Brand Loyalty Isn't a Program You Launch — It's a Relationship You Earn

Key Takeaways

Loyalty is built on data, trust, and lifecycle discipline—not discounts alone.
The strongest retention strategies start long before a loyalty program is introduced.
Brands that communicate at the right moments outperform brands that simply communicate more.
AI amplifies existing customer relationships rather than creating them.
Durable loyalty is earned through consistent customer value over time.

Many marketers are facing a problem of their own making: Consumers have learned to maximize the systems designed to transform them.

That challenge surfaced across multiple sessions at Activate Summit, where leaders from Merkle, Rakuten, Angi, Travelex, Contentsquare, and Carwow, explored what actually drives long-term customer loyalty.

While the conversations covered different topics—from customer data and lifecycle marketing to AI and brand building—they all pointed to the same conclusion: loyalty isn’t something brands create through discounts or rewards programs. It’s something customers choose to give when brands consistently deliver value.

Here’s what leading brands are getting right.

Customer Loyalty Starts With Data, Not Campaigns

Before a brand can build loyalty, it has to know who its customers are at the individual level. The most important loyalty investment most marketing teams are undermaking isn’t a new channel or a new program — it’s the unglamorous work of building a single customer view, connecting disparate data sources, and instrumenting the right measurement to understand what’s actually working over time.

How Travelex Turned a Transactional Business Into Loyalty

Three years ago, Travelex had very little visibility into its customers. Most transactions happened in airports, where relationships were largely anonymous, and customers often disappeared until their next trip. According to Head of Product, Chris Frost, this made long-term loyalty difficult to build.

The company’s solution was to create a stronger value exchange at the point of sale. Customers received something useful in return for sharing their information and agreeing to stay connected. The result was:

45% opt-in rate and a foundation for ongoing engagement
12% growth in six-month customer lifetime value
Card reload rates doubled among loyalty members
A shift toward measuring customer outcomes rather than clicks and opens

The lesson is straightforward. Loyalty programs work best when they’re built on a strong understanding of customer behavior.

How Contentsquare Fixed Fragmented Customer Data to Improve Loyalty

Contentsquare encountered a different challenge. Following multiple acquisitions, the company was operating across disconnected systems and data warehouses that weren’t designed to work together.

According to Senior Marketing Operations Manager, Daniel Agudelo, this made it difficult to create a consistent view of the customer across the business.

The consequences extended well beyond reporting:

Different teams interpreted customer behavior differently.
Personalization became less consistent across channels.
Customer experiences felt fragmented rather than connected.
Trust became harder to build and maintain.

Contentsquare chose to rebuild rather than continue patching legacy systems together, creating a stronger foundation for future growth. They gained new capabilities, but had to accept losing some of what existed before.

See the full session with Travelex and Contentsquare here.

Takeaway: Loyalty programs don’t create loyalty—they reward it. Before a brand can reward customer behavior, it has to be able to see it. Getting the data foundation right isn’t a technical prerequisite for marketing. It is the marketing.

Customer Loyalty Is Built and Lost at Every Stage of the Lifecycle

Loyalty isn’t built through a single campaign. It’s shaped by the small decisions brands make throughout the customer journey—especially in the period immediately after acquisition.

For Rakuten and Angi, loyalty comes down to two questions:

How do you identify the behaviors that predict long-term retention?
How do you avoid damaging the relationship before it has a chance to develop?

Why Rakuten Focuses on the Third Purchase to Drive Customer Retention

At Rakuten, customer retention becomes much more predictable after a specific milestone. According to CMO, Wendy Bergh, there are three common approaches to loyalty:

Tiered loyalty: Rewards increase as customers spend more.
Subscription loyalty: Customers pay for ongoing benefits.
Signal-based loyalty: Customers are rewarded based on demonstrated behavior.

In a market where switching costs are low, reinforcing positive behavior can be more effective than asking customers to commit to another membership structure. Rakuten has increasingly focused on signal-based loyalty, rewarding customers as they engage rather than requiring them to join a formal program.

Customers who reach their third purchase are significantly more likely to stay engaged long term. Rather than treating all customers the same, Rakuten analyzes the cohorts that reach a third purchase most efficiently and looks for ways to replicate those behaviors across the broader customer base.

The goal is to move more customers onto a path associated with long-term retention.

How Angi Increased Long-Term Revenue by Sending Fewer Messages

Angi reached a very different conclusion. When Global Head of CRM, Alison Bernstein‘s team reviewed the customer journey, they found the company was trying to drive the next conversion before customers had completed the first one.

