​​Bringing Personalized Loyalty Strategies to Life: From Promise to Reality​

Earlier this year, Forrester published a report, Use Personalization To Activate Loyalty Program Value, outlining the best practices for developing personalized loyalty strategies that deliver customer and business value. The report identifies four key components of the customer value exchange that can be activated through personalization alongside four “depths” of tactics to bring personalized loyalty to life. It also outlines three dimensions that define successful personalization strategies.

Forrester’s thorough and well-thought-out framework for successful personalization in loyalty raises a couple of important questions: How can brands put these ideas into practice? Are there real-world examples of companies already using these principles to personalize their loyalty programs?

While the report includes quotes from the companies Forrester interviewed, it is worth taking a closer look at real-life applications of personalized loyalty in action and assessing the technology required to make it work at its full potential. Many brands worldwide are already using advanced loyalty technology and adopting Forrester’s best practices to deliver personalization at the scale needed to drive measurable financial outcomes.

Some examples showcase how these brands’ approaches align with the critical elements of a successful personalized loyalty strategy.

Delivering the Four Types of Customer Value

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 personalization:

• Economic: Offering financial incentives such as points, discounts, or cashback
• Functional: Providing tailored product and service recommendations
• Experiential: Creating personalized program experiences that cater to members' unique needs
• Symbolic: Demonstrating customer appreciation through status recognition or exclusive rewards

A loyalty program’s ability to press on each of these levers—to deliver each of these types of value—depends heavily on the capabilities of its technology platform. To deliver a best-in-class strategy, 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 to ensure that each of these distinct aspects can be personalized to each customer.

Loblaw’s PC Optimum program exemplifies how personalization can enhance all facets of the customer value exchange. Take its PC Health program, for instance: this initiative rewards members with PC Optimum points for building healthy habits, completing tailored programs, and participating in special offers. This approach combines economic value (earning points) with experiential value (access to relevant health-related services and support), creating a deeper connection with members. By personalizing these interactions, Loblaw amplifies engagement and the overall value delivered through its program and supercharges the customer value exchange.

Meanwhile, the subscription-based PC Insiders program, which is growing at an impressive 11% per quarter, adds an element of personalized exclusivity that reflects symbolic value, demonstrating appreciation for its most loyal members. Across the PC Optimum ecosystem, personalized 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.

Committing to Personalization with Data Analytics: Woolworths Australia

None of what PC Optimum—or any loyalty program—has achieved through personalization would be possible without leveraging customer data. That is why, according to the Forrester report, the first “dimension” for enabling seamless program personalization to run smoothly is defining and mapping data needs.

Grocery retailers have a unique advantage here, given the vast amount of data generated by the extensive volume of SKUs in their inventory and the frequency of customer visits. By clearly defining data requirements and effectively collecting and managing this data, grocers can leverage their unique advantage to deliver more impactful personalization.

Woolworths Australia has demonstrated the powerful relationship between data and personalization through its 50% purchase of data analytics company Quantium (the investment led to the creation of 'wiq,' a joint venture combining Woolworths' retail expertise with Quantium's data analytics, to strengthen its data capabilities). The retailer also partnered with Eagle Eye to integrate its in-store point-of-sale systems with its Everyday Rewards loyalty program in real time.

Investing in data analytics has allowed Woolworths to implement an AI-powered personalization engine that has achieved personalization at a scale not previously possible. The Eagle Eye-powered loyalty enhancements enable customers to track, earn, and redeem their points as they shop, allowing the retailer to deliver a substantially more positive customer experience. With these capabilities in place, the supermarket giant has reported that customers are five times more likely to make a purchase following a personalized interaction than they would have been after encountering "traditional" marketing.

Perhaps more importantly, Woolworths Australia’s focus on addressing its data needs enables timely, contextual, and highly personalized offer delivery through its Everyday Rewards program. This commitment ensures members have a consistent and enjoyable experience, whether using the loyalty app or shopping in-store.

Triggering Action with Loyalty-Integrated Gamification: Tesco and Carrefour

According to Forrester’s report, the success of an omnichannel loyalty experience is influenced by how well personalization 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, showcases two of the personalization "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 challenge initiatives utilize each retailer’s 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 contextual data points, which are analyzed and processed by predictive AI to prompt specific actions. The outcome is a highly personalized and scalable form of customer engagement, delivering strong results for European retail leader Carrefour and UK mainstay Tesco.

Expanding the Concept of Contextual Engagement: Marketing in the Moment

As the Forrester report describes, contextual understanding and anticipating customer needs represent the "deepest and most challenging depth of program personalization." 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 analyze contextual triggers, such as external factors like weather, and instantly deliver personalized offers and communications. This capability must extend across all shopping environments--whether the customer is in a physical, digital or hybrid (i.e., online hopping with in-store pick-up). Though challenging to achieve, it becomes possible with the right technology partner.

Finding the Right Partner to Deliver Personalized Loyalty

The Forrester report acknowledges that while most loyalty technology platforms support data collection and analytics to some extent, “only some loyalty platforms will offer advanced features for personalization 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 not optional but essential.

The strategies outlined in Use Personalization To Activate Loyalty Program Value are more relevant than ever, particularly for retailers. However, putting these strategies into practice, as demonstrated by the retailers already executing personalized 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 personalized loyalty by enabling value creation and depth across the program. With the right partner, platform and support, brands can fully realize the potential of and activate the incredible value within their loyalty programs.