Published on the 28/01/2025 | Written by Sarah Jarvis - Eagle Eye

Tactical insights for converting loyalty to customer value…

Earlier this year, Forrester published a report outlining best practise in using personalisation to activate loyalty program value. The report identifies aspects of the customer value exchange that can be activated through personalisation alongside “depth” tactics to bring personalised loyalty to life. It also outlines dimensions that define what successful strategies look like.

The report provides a thorough and well-thought-out framework but how can brands put these ideas into practice? Are there real-world examples of companies already using these principles to personalise their loyalty programs?

“A concept that will achieve for marketing what “near me” did for search”

While the report includes quotes from the companies Forrester interviewed, it is worth taking a closer look at real-life loyalty in action and the technology required to make it work.

The examples herein showcase how these brands’ approaches align with critical elements within Forrester’s framework.

The customer value exchange

Forrester describes four distinct types of value that brands can deliver to customers, collectively called the “customer value exchange.” Each type can be enhanced by personalisation:

● Economic: Offering financial incentives such as points, discounts, or cashback

● Functional: Providing tailored product and service recommendations

● Experiential: Creating personalised experiences that cater to members’ unique needs

● Symbolic: Demonstrating customer appreciation through status recognition or exclusive rewards

A loyalty program’s ability to pull these levers—to deliver each of these types of value for every customer—depends on the capabilities of its technology platform. A platform that connects data across every touchpoint, allows for flexible offer creation and deployment and enables the execution of machine learning and predictive AI at scale, is essential.

Points for customers

Canadian grocery group Loblaw’s PC Optimum program is an one example of how personalisation can enhance all facets of the customer value exchange. Its PC Health program rewards members with PC Optimum points for building healthy habits, completing tailored programs, and participating in special offers. The approach combines economic value (earning points) with experiential value (access to relevant health-related services and support), creating a deeper connection with members.

Meanwhile, the subscription-based PC Insiders program, which is growing at an impressive 11 percent per quarter, adds symbolic value for loyal members. Across the PC Optimum ecosystem, personalised offers and recommendations cater to members’ everyday needs, delivering the functional value that keeps over 16 million members engaged and coming back. It’s a prime example of a loyalty program successfully activating all four dimensions of customer value.

Gamification

According to Forrester’s report, the success of an omnichannel loyalty experience is influenced by how well personalisation tactics operate across the four “depths:” segmentation, discrete interactions, customer journeys, and anticipatory or contextual moments. Loyalty-integrated gamification, such as Carrefour’s Challenges or Tesco’s Clubcard Challenges, showcase two of the personalisation “depths” identified by Forrester: customer-determined journeys and discrete interactions. Through these initiatives, customers shape their own journey as they progress through the game, while customized thresholds act as the critical moments of interaction that nudge them towards a desired action or specific behavior—in this case, additional purchases.

Both examples utilise the retailers’ loyalty program and app and the first-party data they generate to create tailored thresholds for individual participants. These thresholds are based on insights from past purchase history, preferences, and other data points, which are analysed and processed by predictive AI to prompt specific actions. The outcome is a highly personalised and scalable form of customer engagement, delivering strong results for both.

Marketing in the moment

As the Forrester report describes, contextual understanding and anticipating customer needs represent the “deepest and most challenging depth of program personalisation.” At Eagle Eye, we call this approach Marketing in the Moment, a concept that will achieve for marketing what

“near me” did for search. This approach allows retailers to influence customer behavior as it happens in real-time—during the search, browsing and discovery phases of shopping.

However, to successfully implement Marketing in the Moment, retailers need the technical infrastructure to analyse contextual triggers, such as external factors like weather, to instantly deliver personalised offers and communications. This capability must extend across all shopping environments—whether the customer is in a physical, digital or hybrid (click & collect) setting.

Tech buy-in

The Forrester report acknowledges that while most platforms support data collection and analytics to some extent, “only some loyalty platforms will offer advanced features for personalisation execution, like next-best-offer decisioning and journey orchestration.”

If brands want to engage their most loyal customers in meaningful ways consistently, these capabilities are essential.

However, putting these strategies into practice, as demonstrated by the retailers already executing personalised loyalty at a high level, requires more than just commitment and buy-in.

It demands a technology platform and partner capable of delivering on the promises of personalised loyalty to activate the inherent value within their loyalty programs.

[About the author]

Sarah Jarvis is communications and propositions director for loyalty platform provider Eagle Eye which executes more than 850 million personalised offers every week for retailers such as Asda, Tesco, Waitrose and the Woolworths Group. She has worked with some of the world’s largest retailers and FMCG brands to help them drive profitable growth through customer insights and loyalty. She co-authored Omnichannel Retail: How to Build Winning Stores in a Digital World.