Homeowners were receiving additional marketing messages while they were still focused on finding and hiring the right service provider. The team responded by pulling back.

Key changes included:

Reducing communications during the earliest stage of the customer journey
Focusing on helping customers achieve a successful first outcome
Scaling back messaging for up to 16 days after acquisition
Using testing and customer feedback to continuously refine communication volume

The results were counterintuitive. Long-term revenue increased, even though short-term marketing attribution appeared lower. Sometimes the best way to strengthen a relationship is to give customers the time and space to achieve what they came to do.

Takeaway: The moment a brand starts optimizing for its next conversion before the customer’s first outcome is delivered, loyalty begins to erode. The brands building durable retention are focused on the full customer journey—not just the acquisition moment.

See the full session featuring Angi and Rakuten here.

Building Loyalty Before a Customer Is Even in the Market

Many loyalty conversations focus on what happens after a customer engages with a brand. But some of the strongest loyalty signals are created long before a purchase decision is made.

The discussions around AI and brand authority at Activate pointed to the same conclusion: customers are more likely to trust brands that consistently provide value before asking for anything in return.

Does Your Team Actually Trust the AI You’re Deploying?

One of the more surprising findings shared during Activate focused on marketers rather than customers. Research discussed during Think You Know Your Customer? Fresh Data, Emerging Trends, and Surprising Insights found that marketing leaders are significantly more likely than their teams to believe AI is improving execution.

If the people using AI every day don’t trust the outputs, the technology creates friction instead of efficiency. Several speakers offered a similar perspective on what successful AI adoption requires:

Jill Hartling, Vice President of Strategy at Merkle, posed that the strongest AI use cases don’t replace human judgment. They help teams surface ideas, insights, and opportunities more efficiently.
Breanna Lawlor, Editor and Host of The CMO Club podcast, argued that effective adoption isn’t driven by the fear of missing out. It starts with a specific business outcome and works backwards.

The question isn’t whether a brand is using AI. The question is whether AI is helping teams make better decisions and execute more effectively.

See the full session featuring Merkle and The CMO Club here.

Why CarWow Only Invests in AI That Delivers Customer Value

Ben Carter‘s perspective as Chief Customer Marketing and Media Officer at Carwow offers a useful framework for thinking about loyalty in an AI-driven world.

As AI increasingly influences search and recommendations, trust and authority become even more valuable. Brands that have built credibility over time are more likely to be discovered, recommended, and remembered.

Carwow invests heavily in content that helps customers before they’re ready to buy. Reviews, pricing insights, and educational content create value long before a transaction occurs.

That’s the real opportunity with AI. Used well, it helps customers make better decisions and get more value from a relationship. Used poorly, it accelerates the same short-term thinking that weakens trust.

See the full session featuring Carwow here.

Takeaway: AI amplifies the loyalty a brand already has. Brands that use it to help customers get more value from the relationship will strengthen loyalty. Brands that use it to extract value before the relationship is ready will accelerate churn.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What makes customers loyal to a brand?

Loyalty is typically built through trust, relevance, and consistently positive experiences. While promotions and rewards can reinforce behavior, long-term loyalty is usually driven by the overall customer relationship.

2. How do brands use data to build customer loyalty?

Customer data helps brands understand behaviors, preferences, and lifecycle stages. This understanding allows for more relevant experiences and stronger long-term relationships.

3. When should brands focus on customer retention?

Retention starts earlier than many marketers realize. The first interactions after acquisition often have an outsized impact on whether a customer returns or disengages.

4. Can AI improve customer loyalty?

AI can strengthen loyalty when it helps customers receive more relevant, useful, and timely experiences. Its effectiveness depends on the quality of the data and customer trust already in place.

5. Do loyalty programs create loyalty?

Not by themselves. Loyalty programs are most effective when they reward behaviors that customers already value. The underlying relationship still matters most.

Stop Optimizing for Conversion. Start Building for Loyalty.

The companies featured across these sessions operate in very different industries, but they arrived at a similar conclusion. Each organization approached loyalty from a different angle:

Travelex: Built stronger customer data foundations.
Contentsquare: Created a unified view of the customer across systems.
Rakuten: Identified the behaviors most closely tied to retention.
Angi: Learned that communicating less can create better outcomes.
Carwow: Invested in trust before customers entered the market.

Different challenges. Same lesson. The strongest brands don’t treat loyalty as a program to manage. They treat it as a relationship to earn.

Loyalty accumulates when customers trust your brand, feel understood by the experiences you create, and consistently receive value from the relationship. That kind of loyalty compounds over time and, unlike a promotion, it can’t be copied.