Loyalty Program Ideas and Strategies That Drive Customer Loyalty and Business Growth

The unprecedented flexibility of modern loyalty programs puts a world of options at your fingertips, allowing you to experiment and find the right formula for your needs. 

That process of discovery helps you gain insights into customer behaviour, learn how to optimise your rewards structure, take advantage of the right opportunities and much more. 

Any brand with an active interest in making its loyalty program the best it can be is already doing all of those things but are they really being innovative in how they do it or are they just keeping up with everyone else?

That’s where we want to help and we’re in a unique position to do it. As a loyalty platform that works with clients across industries and markets, we get an inside look at campaign performance and a front-row seat to the implementation of lots of ideas and strategies. 

We want to share some of those ideas and inspire you to stand out with effective loyalty outreach based on what has worked for some of our clients. The goal is always to help you go beyond simple transactional loyalty to deeper customer relationships based on the true value that your program delivers.

Get inspired by them to try something new, adapt them to fit your audience or simply use them as a reminder that creativity is key in your approach to setting up a program that works for you!
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Use S-T-R-E-T-C-H Goals For Long-Term Success 

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Moving customers beyond simple transactional loyalty is a key challenge everywhere. The mentality of “buy this now, get this now” may deliver short-term satisfaction but it rarely generates long-term effects.

That’s why stretch goals can be so effective in loyalty programs. They fundamentally shift a customer's mindset toward long-term, sustained participation instead of instant, small rewards. 

Stretch goals are powerful gamification tools in loyalty programs because they encourage members to push past their typical engagement level for a superior, often exclusive, reward. They take the base activity (like purchasing or reviewing) and set an elevated target.

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Here are examples of how stretch goals can be effectively integrated into loyalty programs:
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Spending-Based Stretch Goals With a Focus on Revenue

These goals encourage customers to increase their average order value or purchase frequency within a specific period.

• The Tier Accelerator:
  
  • Base Goal: Spend a certain amount to reach a higher tier. 
  • Stretch Goal: If you spend an additional amount over what’s required by a certain date, you will skip a tier and advance to the next one. 
  • Benefit: Motivates high spenders nearing a threshold to make significant, immediate purchases, resulting in a higher lifetime value (LTV).
• The Bonus Point Threshold:
  
  • Base Goal: Earn, for example, 10 points for every $1 spent.
  • Stretch Goal: Spend over $150 in a single transaction and receive a 5,000-point bonus (a value far exceeding the normal points earned).
  • Benefit: Drives up the Average Order Value (AOV), especially for customers who typically spend just under the threshold.

Behavioural & Engagement Stretch Goals With a Focus on Data

These goals encourage deeper commitment to the brand's ecosystem, often generating valuable data or user-generated content (UGC).

• The Multi-Channel Challenge:
  
  • Base Goal: Make one purchase online and one purchase in-store this month.
  • Stretch Goal: Complete the base goal and write five product reviews and follow the brand's new social media account to receive a gift card.
  • Benefit: Encourages customers to engage across multiple brand touchpoints, providing a clearer picture of their habits, making personalised outreach easier. 
• The Comprehensive Profile Upgrade:
  
  • Base Goal: Complete a basic profile (name, email, birthday) for 100 points.
  • Stretch Goal: Complete the basic profile and fill out a detailed 15-question survey on the relevant topic to receive early access to the next sale and a 10% off coupon (in addition to the points).
  • Benefit: Acquires valuable Zero-Party Data (preferences willingly shared) that allows for superior personalisation and targeted marketing.

Time-Based & Habitual Stretch Goals With a Focus on Retention

These goals focus on consistency and frequent, low-effort engagement to build long-term habits.

• The Streak Multiplier:
  
  • Base Goal: Log into the brand's app every day for a week and earn 50 points.
  • Stretch Goal: Maintain the daily logins for 30 days to unlock a discount on all purchases in the next six months.
  • Benefit: This uses the fear of breaking the streak (loss aversion) to hardwire a daily engagement habit, significantly boosting app adoption and retention.
• The Product Discovery Challenge:
  
  • Base Goal: Buy three different products this quarter.
  • Stretch Goal: Purchase from five different product categories this quarter to unlock some kind of benefit. 
  • Benefit: Promotes product trial and discovery, widening the member's purchasing repertoire and making them less likely to churn due to limited product interest.

