Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

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When Peter Menges, Senior Vice President of Customer Engagement and Insight Loyalty at Unique Vacations, Inc., an affiliate of the worldwide representative of Sandals and Beaches Resorts, looks at the loyalty space today, he no longer sees any excuse for brands to fail to deliver highly personalized experiences for their customers. He notes that with the advent of artificial intelligence, loyalty marketers now have the tools available to ask relevant questions, tailor communications, and deliver the experiences that their customers are seeking. 

“You have every tool that you can possibly imagine to get at the heart of what your customer thinks, feels, how they behave, their historical behavior,” Menges said. “There is zero excuse.” 

Sandals is one of the most well-known luxury resort brands, founded 45 years ago, with 19 locations in the Caribbean—17 adults-only resorts under the Sandals name, and two family friendly locations under the Beaches brand name. According to Menges, the company utilizes AI—including an AI agent called Sandy—as a support mechanism that helps it curate a better, more personalized vacation for its guests. 

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One of the primary goals for a loyalty program is to not only build engagement with a brand’s customers, but to develop an emotional connection between their members and their brand. For Audience Rewards, this latter aim is perhaps a lot less daunting a task to pull off than it is for many others in the loyalty space. 

As the official rewards program for Broadway, Audience Rewards is not connecting customers to a single brand, but rather an ecosystem of individual Broadway shows that are each its own business with its own producer. There are also multiple companies that own the physical theater buildings—and those theater owners were the ones responsible for creating Audience Rewards back in 2008.  

Although serving an ecosystem of different stakeholders and businesses is arguably more complex than connecting consumers to one brand, Katie Dalton, President of Audience Rewards, notes that when it comes to building emotional loyalty, it is in a more favorable position than many other rewards programs. 

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There’s no question that the digital experience has become vital to the overall performance of loyalty programs today, with customers expecting to shop, pay, and redeem points all through an app. For Weigel's, a regional c-store chain with about 90 locations centrally located in East Tennessee, this summer provided an ideal time to get creative with its digital experience. 

Celebrating its 95th anniversary with what it dubbed the Summer 95 campaign, the company used the Weigel’s app and its MyWeigel’s Rewards program to ramp up engagement with customers through a combination of gamification, loyalty offers, personalized communications, and fuel rewards. 

The effort paid off: Weigel’s announced last month that its app generated more than 16 million engagements in July alone, representing a 194% increase in engagement from the previous year. Its app users grew by 29%, total app sessions grew by 83%, while its active loyalty membership increased by 12%, and its member spend jumped by 15%. 

For Jessica Starnes, Director of Loyalty at Weigel’s, this type of customer engagement is not limited to just an anniversary celebration, but instead a part of the company’s DNA as East Tennessee’s hometown convenience store. 

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When many brands talk about the customer journey, they are often talking about how their customers interact with their products and services up to the point of purchase. But for DICK'S Sporting Goods, the customer journey is actually an athlete’s journey—and that journey doesn’t end at the point of purchase. 

Kate Fedishen, Vice President of Marketing Transformation at DICK'S, notes that as athletes have become more informed about their sports, their expectations have risen. DICK'S in turn continually increases its own expectations about the products and services it delivers to meet its customers’—or athletes’, as the company refers to its customers—needs. 

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Although online sports betting has surged in popularity since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized state-authorized sports betting nationwide in a landmark 2018 ruling, the industry remains dominated by just a small number of key players.  

But the way Shawn Henley approaches his job as Chief Customer Officer for DraftKings—one of the two biggest sports betting apps in the world—is to cast a much wider net beyond his industry. 

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As Head of Loyalty at Circle K, one of the primary ways that Carly Lee ensures that she and other executives at the convenience store chain are meeting their customers' needs is by actually listening to what their customers are telling them. 

Lee spends a considerable amount of time going through customer feedback, while also monitoring how they’re engaging with the brand. One of her most important takeaways from listening to this feedback is that Circle K’s customers are looking for a seamless experience, whether that’s filling up their vehicle with gas or shopping in the convenience store. 

And this need for simplicity extends to what members want out of the brand's loyalty program, Inner Circle. According to Lee, customers want the loyalty program to fit into the experience they already have when they are shopping and engaging with Circle K.  

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The way Chris Riedy sees it, this is either a very exciting time to be in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, or a really scary time. What’s creating these two views of the industry is the fact that it is undergoing a tremendous amount of evolution that creates new opportunities, but the playbooks that used to work are much less effective today.  

Riedy, who is Chief Revenue Officer at Ibotta, points to one significant development that is spurring this evolution: the consumer today has much more choice. As consumers take an omnichannel approach to shopping, it’s no longer enough for CPG brands to get distribution at the right grocery store, on a good aisle, and with good shelf placement. 

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For Bill Warshauer, the Chief Revenue Officer at Tillo, a reward can do much more than help a company complete a transaction. It can also produce measurable and meaningful value for companies by changing behavior, creating moments of connection, and strengthening relationships. 

Tillo helps brands deliver on all these needs. The company, which is a global gift-card network purpose-built for both brands and buyers, represents more than 4,000 merchants globally. 

These merchants form one corner of what Tillo refers to as the “power triangle,” which also includes the buyers/platform providers such as loyalty programs, fintechs, employee engagement companies, and more as the other corner. And at the top of the triangle sits the consumer and the consumer experience.  

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All marketers face the challenge of adapting to changing consumer expectations and behaviors, regardless of industry. But Eric Creel, Loyalty Program Manager at shoe retailer Journeys, notes that this challenge can be especially tricky to navigate in his industry. 

“In a weird way, I'd say one of the biggest challenges is also one of the things that I find the most interesting, and that’s how shoe retail is very much driven by trends and what's hot in the moment,” he said. “Our customers are constantly evolving with that, and we have to be able to recognize that as quickly as we can and then make the necessary adjustments to stay relevant to them and deliver the experiences they're looking for.” 

Whether it’s a seasonal trend, a new shoe drop, or a certain style that has become trendy on social media, Creel and his team must stay abreast of trends and what’s new in the footwear space. This requires meeting the customers where they are through social media or other channels and then reacting to what they are looking for now.  

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Brands across nearly every industry face a similar challenge with their loyalty programs: how to give consumers a meaningful reason to engage more often that also keeps them coming back. For adtech firm adjoe, connecting mobile gaming to loyalty programs is an effective way for brands to drive engagement because it taps into something millions of people already do, mobile gaming, and connects it to rewards programs they already value and engage with.  

When adjoe works to integrate major games such as Monopoly or Candy Crush into a brand’s rewards program, it will connect the brand’s currency, such as points or cashback, as it relates to a dollar. Based on what the gaming providers are spending, adjoe converts that spend into the brand’s currency so that users can transparently see how much they can earn from level to level. Once loyalty members hit a milestone, adjoe communicates back to the brand with the number of points to be added into their wallet. 

Michael Corigliano, US Team Lead, Partnerships at adjoe, notes that the games actually fund the entire rewards experience. For mobile gaming companies, participating in a brand’s rewards program gives them a high-quality user acquisition channel.

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