25 times
Emotional loyalty, not just transactional	Customers who feel seen are more loyal than customers who just earn points
Word-of-mouth generation	Milestone moments are shareable — customers celebrate reaching a milestone the way they celebrate a birthday
Natural VIP segmentation	Customers who reach high visit counts are your most valuable — acknowledging this reinforces that behaviour

How to set it up

Option 1: Mobile App

Time to complete: ~3 minutes

Step 1 — Open Campaigns and tap +

Tap Campaigns in the bottom navigation, then +. Select Milestone Campaign.

Creating a Milestone Campaign in the Blinko mobile app

Step 2 — Select your milestone type

Choose one of:

Visit count milestone — fires when a follower checks in for the Nth time
Follower anniversary — fires on the Nth month or year since their first check-in
Community milestone — fires for all followers on a date or event you define

Step 3 — Set the threshold and reward

For visit count milestones:

Visit number: Which check-in triggers the milestone. Common thresholds: 5, 10, 25, 50.
Milestone name: What to call it — "10-Visit Regular", "Coffee Veteran", "VIP Member"
Reward: What the customer receives. For milestone campaigns, the reward should feel proportional to the achievement — bigger milestones earn bigger rewards.
Message: The personal note that accompanies the milestone notification. This is the most important field — write it as if you're speaking directly to the customer.

Configuring milestone threshold and reward

Step 4 — Add more thresholds (optional)

You can layer multiple milestones in a single campaign — for example, rewards at the 5th, 10th, and 25th visit. Each threshold has its own reward and message. This creates a progression that keeps customers engaged across multiple loyalty levels.

Step 5 — Publish

Tap Publish. The milestones will fire automatically as customers reach each threshold going forward.

Option 2: Web Portal

Time to complete: ~4 minutes

Step 1 — Go to Campaigns → New Campaign → Milestone Campaign

Step 2 — Choose milestone type and configure

Select your milestone type and set up each threshold:

Milestone type: Visit count, follower anniversary, or community milestone
Threshold(s): The specific number(s) that trigger a reward
Reward per threshold: What the customer receives at each level
Message per threshold: The personal acknowledgement message — each level should have its own tone

Milestone Campaign configuration in the Blinko web portal

Step 3 — Publish Campaign

Click Publish Campaign. Customers who have already exceeded the threshold will receive the milestone immediately; all future customers will receive it when they reach it.

Option 3: AI Copilot

The Copilot is well-suited to milestone campaigns because it can help you choose appropriate thresholds for your visit frequency and write the recognition messages:

"Create milestone rewards for my 10th, 25th, and 50th most loyal customers with escalating rewards."

"Set up a 1-year anniversary reward for followers who have been with us for 12 months."

"Create a community milestone — we're celebrating our 3rd anniversary. Reward all followers with a special offer."

"My 10th-visit customers should get a free coffee. Write something warm to go with it."

AI Copilot creating a Milestone Campaign

What your staff need to do

Milestone redemptions are the most emotionally significant moment in a customer's loyalty journey. The process is simple — but the staff interaction around it matters more than for any other campaign type.

No action needed at delivery

Milestone notifications fire automatically when a customer reaches the threshold. Staff do not trigger them and do not need to track who has earned what.

At redemption — staff action required

Customer shows the milestone notification in their Blinko app — it displays the milestone name (e.g., "10-Visit Regular") and the reward they've earned
Staff open the Blinko Business app → tap Redeem
Customer holds up their in-app QR code
Staff scan it — the milestone reward is confirmed and marked as redeemed
Staff honour the reward at the register

The verbal acknowledgement is part of the offer

A customer who has visited 25 times has chosen your business over every alternative, 25 times. When they show a milestone, they're not just redeeming a coupon — they're marking an achievement. A staff member who says "Congratulations, you're officially one of our best customers" turns a transaction into a moment the customer will remember and talk about.

Brief your team to treat milestone redemptions differently from standard offer redemptions. The scan is the same. The moment around it should not be.

Brief your team: "If a customer shows a milestone achievement in their Blinko app, scan their code to redeem the reward and congratulate them — genuinely. These customers have been coming back for a reason."

Tips for better results

Layer your milestones — 5, 10, 25, 50

A single milestone at visit 10 is good. A ladder of milestones at visits 5, 10, 25, and 50 is transformative. The first milestone at visit 5 catches customers early, before they've had a chance to drift. The milestone at visit 25 rewards your most committed regulars with something genuinely special. Each threshold gives the customer a new achievement to work toward even after the previous one is claimed.

Write the message as if it came from a person

The milestone message is your most important copy. "You've visited 10 times — you've officially earned the title of Regular. Here's something to celebrate." outperforms "Milestone reached: 10 visits." by a significant margin. The offer might be identical; the feeling is completely different. Spend time on the message. The AI Copilot can help if you're not sure how to phrase it.

Use community milestones for your business's own story

Your 1st anniversary, your 100th follower, your 500th coffee served — these are moments worth celebrating with your community. A community milestone campaign sent to all followers on your business birthday does something no discount campaign can: it invites customers to be part of your story, not just a transaction in it.

Frequently asked questions

What if a customer already exceeded the milestone threshold before I published the campaign? Customers who have already surpassed a threshold when the campaign is published will receive the milestone immediately upon activation. This is a feature, not a bug — your longest-standing regulars get recognised right away.

Can I run multiple milestone campaigns at the same time? Yes. You can run a visit count milestone and a follower anniversary milestone simultaneously. Both will fire independently for eligible customers.

Should the milestone reward be bigger than my stamp card reward? Generally, yes. A customer reaching their 25th visit has demonstrated exceptional loyalty — the reward should reflect that. A free coffee is a great stamp card reward. A free meal, a meaningful upgrade, or a personalised experience is a more fitting 25th-visit milestone reward.

Can I retroactively send a milestone to customers who hit a threshold before I had Blinko? Milestones fire based on check-in history recorded in Blinko. Check-ins that happened before a customer started following your business on Blinko are not counted. The count starts from their first scan.