In all these examples, the stretch goal is successful because it offers a reward that is disproportionately valuable compared to the effort, justifying the customer's extra push.

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Stretch Goals in the Restaurant Industry

When the reward is definitely worth the effort, customers will respond. 
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Just ask UK restaurant brand Bella Italia, part of the Big Table Group. They utilised a loyalty strategy called the "90 Day Challenge" to drive sales, boost customer loyalty, and encourage repeat customer visits. It was strategically designed to move customers past a single transactional mindset and introduce them to longer-term participation with a compelling, high-value reward.

The core of the "90 Day Challenge" was a tiered loyalty program built into the Bella Italia mobile app, requiring a series of repeat visits within a specific time frame to unlock the grand prize.

The steps and rewards were structured to increase customer commitment with each visit:

• Requirement: Customers had to download the Bella Italia app and complete three visits within the promotional window of 90 days.
• Minimum Spend: A minimum spend of £20 per table was required on each visit, ensuring a meaningful revenue contribution.
• Reward Tiers: Rewards were given for each milestone, driving immediate repeat behaviour and orientation toward the ultimate goal:
  
  • Visit 1: Unlocked a smaller, immediate reward, such as £10 off the next meal.
  • Visit 2: Unlocked a more substantial reward, such as a free main meal.
  • Visit 3 - The Stretch Goal: Unlocked the ultimate reward — 50% off the food bill on every subsequent visit for the next 90 days.

The “90 Day Challenge” turned out to be a massive success for Bella Italia, not only in terms of increasing customer visit frequency (up over 30%) and overall spend (up over 10%), but also by driving downloads of their dedicated app to over 150,000 users and counting, providing a massive platform for ongoing conversations and future promotions. 

Keep Bella Italia’s recipe for stretch goal success in mind when planning your own strategy for engaging customers in a way that keeps them focused on a longer-term goal!

Key Takeaways: 

Stretch goals encourage customers to think beyond the short term and about their future relationship with the brand instead. Instead of focusing on what they could get right now, participants in Bella Italia’s 90-Day Challenge reframed everything in terms of their next visit. 

Here’s how stretch goals help enhance customer loyalty:

• Steering Away from Transactional Loyalty: While the first two visits offered instant rewards, the main driver was the significant stretch goal of 50% off for 90 days. This incentivised customers to commit to three visits, rather than just one, two, or simply waiting for another one-off voucher.
• Creating a Habit: The 90-day duration of the grand prize was designed to create a dining habit. By offering a substantial discount for three months, the challenge encouraged customers to incorporate Bella Italia into their regular dining rotation, making it their default choice for casual meals during that period.
• Increased Lifetime Value (LTV): By encouraging frequent, high-spend visits over a three-month window, Bella Italia was able to significantly increase the customer's short-term LTV and establish a strong foundation for long-term loyalty after the promotion ended.

In the end, the “90 Day Challenge” helped Bella Italia address a common business problem in the restaurant industry —  customer visit frequency. It’s a great example of what bold thinking and a flexible, feature-rich loyalty platform can do. 
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Stretch Goals Switch the Focus to the Longer Term

By successfully steering customers toward larger, more aspirational targets, stretch goals in loyalty programs effectively transition customers from being transactional participants focused on “What do I get now?” to committed partners focused on “What can I achieve next?”, building a much more robust and sustainable form of loyalty.

Stretch goals like the “90 Day Challenge” may or may not fit with your business model or industry but keep the mentality they create among customers in mind — a commitment to taking multiple small steps towards a goal worth pursuing.

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Play With Gamification to Drive Engagement

Let’s take a step back from stretch goals to look at gamification more generally and the role it continues to play in transforming traditional loyalty programs into the updated, modern experience that today’s consumers expect. 

The days of simply offering a "Buy 5, Get 1 Free!" card are fading fast, if they’re not gone already. The digital landscape has enabled enormous opportunities to introduce an element of gamification to loyalty experiences, replacing simple, uninspired transactions with engaging journeys. Now you can turn formerly passive customers into active participants in brand advocacy. 

Finding the right way to incorporate gamification into your loyalty outreach may take some experimentation but one thing is already settled — any loyalty program that doesn’t have it is not going to perform as well as those with it. 

What Is Gamification In Loyalty Programs?

Let’s specify what we have in mind here since you might have your own impression of what “gamification” means. 

