The 3 motivations to join a loyalty program and their financial impact

The latest for love or money 2017 research report continued to quantify the motivations for members to join loyalty programs.

  • 57% of members were motivated by Convenience Loyalty = “I purchase from the brand/business anyway, so I might as well be rewarded”
  • 32% were motivated by Transactional Loyalty = “The benefits and rewards offered are worthwhile”
  • 10% were motivated by Emotional Loyalty = “I love the brand and its products or services”

What’s the impact of these motivations on the financial viability of a program?

Quantifying these motivations provides a basis from which to understand the real impact of your loyalty program.

If 57% of your members “purchase from your brand/business anyway so might as well be rewarded”, then your program is rewarding customers who are already shopping with your business/brand.

Whilst it important to maintain this existing behavior (retention is critical), if you have too many members of your program driven by this motivation (57% of them based on the research), then your Return on Loyalty will be impacted as you are giving away margin to customers you already have.

Motivating more members to move from ‘Convenience’ to ‘Transactional’ Loyalty (so that they find the benefits worthwhile) and even better to Emotional Loyalty, is the goal.

Knowing where your members sit within the 3 Motivations of Loyalty and more importantly – how many, gives you the opportunity to assess the impact of each on your program’s profitability.

To find out more on the 3 motivations to join a loyalty program and which generational cohorts are more into emotional loyalty the full 100+ page report of for love or money 2017 is available for purchase at thepointofloyalty.com.au