Design, print and manage your posters

Posters are how customers find your card. Each one carries a QR code that opens the card on their phone, and each belongs to one card at one outlet. There are two kinds, and scanning either never gives a stamp by itself: your team approves every request at the till.

The two kinds

• Till poster. Put it by the till. Customers scan it to join and to ask for a stamp or a reward. Its headline reads “Scan to collect your stamp”.
• Window poster. For the window or a table. Customers scan it to start a card; stamps are asked for at the till. Its headline reads “Scan to join our loyalty card”.

On a card whose stamps come only from secure tags, the till poster only joins, so its headline says “Scan to join our loyalty card” too.

Every outlet where a card works needs a till poster for that card. The window poster is optional, for bringing in people who are browsing or waiting.

Create a poster

Posters appear on a card’s page once the card is published. Owners and admins can manage them at every outlet, and managers at the outlets they work at.

1. Open Overview, tap the card under Loyalty cards and scroll to Posters.
2. Tap New poster.
3. Choose the Kind and the Outlet, then tap Create poster.

If an outlet where the card works has no till poster yet, the section says so and offers a button to create one for that outlet. A card can have up to 100 posters.

Design your posters

Each card has designs for its till posters and for its window posters, used at every outlet: each poster fills in its own outlet’s name. Every design comes as a standing poster and a landscape one, which also prints as a table tent. Window posters have two more shapes, a square image and a story image, for posting online. Until someone changes it, a standing poster uses the Classic design: ink on white, with your business and outlet, the headline, the card’s name, the QR code, what the card gives and the NextStamp mark.

Owners and admins can change the designs:

1. On the card’s page, go to Posters and tap Design till posters or Design window posters. Choose the shape at the top: Poster, Landscape, and for window posters Square image or Story image. Each shape has its own design and templates.
2. Pick a template, or work on the design you have. Tap anything on the poster to select it. Drag it to move it and drag a corner to resize it. Its words, font, size and colour are in the panel.
3. Use Add for a heading, more text, a photo, your logo, the card’s stamp, the stamp card, the how-it-works steps or a shape. Use Background for a colour, a gradient or a photo. A till poster can also have a tap mark, to show customers where an NFC sticker is.

Things snap to the middle and the margins of the page, and line up with each other. There’s no save button: a design saves itself a moment after each change. Undo and redo keep the last 50 steps. On a keyboard, Ctrl+Z or ⌘Z undoes, and adding Shift redoes. Printed posters keep working when you change a design, because their QR codes stay the same.

Smart fields

Text on a poster can hold smart fields, which fill in from the card: the business name, the outlet name, the card’s name, the reward, the stamps to fill, the welcome gift and what the poster asks people to do (scan to collect a stamp, or scan to join). Publish the card with a new reward or a different number of stamps, and the poster follows. If a line uses a field that’s empty, the poster leaves the line out. A welcome gift line on a card with no welcome gift is one example.

The stamp and the stamp card always show the card as it is now: its colours, its stamps’ shape and pictures, and what it gives.

What every poster keeps

• The QR code. There is always exactly one. It sits on its own white square above everything else. On A4 it’s never less than 6.3 cm across, and on other sizes it keeps the same share of the page. Its colour has to be dark enough for phones to read.
• The NextStamp mark. It tells customers which app they’re joining. You can move it, resize it and change the colour of its lettering.

A design holds up to 30 things, and up to 4 of them can be photos in PNG, JPEG or WebP. NextStamp shrinks each photo to a size fit for printing and removes its location data.

Print it

Choose Print as above your posters, and your phone or computer remembers it:

• Poster: A4, A3, A5, A6 (a counter card) or US Letter, standing up.
• Landscape poster: A4, A3, A5 or Letter, on its side, from the landscape design.
• Table tent: an A4 or Letter sheet with the landscape design twice, one face upside down. Fold it along the marks at the edges and it stands on a table, the right way up from both sides. On A4 each face is A5.

Then tap Print on a poster. The thumbnails show the design that prints. A design fills an A-size page; on Letter it’s centred with thin margins.

To send a poster to a print shop, pick Save as PDF in the print dialog. Most home printers can’t print right to the edge of the paper, so keep words and the QR code a little way in from the edges.

Once you print a poster, the Posters section says when. If something it printed changes later, such as the reward or the stamps needed, it says what changed so you can print it again.

The Home Screen app on iPhone and iPad can’t open the print dialog. There, NextStamp offers to open the card in Safari, where you sign in if asked and tap Print.

Post it online

A window poster has Image for posting. It makes a square image (1080 × 1080 pixels, for a post) or a story image (1080 × 1920, for a story or status) from the window poster’s square or story design, with its join link as the QR code. On a phone, Share opens your share sheet with the image and the join link, so it goes straight to Instagram, WhatsApp or anywhere else. On a computer, Download saves it.

Only window posters make images. A till poster’s link asks the till for a stamp, so it stays off the internet. To change how the images look, open Design window posters and pick Square image or Story image.

Share or copy its link

A window poster has Copy join link, and Share join link where your phone or computer has a share sheet (most phones do). Post the join link on social media or send it in a message, and people can start a card from wherever they are.

A till poster has Copy NFC sticker link, for writing on an NFC sticker at the till (see set up an NFC tap tag). Keep that one off the internet: it asks the till for a stamp, and anyone can open a link at home.

Where to put it

• The till poster goes at eye level where people pay, close enough that the customer and your team can both see the phone. The request it sends goes to that outlet’s till.
• The window poster goes where people wait or pass by: the door, the window or the tables.

A4 or A5 suits the till, A6 fits a stand on the counter, a table tent stands on tables, and A3 reads from further away in a window.

Test each new poster with your own phone before you rely on it: scan it, join and approve the request at the till.

Pause, replace or retire

Each poster has three controls:

• Pause stops it working until you Resume it. While paused, scanning it says “Code not active”.
• Replace stops the printed poster straight away and gives it a new code. Print the new one and put it up. Use this if a photo of your poster is being passed around or the print is damaged.
• Retire stops it working for good. Customers keep their cards and stamps.

Posters also pause by themselves when you archive their outlet, or when you publish the card away from that outlet. A restored outlet’s posters stay paused until you resume them on the card’s page.

When a poster can’t be created

• “This card isn’t offered at that outlet. Add it under Where it works first.” The card is limited to other outlets. See choose the outlets where a card works.
• “Its outlet is archived. Restore the outlet first.” See add, edit and archive outlets.

When a design doesn’t save

• “This design was changed on another device.” Someone saved the same design at the same time. Tap Load the latest; changes made on your device since then aren’t kept.
• “Too light for phones to scan.” Pick a darker colour for the QR code.

What a scan does

A signed-in customer who scans the till poster sends a stamp request to the till, and your team matches a four-character code and approves it. Stamp requests from the till poster explains both sides, and choose what a first scan does covers a new customer’s first scan. For a tap instead of a scan, see set up an NFC tap tag.