In the context of loyalty programs, gamification involves adding game-design elements or competitive principles to spark and maintain interest. You’re probably familiar with the use of things like points, badges, levels, leaderboards, and challenges to create an immersive and motivating experience that rewards participants and inspires them to remain engaged and build on what they’ve accomplished so far. 

Think about all the psychological drivers that respond to gamified interactions — the desire for achievement, recognition, and the allure of competition. They all make the act of engaging with a brand feel less like a trade of money for goods and more like a rewarding adventure.

Why Gamification Is Especially Relevant Now
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Two forces are now converging to push gamification to the forefront of loyalty program design. 

Firstly, we have become digital natives accustomed to interactive experiences. We expect more than just static rewards and are familiar with gamification elements from previous exposure.  Few modern consumers are new to dynamic engagement, instant feedback, and opportunities to demonstrate their progress and status. 

On top of that, the sheer volume of choices available to consumers means more brands are in search of innovative ways to stand out. A gamified loyalty program offers a unique selling proposition, differentiating a brand not just by its products or services, but by the experience it provides.
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The result is customers who return to a brand and become invested in a way that strongly diminishes the likelihood of looking for other options. In an age where customer retention is increasingly difficult and expensive, gamification is the shortcut to holding on to their attention and building and creating ongoing relationships. 

Gamification can motivate customers to take action in two key areas:

Purchases

Tiered levels/status:

• Example: Customers advance from Bronze to Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers based on spending levels. Each level unlocks a reward, like free shipping, discounts, exclusive or early access, etc.
• Customer motivation: Customers strive to reach and maintain the next status for social recognition and better permanent perks (loss aversion).

Progress Bars to Reward:

• Example: A visual bar shows a member is "90% of the way to a free product" after spending a certain amount of the required threshold. 
• Customer motivation: Proximity to the goal encourages the member to spend more now rather than wait.

Spending Challenges:

• Example: A limited-time offer to earn more than the normal amount of points when making qualifying purchases. 
• Customer motivation: Focuses spending behaviour by linking a clear, time-sensitive incentive to a specific business goal (clearing inventory, promoting a category, etc.)

Engagement & Data Collection

Badges & Achievements:

• Example: Badges awarded instantly after a member writes five product reviews or for sharing a product link on social media.
• Customer motivation: Provides a sense of accomplishment for helpful, non-monetary actions, fostering brand community and user-generated content (UGC).

Quizzes & Surveys:

• Example: A quick, fun quiz or survey related to a product or industry. Completing it awards bonus points or some other rewards. 
• Customer motivation: Turns the challenge of data collection into a low-effort, high-reward activity. The customer willingly gives Zero-Party Data for personalisation.

Daily Login Streaks:

• Example: Logging into an app for a certain number of days in a row automatically enters the member into a small prize draw or awards a small point bonus.
• Customer motivation: Uses the fear of breaking the streak (loss aversion) to encourage frequent app visits, making the brand top-of-mind.

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Gamification in the Hospitality Industry

Who doesn’t love to “spin to win”? That was the idea behind an effective gamification strategy from FrogPubs, a network of UK-themed establishments in France. 

New members to their loyalty program could sign up and get a “mystery spin”, with content updated and customised for various promotions.

Using their point of sale data and running a data script over it based on visit time and items purchased allowed FrogPubs to place these new customers in dynamic segments for better personalisation. These groups included Business (Monday to Friday 12.00-14.00), Leisure (Evening and weekends), Football (being present in the pub when certain key sports games were on) and Family (buying kids meals).

From there, it was easy to craft customised messaging for everyone, with tailored offers most likely to connect with the needs and interests of these different customer segments. 

This is a great example of potentially turning one-time visitors into regular customers and dealing with the challenge of client anonymity in the hospitality industry. 

