Loyalty glossary · 10. Marketing and engagement (20)
Frequency Capping
Frequency capping is the practice of limiting how often a member receives marketing messages or promotional content within a set period, usually to prevent fatigue and list churn.
Frequency capping is usually deployed as a single number for everyone. A programme sets one limit on how many partner messages a member can receive in a month, then applies it to a member with a high active member rate and a member who has not opened an email in a year. That is not a strategy, it is an absence of one.
The right cap depends on what the member has done recently. A member who has just completed an activity-based qualification has earned the right to a higher frequency than someone who has not. Treating both the same ignores the only information that predicts whether a contact will lead to a redemption.
Work the numbers on a typical restriction. A member can earn points from 8 partners per month before any cap. The programme cuts that to 4 partners per month. That is a 50 percent reduction in earning surfaces, and the arithmetic does not care whether the member was using all 8 or none.
Suppressing earning surfaces this way slows accrual directly. Fewer partner touchpoints mean fewer opportunities to add points, which then lowers the future balance a member has available to redeem. The cap does not just limit messages, it limits the reason to remain in the programme.
A better rule is to reset the cap after meaningful behaviour, not after a calendar month. A member who redeems points from a partner should get a higher cap for the next 30 days. A member who ignores three consecutive contacts should get a lower one. This ties frequency to observed responsiveness, which is what frequency capping was supposed to do.