Key Takeaways
- Customer loyalty depends on consistently earning preference across the customer journey.
- Early lifecycle marketing should help customers reach their first meaningful outcome before introducing the next conversion.
- Loyalty structures should reflect customer behavior and the economics of the business.
- Communication volume can become a retention problem even when traditional email metrics look healthy.
- Long-term retention investments are easier to defend when marketers test their assumptions and give leadership clear financial evidence.
Customers have more choices than ever—and fewer reasons to stick with a brand that lets them down. AI has accelerated that shift, making it easier to find alternatives and eroding the switching costs that once kept customers loyal out of habit.
At Activate Summit 2026, Rakuten CMO Wendy Bergh and Angi Head of Global CRM Alison Bernstein explored what this new reality means for customer loyalty. Both emphasized the same core belief: loyalty isn’t secured through a program or a points balance. It is earned, continuously, through interactions that are timely, relevant, and genuinely valuable
For lifecycle marketers, that changes the question. Rather than simply asking whether a loyalty program is performing, teams should ask: Does every interaction give customers a stronger reason to stay? Does it help them accomplish what they came to do? And does it create enough value to earn the next engagement?
Watch the full Activate Summit 2026 session on demand to hear the complete conversation with Wendy Bergh and Alison Bernstein, moderated by Iterable CMO Priya Gill.
Loyalty Is Earned Through Every Customer Interaction
Loyalty once benefited from friction. Finding an alternative provider required more research, time, or effort, which meant habit could keep customers around even when the experience was less than ideal.
Those barriers have largely disappeared. Bernstein pointed out that AI puts alternatives at customers’ fingertips, making brand recognition and trust increasingly important when consumers can compare their options almost instantly.
Bergh describes modern loyalty as earned preference. Every interaction gives the customer new information about whether the relationship remains worth maintaining, from a recommendation or email to a customer service interaction.
As Bergh put it:
“Every interaction is a requalification moment.”
That makes trust especially important because it builds and disappears at different speeds. Bergh summarized the dynamic as trust being “earned in drops and lost in buckets.” A series of positive experiences can strengthen a relationship over time, while one poorly handled interaction can undo much of that work.
Both leaders shared personal experiences that illustrated the point. Bergh described a rideshare company quickly resolving a billing issue after a driver took several wrong turns. The original mistake mattered less than the company’s response, which showed that it valued the relationship enough to make the situation right.
Bernstein shared the opposite experience. After another company refused to correct a service failure that was clearly its responsibility, she stopped doing business with it. The deciding factor was the company’s unwillingness to address the problem, not the initial mistake.
The same principle applies to personalization. Customer data creates value when it helps people accomplish their goals, making relevance and usefulness stronger measures of personalization than the number of individualized messages a brand can produce.
Takeaway: Loyalty compounds through useful, reliable interactions. Every touchpoint gives customers another reason to continue the relationship or reconsider it.
The Underinvested Middle of the Customer Journey
Acquisition receives significant attention because the economics are visible. Marketing teams know what they spent to acquire a customer and naturally want to generate a return as quickly as possible.
That pressure can create a sequencing problem. Brands begin optimizing for another purchase before the customer has successfully completed the experience that brought them there.
Angi encountered exactly that issue. Bernstein’s team found that new homeowners were receiving additional marketing while they were still trying to complete their original task of finding and hiring the right service professional.
The team tested a different approach. For some customers, Angi created a quiet period of up to 16 days and concentrated on helping them complete that first job before introducing additional marketing.
The trade-off was significant:
- Overall revenue per user increased.
- Attributed CRM revenue decreased.
- Customers had more space to complete their immediate goal.
That created an uncomfortable measurement problem for the CRM team. The strategy improved the outcome for the customer and the company while making the team’s own attributed performance appear weaker.
Bernstein’s conclusion was straightforward:
“If it’s the best thing for the company and for the customer, it’s the right move to make.”
Rakuten uses a similar principle to guide repeat purchases. Bergh identified the third purchase as an important retention milestone because customers who reach it are significantly more likely to remain loyal.