The Advantages of Gamification In Loyalty Programs

Let’s get down to the details of the specific ways gamification elements in a loyalty program translate into business benefits:

• Increased Customer Engagement: Transforms passive earning into an active pursuit, making interactions with the brand more exciting and memorable.
• Higher Customer Retention & Loyalty: Thanks to a deeper emotional connection and higher levels of motivation, customers are more likely to stick around.
• Enhanced Brand Advocacy: Engaged customers are more likely to talk about their positive experiences, becoming informal brand ambassadors.
• Greater Data Collection & Personalisation: Gamified interactions provide behavioural data, allowing brands to understand preferences and tailor future offers.
• Improved Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Engaged and loyal customers tend to spend more over time, leading to higher revenue.
• Differentiation in a Crowded Market: Unique and appealing reasons for customers to choose one brand over another.
• Reduced Churn: Continuous incentives to prevent customers from moving to competitors.
• Educational Opportunities: Guide customers through product features or benefits in an engaging way.
• Positive Brand Image: Brands that offer fun and rewarding experiences are often perceived as innovative and customer-centric.
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Don’t Go Too Far — What NOT to Do with Gamification

While the benefits are compelling, gamification is not a magic bullet and you can have too much of a good thing. Poorly implemented strategies can backfire, leading to frustration, disengagement, and even a negative brand perception. Here are crucial warnings about the wise use of gamification:

• Don't Force It Where It Doesn’t Fit: If there isn't a clear business objective or a genuine improvement in the customer experience, gamification will feel forced and superficial.
• Don't Make It Too Complex: Overly complicated rules, confusing point systems, or too many steps will overwhelm and deter users. Keep it intuitive and easy to understand.
• Don't Make Rewards Unobtainable or Meaningless: If the effort required far outweighs the perceived value of the reward, or if the rewards are generic and uninspiring, customers will lose interest.
• Don't Focus Only On Material Benefits: While points and discounts are good, remember to use intrinsic motivators like status, recognition, and exclusive access.
• Don't Forget the Experience: The underlying product or service must still be excellent. Gamification can't fix fundamental flaws in your offer.
• Don't Be Inconsistent: If the program isn't regularly updated, refreshed, and supported, it will quickly become stale.
• Don't Make It Feel Like Work: The goal is to make engagement fun, not another item on a to-do list.
• Don't Mislead: Avoid using gamification to trick customers into unwanted behaviors or to hide poor service. Transparency and fairness are key.
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Make Loyalty a Game Worth Playing

Gamification moves customer relationships beyond the transactional to emotional connections. By understanding the psychology behind it and following some simple rules, businesses can craft loyalty programs that not only reward purchases but also celebrate engagement, build communities, and create lasting and meaningful bonds with customers. The future of loyalty is interactive, immersive, and, most importantly, fun.
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Program Points — Learn While Customers Earn & Burn 

Points are the foundation of customer loyalty programs everywhere, from airlines & hotels to coffee shops & restaurants to ecommerce & retail and more. Their common role is no accident because points systems leverage aspects of behavioural psychology while providing an easy, flexible way to participate in loyalty programs and track progress. 

Points are the universal language of loyalty because they satisfy both the brand's need to manage and control their use and the customer's need for tangible, trackable rewards and recognition. 

But getting customers to earn those points is only half of the loyalty challenge. It’s only when they burn those points and turn them into rewards that they’ve completed the loop, gained something from their participation and are ready to advance further. 

So how can you make sure that loyalty program members reach this important milestone and benefit both themselves and the brand behind the program? 

Here’s Why Points Programs Work
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The "Sink": As customers accumulate points, they develop a sense of investment. This point balance acts as a "sink" — they become psychologically anchored to the program, making them less likely to switch to a competitor where they would have to start from zero.

Points drive aspiration: Points are the quantifiable measure of progress toward aspirational goals (e.g., the next level, the exclusive reward). The progress bar showing a customer is 800 points away from a free flight is a powerful visual encouragement.

Better personalisation: By tracking how points are earned and redeemed, brands gain data that can be used to personalise future offers (e.g., if a customer only uses points for free shipping, target them with a shipping-focused bonus).

Gamification: Points are the scoring system for all gamified elements, like challenges, quests, and leaderboards. They transform the act of shopping into a game where the customer is actively managing their score and strategy.

Reactivating Customers With Loyalty Points in Ecommerce

Here’s an example of a simple but very effective way to get customers to move from earn to burn and directly impact sales. It’s a great reminder that idle loyalty points should be seen as a new sale just waiting to happen. 

UK-based cosmetics brand Escentual wanted to prompt loyalty program members to utilise any points they had earned but not yet burned. The solution came in the form of email outreach with a subtle hint of urgency to provide momentum:

Customers received a series of emails telling them how many points they had earned along with a message that those points would expire in thirty days, then fourteen days, then seven and then finally in twenty-four hours. What better way to speak to the fear of missing out AND the loss of an investment than putting a countdown clock on unspent loyalty points? 

