A discount, coupon or bonus can trigger the next purchase. But we can only talk about true loyalty when a customer comes back to you even when you are not advertising a special offer or perk.
If loyalty were measured by the number of cards and apps, customers today would be almost professional collectors. According to the Bond Loyalty Report 2025, the average American consumer is enrolled in seventeen loyalty programs but actively uses only nine. That is fairly good proof that membership and loyalty are not the same thing.
It is very easy to sign up for a program. An e-mail address or phone number is often enough, handed over in passing in return for a promise of a percentage off the next purchase. Something else is much harder to achieve: getting customers to come back even when they get no coupon, double points or special promotion.
True loyalty therefore does not start with a card. It starts with the question of why someone would choose you when they have five similar offers in front of them.
Transactional loyalty: “I stay as long as it pays off”
Points, coupons, cashback and similar member perks are not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary: they are very effective tools for encouraging repeat purchases, collecting data and personalizing offers. The problem arises when they are the only reason a customer keeps coming back.
If someone buys from you because they get ten percent off, the question is what happens when a competitor offers fifteen. You already know the answer: you will have to offer twenty, or the customer will leave. In that case it is clear that they decide mainly because of the benefits, not because of your brand or the quality of your service.
An interesting current example is the British supermarket chain Waitrose, known for its more premium food offering. Its My Waitrose program includes, besides personalized offers and free coffee, a system called “Little Treats”. When a member reaches a certain spend in a given month, small surprises await them in the app: a free product, a coupon or another reward. It is not a revolutionary mechanic, but the tone matters. Instead of a cold “spend X, get Y”, the brand successfully presents the reward as a small thank-you.
According to the John Lewis Partnership, which Waitrose belongs to, the Net Promoter Score for its loyalty program improved by 20 points in the first half of 2026 compared with the year before. In other words: a well-designed perk can do more than just lower the bill. It can improve the feeling of how the brand treats its most regular customers.
When points become a ticket into the world of the brand
The most interesting loyalty programs therefore try to go beyond the maths of “one euro = one point”. Membership gives the user access they would not otherwise have: they see a novelty first, get a special experience, attend an event, take part in a community or get something that is not simply on the store shelf.
Another example of good practice is the cosmetics giant Sephora. Its Beauty Insider had more than 45 million members in North America in 2025. Of course it includes classic points and discounts, but also birthday gifts, special rewards, member challenges and exclusive perks. The brand does not address the member only as someone who bought something, but as part of a “beauty” community.
The best reward is not always a cheaper product. Sometimes it is the feeling that you got access that others do not have.
LEGO Insiders uses a similar principle. Members collect points, but can also get early access to new sets, special gifts, exclusive products, event tickets and various experiences. More importantly, the wider LEGO ecosystem lets fans share their ideas, vote for other people’s suggestions and connect with people who are interested in the same thing. Here loyalty is no longer just a financial mechanism. It becomes part of identity: “I am a LEGO fan.” Once a brand reaches that point, price comparison still matters, but it is no longer the only criterion.
Why does a sense of belonging work at all?
A good loyalty program combines a rational and an emotional reason to return. The customer has to get something concrete, and at the same time feel that the brand knows and values them.
In this year’s loyalty program research, McKinsey found that members of the highest-rated programs change their behavior much more often: they are twice as likely to buy more often than with other providers. These customers are also 79 percent more willing to recommend the brand than members of programs at the bottom of the ranking.
5 points of a good loyalty program:
- the benefit is easy to understand and simple to redeem,
- the offer is at least partly personalized,
- the member gets access to something others do not,
- the program is tied to the identity and character of the brand,
- the experience is consistent beyond the loyalty program itself.
You can build belonging without points too
Of course, not every business needs an app, a card and a rewards system.
In a B2B company it would be a little odd to offer a client an eleventh strategy meeting for free after the tenth. Loyalty can also be built by far more everyday things: remembering the context in which you met the client, alerting them to a problem before they notice it themselves, staying available after a project ends, offering them an early look at news in your offer, or inviting them to an event where they can gain useful knowledge even without buying anything.
Content can also be part of loyalty. If a company regularly offers information that users actually look forward to, a newsletter, podcast or professional event plays a similar role to a good loyalty program: it creates a reason for the relationship to continue between two purchases.
That is also why communities have so much power. People do not come back only because of the product, but also because of the feeling that they belong to something close to them.
Quick test: have you built loyalty or just a discount?
For a first assessment, answer five questions:
- Do you think your typical customer would come back even without a coupon or special promotion?
- What does a member or regular customer get from you besides a lower price?
- Can you recognize customers and address them based on their previous experience with you?
- Can they get access, knowledge, an experience or a sense of community that cannot simply be compared with the competition?
- Does your loyalty program truly express the character of your brand, or could almost any competitor use it unchanged?
If your communication revolves only around discounts and points, you may have a very good promotional mechanism. But you do not necessarily have very loyal customers.
The takeaway: loyalty is the result of deliberate action, not discounts
A loyalty program can be a powerful marketing tool, but usage numbers are not automatically proof that a customer is loyal. A card in a wallet, an app on a phone or a few thousand unspent points only say that someone once signed up to your system.
The real value shows when a brand combines the benefit with a sense of recognition, access and belonging, and when your program is good enough to change behavior and distinctive enough that the user does not see it as yet another generic benefits scheme.
If you want a loyalty program that customers actually use, start with what you can give them between two purchases. Marketing automation helps here: it sends regular customers a message when it makes sense for them, not only when there is a sale. If you want to find out where your program is losing members, get in touch.
