Loyalty Programs Are Having a Renaissance. Here Is How to Do Them Right.
Lessons from Zsuzsa Kecsmar, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Antavo
Zsuzsa Kecsmar started a company with her boyfriend and two friends in London after a career in radio journalism. They nearly killed it with 30% monthly churn. Then they pivoted to loyalty technology, grew to 100 people, and now power programs for BMW, KFC, Benefit Cosmetics and PepsiCo. The pivot worked because they stopped building for acquisition and started building for retention. There is a lesson in that for every marketer.
Strategy Always Comes Before Technology
Antavo has walked away from deals where clients wanted the tech before they had figured out what they actually wanted to do. Zsuzsa is direct about it: if you do not have the strategy on paper, do not call a technology vendor.
The first step is one page. Write down what you want the loyalty program to do. Then hire a consultant who specialises in loyalty in your specific space. Then, and only then, start talking to technology providers.
Companies that skip this end up with expensive platforms and no idea how to use them.
Takeaway: Before evaluating any loyalty technology, answer three questions first. Who are you rewarding? What behaviour do you want to change? How will you measure success?
Gamification Is Not a Gimmick. KFC Proved It.
The KFC Rewards Arcade is one of the most awarded loyalty programs in recent years. The insight behind it is smart: instead of only rewarding existing loyal customers, the program targets people who have the potential to be loyal but are not there yet.
The mechanic is simple. Make a purchase, unlock arcade games, get incentives to come back. The whole thing is designed to increase craving. It works because it is genuinely fun and the brand is woven into every interaction. When you are playing a hammer time game on your phone at 11pm, you are thinking about chicken.
Takeaway: Loyalty programs do not have to start with a purchase. Think about how to bring people into your world first and let the transaction follow.
Nine Out of Ten Companies With a Loyalty Program Have a Positive ROI
That number is from Antavo's Global Customer Loyalty Report, which surveyed 600 loyalty professionals, recorded 1,500 minutes of qualitative interviews and analysed 30 million loyalty program member actions. A year ago it was eight out of ten. The year before that, seven.
The trend is clear. Companies are getting better at running loyalty programs because they are finally measuring them properly.
1,500 people signed up to the webinar when the report launched. For a B2B company. That is what happens when you commit to being the definitive source of knowledge in your category.
Takeaway: Publish the research. Own the conversation in your space. A well-produced industry report does more for brand authority than most campaigns ever will.
B2B Marketing Should Feel a Lot More Like B2C
Antavo puts a biker astronaut with Barbie hair on the cover of an 80-page research report. They write haikus using their own AI. They created a spy thriller video series called Mission Loyalty featuring Agent Jess, who investigates what makes great loyalty programs work.
None of this is accidental. Zsuzsa's view is that B2B marketers are still selling to people. People have ambitions, fears, careers they want to protect and reputations they want to build. They want to be entertained just as much as anyone else. The companies that remember this stand out immediately from those that do not.
Takeaway: Look at your last five pieces of B2B content. Would a real person actually want to read or watch any of it? If the answer is no, you already know what to fix.
The Pivot That Saved the Company
Antavo started in lead generation and contest technology. They had a 30% monthly churn rate. For a company that would eventually build loyalty programs for global brands, that is a deeply ironic problem to have had.
The pivot to loyalty came from asking a simple question: if we built loyalty software, would our own customers be more loyal to us? The answer was yes. Churn dropped. Revenue grew. By the time COVID hit they were 40 people. Eighteen months later they were 100.
Takeaway: Sometimes the product you need to build is hiding in the problem you are currently failing to solve.
Tom Whatley: Linkedin
Suds Singh B2B Video Content Specialist London for Interesting Content, LinkedIn.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/1BhxgCF9LhQ?si=QYBqsueObtzQMR1e
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