What Sausages Taught Me About Loyalty Campaigns
There’s a butcher on Dominion Road who sells ten-dollar sausages that could make a vegetarian think twice. He doesn’t have a loyalty card. He doesn’t need one. That got me thinking — when did loyalty turn into a spreadsheet instead of a smile?
Marketers still bandy about the word ‘loyalty’ like it can be summoned with a QR code. Yet most programmes don’t reward loyalty. They reward sign-ups. You get 100 points for filling out your profile, another 50 for sharing your date of birth, and then… tumbleweeds. Six months later, some algorithm shoots you a birthday discount on something you’ve never bought. Thanks for the sentiment, robot.
True loyalty is irrational. It’s emotional, sometimes inconvenient. I’ll drive past three bigger, cheaper butchers because I like how this guy remembers my name. He once gave my kid a frankfurter “on the house.” Not because I earned it through a tiered reward system, but because he felt generous. That’s not scaleable. It's better.
So here’s a pitch: less gamifying, more human-ing. Find the thing that customers would willingly drive past better deals for. Don’t offer rewards, offer stories they’ll tell flatmates. Not everyone wants to feel like a member. Some people just want to feel like you saw them.
Marketers still bandy about the word ‘loyalty’ like it can be summoned with a QR code. Yet most programmes don’t reward loyalty. They reward sign-ups. You get 100 points for filling out your profile, another 50 for sharing your date of birth, and then… tumbleweeds. Six months later, some algorithm shoots you a birthday discount on something you’ve never bought. Thanks for the sentiment, robot.
True loyalty is irrational. It’s emotional, sometimes inconvenient. I’ll drive past three bigger, cheaper butchers because I like how this guy remembers my name. He once gave my kid a frankfurter “on the house.” Not because I earned it through a tiered reward system, but because he felt generous. That’s not scaleable. It's better.
So here’s a pitch: less gamifying, more human-ing. Find the thing that customers would willingly drive past better deals for. Don’t offer rewards, offer stories they’ll tell flatmates. Not everyone wants to feel like a member. Some people just want to feel like you saw them.