Customer Experience in Loyalty Marketing
Loyalty Marketing is no longer solely about the purchase frequency of a consumer. The experience you offer your customer matters.
In my professional opinion, I would actually say that Loyalty Marketing hasn’t solely been about purchase frequency in quite a long time; and that brands should double down on the customer experience they’re offering. However, there are many brands and marketers today, that in 2025, are acknowledging that they focused too much on transactional loyalty.*
According to Loyalty360’s “2024 State of Customer Loyalty Report” – 79% of brands expressed interest in updating, enhancing, or redoing their customer loyalty programs.
In 2012, I had the opportunity to speak on social, mobile and loyalty marketing and what I was doing as a c-store marketer to drive a loyal consumer base back to the store chain. While also sharing my journey of implementing the right mobile strategies and tactics for the customer.
At that time, we were discussing the main differences between transactional and experience driven loyalty marketing. And here we are over a decade later, where transactional and experience driven loyalty marketing is quite the topic.
So in this blog article, I want to share with you the importance of experience and value in Loyalty Marketing in 2025.
First off, when I refer to Loyalty Marketing, what do I actually mean?
Loyalty marketing is a strategy focused on encouraging customers to continue to buy from a specific brand over time, while building a brand community and offering great customer experiences at all interactions. These type of strategies are great for established brands that are looking for ways to strengthen their relationship with the customer, while enhancing the customer experience with the brand.
Throughout the program, a great marketer will create different ways for the customer to engage and interact with the brand, and they will not rely solely on transactional data to determine if their marketing is successful.
Customer loyalty programs do require organizational energy, resources and communication between the organizationals internal team, no matter how big or small. So if you’re considering formulating your own loyalty marketing strategy, these are a few things to keep in mind.
So what are the role of the terms, “experience” and “value” in a loyalty marketing strategy?
If you turn on the radio, tv, see a billboard or look at social media, and really listen, you’ll notice a lot of ad copy for different brands, is focused on inviting the market to experience their brand. Whether it be a hotel, home builder, auto, candle company, equine breeding facility, special event, bar, restaurant, gaming, medspa, or retail business, you hear or see “experience” in some form of marketing.
They are leading with this style of copywriting because:
- They focusing on selling the experience not necessarily just the product or service.
- By selling the experience the brand offers vs. the product or service itself; it gives the brands a way to differentiate themselves in their industry as a whole, and the specific market they serve.
- It aims to paint a picture of what to expect, when engaging with the brand, and ties the messaging back to focusing on the benefits they’ll receive.
Think of a hotel chain you prefer, in their messaging, are they selling the king size bed?… or the luxury, clean, and relaxing experience you receive?
What about about a upscale restaurant? Are they selling a cheese burger with bread and meat? Or are they selling the farm to table fresh organic beef and locally sourced bread with a local craft brew at the perfect location?
Maybe consider adding the experience you offer and what added value your brand delivers to the customer into your brand messaging.
Also In today’s economy, where inflation is up; if a brand wants a share of the consumers spend, they need to engage with their customer where they already are. Then share value and the experience they offer their customer, and eventually invite them to be apart of the brands community.
But remember, before a brand will get a share of spend from a customers wallet; they have to be able to get a share of the customers mind. That’s why brand awareness is such a key component to marketing.
So truly understanding your customer and what channels they hang out on is important, because you want to join them where they are, and be apart of the conversation that’s already happening. Engage, interact, comment, ask questions…Perhaps instead of using social media as a sales channel, use it as another channel to provide value and create experiences for your brands community.
Then invite them to join your brands conversation and be apart of your customers journey.
Although experience and value, might sound like two buzzwords or keywords to plug into your loyalty marketing right now; think about what each word truly means and get back to the basics of applying them to what you offer your customer.
And here’s a few ideas on creating brand experiences for your customers, without discounting products, services, or asking for a transaction.
Engaging Non Transactional Experiences
- Download your mobile app and get a free product ( salve, coffee, t-shirt etc).
- Subscribe and get a free digital subscription to members only newsletter or digital magazine
- Create an free account and reward in-store check-ins (points, gift cards, brand partner rewards)
- Win concert or gaming tickets for interacting on the app, social and/or in-store
- Invite to special event for being a valued customer
- Host a brand or brand partnership trivia game on social media and reward winners each week.
- Give back event, invite your brands community to do something great together for your local community or a non-profit.
As always, I appreciate you taking a moment to check out our blog here at Miller Marketing Group. The goal of our blog is to add value to our readers and help small business owners with their marketing through our tips and information we share!
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