The emails were also sent to customers who had not made a purchase for at least 180 days in an attempt to reactivate them using the same message regarding their accumulated loyalty points. 

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The results were immediate and unmistakable. Look at this image taken from the campaign results — the huge spike in transactions at the end of October started on the day after the first email about the loyalty points was sent:

The effect lasted for days and another spike came after the next email was sent a week later. It’s clear proof that loyalty program members can be motivated to take action and inactive customers can return when they are informed about a points balance that can be lost. 

The benefits of reaching out like this extend well beyond the transactions it generates. It shows clients that you are actively listening and monitoring your loyalty program in a way that works to their advantage. You’re helping them to not only take advantage of the points they have — discounts, free shipping or something else — but to avoid the frustration that comes with the loss of what they’ve accumulated. 

The 70/30 Ratio in Loyalty Points Spending

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s actually a good thing if loyalty program members don’t spend their points because you, as a business, somehow “profit” because you don’t have to give the discounts or free shipping or some other benefit that customers have earned. 

Remember that the entire point of your loyalty program is to keep your customers engaged and returning and what says “low engagement” more than low levels of loyalty point spending? 

When you have low levels of point spend, it means that program members don’t see the value in belonging to the program because the rewards are not worth their time, the rules are too complex or some other reason. It’s just a matter of time before they are no longer your customers. 

Where’s the “profit” there? 

As a rule, a healthy ratio for loyalty points is 70/30 — that is, 70% are redeemed and 30% are “lost”, or simply remain untouched. If the redemption rate in your program slips too far under 70, it’s time to look for the broken link in your loyalty program’s chain because it’s a sign that something is off. 

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Emotional Loyalty is the Goal

Stretch goals, gamification and the smart use of loyalty points have more in common than just being effective ways to deepen customer engagement. They are building blocks for the emotional loyalty that every brand should have as a goal. 

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But what is emotional loyalty? Let’s start with what it’s not. 

Emotional loyalty isn’t what motivates a customer to shop right now just because something is on sale. It isn’t always stopping by the same coffee shop just because it’s on the way or staying with a certain brand because the cost of switching is too high. It isn’t the kind of loyalty that’s lost if a competitor is ten percent cheaper. 

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Instead, emotional loyalty is the bond that would cause a genuine sense of loss among customers if they were suddenly unable to interact with a brand for some reason. If you’ve ever missed a certain store or restaurant because you moved to another area where they didn’t exist, you had emotional loyalty. If you’ve ever been genuinely disappointed that a particular brand was somehow no longer available to you, that was because you felt emotional loyalty towards them. 

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That’s the kind of loyalty that every brand should strive for, not the kind that is based on individual transactions motivated by a “buy this & get that” experience. 

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When you use stretch goals, gamification or loyalty points in a smart, innovative way that engages customers, you shift the conversation. Instead of a brief, transitory exchange based on an immediate payoff, you create a back-and-forth series of interactions that build towards something bigger. 

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This journey helps you learn more about each individual customer and your audience generally. It helps you craft personalised experiences and run experiments at scale. Most importantly, however, moving the conversation to the longer term helps create the space you need to serve, delight, satisfy and impress participants in your loyalty program. It allows you to position your brand as the only source customers need for your products and services and become the default, go-to option when the need arises because why would they think about anyone else?

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That’s emotional loyalty. 
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Create Your Own Custom Plan With
Loyalty AI 

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As you can see, elements like stretch goals, gamification and the smart use of points gained in loyalty programs can be strong differentiating factors that drive customer engagement. Today’s consumers are drawn to more satisfying brand experiences and these are all excellent ways to meet those expectations while standing out from competitors. 

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Still, they are part of a larger framework designed to cultivate more profitable, long-term relationships with those who interact with your brand. 

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Designing a loyalty program that fits your needs and appeals to your customers involves lots of moving parts and that’s why we recently introduced Loyalty AI to make the process easier, faster and more effective. 

You’ll save time and resources while taking a shortcut straight to the implementation stage and get a head start on building greater customer loyalty and achieving the business goals that come with it. 

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Try Loyalty AI and discover the possibilities that await your brand with the power of a custom-designed loyalty program.

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