Most of us have a card or two from a local café tucked into our wallet, with the promise of a free cup of coffee once we've bought 10 coffees. It's a great way to engender loyalty from your customer base, but it's not just coffee shops that can benefit from rewards programmes.

An increasing number of small enterprises are using rewards programmes to incentivise their customer base to remain loyal to their business, and many are becoming scientific about measuring how successful these programmes are at keeping customers coming through the door.

Despina Zylstra, marketing manager of children's clothing brand OshKosh B'gosh has been running a rewards programme since 2009 to leverage the strong relationships the business' staff have created with customers