The team studies which cohorts reach that milestone most efficiently and looks for ways to help other members follow a similar path. The objective gives lifecycle marketing a specific customer behavior to support rather than simply increasing the number of messages or offers sent.
Takeaway: Strong lifecycle marketing sequences engagement around customer progress. Helping customers reach the milestones that create value gives brands a stronger foundation for the next conversion.
Choose the Loyalty Model That Fits the Relationship
Loyalty programs can take very different forms. Bergh outlined three common structures, each designed to recognize and encourage customer commitment in a different way.
The three models are:
- Tier-based loyalty: Customers unlock greater benefits as their spending or engagement increases. Airline status programs are a familiar example.
- Subscription-based loyalty: Customers pay for access to ongoing benefits, such as reduced fees, faster service, or exclusive experiences.
- Signal-based loyalty: Brands recognize behaviors that indicate growing loyalty and respond with increasingly relevant experiences or rewards.
Rakuten has been investing heavily in the signal-based model. Rather than waiting for a customer to reach a formal tier, the company can identify behaviors that indicate a strengthening relationship and respond accordingly.
Those signals can also help marketers understand where a customer is headed. A member approaching Rakuten’s important third-purchase milestone may need a different experience from someone making their tenth purchase. The loyalty strategy can reflect that progression instead of applying the same incentive to everyone.
Choosing between these models also requires financial discipline. Bergh emphasized that marketers need to understand the economics behind the benefits they provide, including which behaviors justify additional investment and where incentives create sustainable value for the business.
Takeaway: The right loyalty model reflects how customers build relationships with the business. Behavioral signals can help marketers recognize growing loyalty and respond at the right stage of the journey.
More Communication Does Not Always Create More Engagement
Marketing teams have spent years optimizing when to send, what to send, and who should receive each message. Communication volume deserves the same scrutiny.
Angi learned that lesson through customer feedback. An NPS survey revealed that marketing communications had become the company’s second-largest customer complaint, even while traditional email performance appeared healthy.
The team responded by reviewing its communications individually. Each message had to justify its place in the customer journey based on the value it provided to the homeowner.
That process led Angi to:
- Reduce overall communication volume by approximately 40%.
- Remove messages that added little customer value.
- Give customers more space during important stages of their journey.
- Evaluate success through long-term engagement as well as immediate campaign performance.
The change also highlighted a weakness in traditional CRM measurement. Sending another email may produce incremental clicks or attributed revenue, but it can also increase fatigue and accelerate unsubscribes.
Bernstein’s team began looking further ahead. Keeping a customer subscribed for another year creates more opportunities to communicate than extracting another conversion today at the expense of the relationship.
That perspective changes the role of frequency management. Message volume becomes part of the customer experience, with every send carrying both an immediate opportunity and a potential long-term cost.
Takeaway: Communication frequency should be managed as a retention lever. The value of another message depends on what it contributes to the customer relationship over time.
Customer Feedback Should Shape the Experience
Testing can reveal what performs better. Direct customer feedback can help marketers understand why.
Rakuten combined both when redesigning its member signup experience. Rather than relying exclusively on surveys or internal assumptions, the team presented customers with different landing page prototypes and observed how they responded.
The research surfaced three priorities customers wanted from the experience:
- Guidance.
- Trust.
- Value.
Rakuten incorporated those findings into the redesigned experience. The resulting page nearly doubled performance, providing a clear example of how customer research can translate into measurable business results.
The process also demonstrates why experimentation works best when marketers test more than campaign variables. Showing customers concrete concepts can uncover needs that may never emerge from asking them to describe an ideal experience from scratch.
Takeaway: Customer research becomes more actionable when people can react to real concepts. Combining qualitative feedback with performance testing helps teams understand both what works and why.
Build the Business Case for Long-Term Loyalty
Customer-first decisions can create tension when short-term marketing metrics move in the wrong direction.
Angi experienced that firsthand when reducing communications improved overall revenue but lowered the revenue attributed directly to CRM. To secure support for changes like these, Bernstein’s team needed evidence that connected the customer experience to broader business performance.
