Elevating Loyalty Programs With Experiences
Experiences Are the New Loyalty Engine
Loyalty programs are important mechanisms for driving customer engagement and retention. Their proliferation has proven immensely profitable, but also poses challenges. Consumers today are faced with seemingly limitless options, leading to digital fatigue, while rewards have become discernibly less rewarding as more members compete for limited seat upgrades, VIP airport lounges, and hotel suites.
For brands to stand out and their loyalty programs to grow, fresh approaches are essential. Forward-looking enterprises are connecting with customers on a deeper level, namely, through unique and memorable experiences that members can access anytime, anywhere.
Experiences enable brands to engage with customers around interests that excite and inspire them in daily life. They evolve the legacy, transaction-based relationship with the customer to a richer one built on shared affinities and lifestyle preferences.
Read on to discover important insights and tactics used by top brands connecting loyalty programs to experiences.
Expanding a LOYALTY PROGRAM Beyond Seats & Stays
An enterprise needs an experiential strategy that encompasses the entire customer journey, scaled across the portfolio while honoring its brand integrity. When connected to a loyalty program, experiences offer customers value in powerful and dynamic new ways.
Members can receive exclusive access to other business units, such as reservable on-property resources like cabanas and spa treatments, and products in the form of unique experiences and sought-after goods.
Travel and hospitality loyalty initiatives alike are progressing past traditional offerings like dining credit and late checkout, beyond travel itself, to remain relevant. They are engaging customers at every touchpoint, enriching every facet of their lives with premium experiences reflective of their personal passions. And in doing so, they are unlocking a new mechanism for membership and revenue growth.
Brands like Haytt and Alaska are revolutionizing loyalty with their World of Hyatt FIND and Atmos Rewards Unlocked programs, which not only drive ancillary spending and engagement, but also create unforgettable moments that resonate with customers long after they’re over.
Here is a look at tactics used by leading brands that are redefining loyalty by integrating their programs into customers’ lives.
1 Uniting Loyalty & Experiential at Scale
Streamlining manual processes and integrating a complex tech stack are fundamental first steps in connecting experiential to a loyalty program’s digital ecosystem. The right technology can deliver a brand-defining experience to millions worldwide without ever leaving a brand's core digital channels.
World of Hyatt FIND invites loyalty members to earn and redeem points on curated experiences around the globe, accessible through the app and hundreds of participating hotel websites, making discovery and booking effortless at every touchpoint.
2 Offering Access & Exclusivity
Successful loyalty programs offer customers something they can’t find easily or elsewhere. Granting rarefied access to special events treats customers like insiders.
Enterprises such as Alaska Air Group have raised the bar for rewarding and inspiring loyalty, letting members bid and redeem points on bucket-list adventures, wellness offerings, and highly covetable access to important cultural and sport events through Atmos Rewards Unlocked. The demand speaks for itself, as many of these experiences sell out.
3 LEVERAGING EXPERIENCES TO DRIVE NEW MEMBERSHIP
Experiences provide brands with another opportunity to articulate their program’s uniqueness with offerings that capture their signature identity and distinguish them from the noise.
Campaigns built around these signature activations, paired with exclusive, one-of-a-kind events unavailable anywhere else, are giving loyalty programs new levers to market to discerning members who will choose to earn and redeem through their channel above all others.
4 Launching Co-Branded Activations
Hospitality and travel brands are pairing with well-known names in retail, automotive, and spirits, leveraging each other’s channels to boost awareness and reach new customer segments and increase membership. Co-branded partnerships infuse a brand with renewed relevance and appeal to broader lifestyles.
The Future of Loyalty
Across the industry, brands are employing experiential strategies to drive loyalty and convert customers into brand advocates. As experiences become the new currency of connection, loyalty will belong to brands that create meaning beyond the transaction.
When loyalty programs expand to include ancillary offerings and signature experiences accessible any time and anywhere, the possibilities for growing membership with new audiences and cultivating customer loyalty are endless. Customers have enduring reasons to return to a brand’s website or app, engage with its latest products, and the motivation to stay within the brand’s ecosystem when choosing where to make their next travel purchase.
