In some ways Australian surfwear brand Rip Curl’s loyalty program is typical. For every dollar they spend, for example, members of Club Rip Curl earn 100 points toward future purchases.
But here’s how this loyalty program, as its participants might put it, is totally rad: Participants also earn points when they go surfing, collecting 200 points for every wave they catch, provided they’re wearing a Rip Curl Search GPS Watch, which logs waves ridden.
“We’re so excited about being able to reward customers for what they love doing best—getting out and enjoying the waves,” Michael Scott, chief customer officer at Rip Curl, said in a case study of the loyalty program.
Zsuzsa Kecsmar, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Antavo Loyalty Cloud, the London-based loyalty platform that partnered with Rip Curl on a new loyalty program in 2022, told Retail Brew that she’s advocating for brands to expand beyond “old school, more transactional loyalty” (which Antavo also calls “rational loyalty”), namely giving points only for purchases.
Rather, brands should also reward for what Kecsmar calls “emotional loyalty,” which encompasses other more familiar non-transactional actions for which brands are providing loyalty points, including referring friends, watching sponsored videos, and writing product reviews.
“For this ‘wow’ effect, companies are…going the extra mile with their loyalty programs,” Kecsmar said.
Another Antavo client, German outdoor retailer Bergzeit, rewards points to customers for doing what they love, namely completing challenges the brand sets for activities including hiking, running, and cycling.
While it would be difficult to determine whether that aspect of Bergzeit’s loyalty program specifically enthralls members more than the transactional aspects, what is clear is that members of the loyalty program overall are spendy. On average, those members place orders with 95% more frequency and have 25% higher average order value than their customers who aren’t enrolled, according to Bergzeit data via Antavo.
Yet another Antavo partner, KFC UK and Ireland, gives rewards of free food to members of its loyalty program who spend time on the KFC mobile app playing traditional arcade games.
Suite emotion: Among brands who plan to launch a loyalty program in the next two years, more than half (52%) intend for it to be more emotional than rational, according to a 2024 global report from Antavo that surveyed 600 CMOs and loyalty executives.
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As for companies’ current loyalty programs, only 14.5% classified the program as emotional, with 65.4% classifying their programs as rational, and 20.1% as mixed.
For its loyalty program, Mr. Lid, a line of plastic storage containers with a hard-to-lose hinged lid, already rewards points for non-purchase actions including subscribing to its newsletter and providing a birthdate. But Pall Musaev, CEO of Mr. Lid, told Retail Brew that his goal is to make the product “the next hot accessory,” and the brand is encouraging consumers to swear off restaurants’ single-use containers as doggy bags and bring their containers to restaurants instead.
To that end, Musaev said the brand is planning to challenge loyalty club members to post photos showing them using Mr. Lid containers instead of the restaurants’.
“We’re going to be offering points for that type of behavior,” Musaev said.
Brick and more points: While countless loyalty points are awarded for online purchases, Leigh Sevin, co-founder of Endear, a customer relationship management (CRM) firm with a focus on omnichannel brands, noted that points can be used as a come-hither to lure the online-inclined into stores.
If a retailer wants to incentivize shoppers to come to a store for a pre-sale or VIP event, for example, “not only will you have a discount when you come to the store, but you’ll get points for doing so,” Sevin told Retail Brew. “That would be the sort of thing that helps to bring the physical locations more into the fold.”
Emily Rugaber, VP of marketing at Thanx, a loyalty platform for restaurants, said along with awarding points as a carrot for activities like posting reviews or downloading and engaging with a mobile app, the points also can be used in the same ways restaurants have sent tables a complimentary drink or dessert when they’ve had to wait long to be seated or were disappointed with a dish.
“Maybe you had a bad experience, and so we’re going to reward you with points in order to make that experience right,” Rugaber told Retail Brew.
“A true differentiator can lie in these non-transactional activities,” said Antavo’s Kecsmar, adding that points for purchases “is hygiene and the other is where the real differentiation and fun begins.”