The team built that case through:
- Financial models that projected the potential business impact.
- Controlled testing before expanding major changes.
- Dashboards comparing expected and actual performance.
- Multiple rounds of experimentation to validate the results.
That evidence gave executives a clearer view of the trade-offs involved. A decline in attributed CRM revenue could be evaluated alongside improvements in overall revenue, customer success, and long-term engagement.
Bernstein also emphasized the importance of understanding the executive perspective. Leadership teams are responsible for managing risk across the entire business, so marketers need to show how a proposed change supports company-level outcomes rather than relying on the strength of the marketing argument alone.
Takeaway: Long-term retention strategies need a measurable business case. Testing, financial modeling, and clear reporting help marketers demonstrate value beyond their own channel metrics.
Loyalty Requires a Longer View of Performance
The experiences shared by Rakuten and Angi point to a broader challenge for lifecycle marketers. Many of the decisions that strengthen customer relationships can look inefficient when evaluated through short-term campaign attribution.
Reducing communication volume may lower immediate conversions. Delaying the next offer may reduce attributed revenue. Investing in customer research may require more time before a campaign reaches the market.
A longer measurement window captures outcomes that campaign metrics can miss:
- Whether customers remain subscribed and engaged.
- Whether they reach behaviors associated with stronger retention.
- Whether customer complaints and friction decrease.
- Whether personalization makes the experience more relevant.
- Whether the overall relationship produces greater value over time.
Rakuten’s third-purchase milestone and Angi’s communication experiments provide two ways to make those outcomes measurable. Both give marketers specific behaviors to track beyond the performance of an individual message.
That broader view also creates room for better decisions. Teams can evaluate whether a campaign contributes to the customer relationship instead of optimizing every interaction as an isolated opportunity to convert.
Takeaway: Loyalty measurement should capture how customer behavior changes over time. Retention milestones, engagement, feedback, and business-level outcomes provide context that individual campaign metrics cannot.
Earn the Next Interaction
Customer loyalty becomes more valuable as switching becomes easier. Brands have fewer structural barriers keeping customers in place, which puts more weight on the quality of the relationship itself.
Rakuten and Angi show what that looks like in practice. Help customers accomplish their immediate goal, recognize the behaviors that signal deeper engagement, manage communication volume carefully, and use customer feedback to improve the experience. Those decisions give customers concrete reasons to continue choosing the brand.
The same discipline applies internally. Marketers need measurement frameworks that account for long-term customer behavior and evidence that connects retention investments to business outcomes. With those foundations in place, loyalty becomes something teams can intentionally strengthen across the entire lifecycle.
Watch the full Activate Summit 2026 session on demand to hear the complete conversation with Wendy Bergh and Alison Bernstein, moderated by Iterable CMO Priya Gill.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is an effective customer loyalty strategy?
An effective loyalty strategy identifies the experiences and behaviors that strengthen the customer relationship over time. Rakuten and Angi focus on customer outcomes, retention milestones, relevant communication, and ongoing testing rather than relying on rewards alone.
What are the three types of loyalty programs?
Bergh outlined three common structures: tier-based loyalty, subscription-based loyalty, and signal-based loyalty. The appropriate model depends on how customers engage with the business and which behaviors the organization wants to recognize or encourage.
What is signal-based loyalty?
Signal-based loyalty uses customer behavior to identify indications of growing commitment to a brand. Those signals can help marketers adjust experiences, recognition, or rewards as the relationship develops rather than waiting for customers to reach a predefined tier.
How can marketers reduce customer communication fatigue?
Angi reviewed its communications based on the value each message provided and ultimately reduced overall volume by approximately 40%. Customer feedback and long-term engagement metrics can help teams identify when additional communication is creating friction rather than value.
How can marketers get executive support for retention initiatives?
Marketers can strengthen the business case with controlled experiments, financial modeling, and reporting that connects customer outcomes to company-level performance. Angi’s approach helped leadership evaluate long-term benefits alongside changes in short-term CRM attribution.