New customers won’t sustain your brand! Existing ones will! Don’t be mad, we’re just calling it like it is! Bad news for your 31.4% budget: Customer acquisition costs rose 222% over 8 years. Good news for your budget: Loyalty programs deliver a jaw-dropping 5.2x return on investment. The cost and value of customer retention have never been clearer.
Investing in the right technology for customer retention and loyalty programs can not only sustain but also drive your business growth! To do that, you have to find a loyalty engine that’s both fast, flexible, scalable, and not a pain in the behind to operate! Your stakeholders and team members will both thank you!
As will we, if you just skip over here and book a demo with our experts, who are more than ready to show you why Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud is the best solution for fast and reliable loyalty growth! Just ask KFC UK & Ireland, their 61% increase in plays looks pretty good to us!
Loyalty Programs: The Revenue-Generating Engine Hiding in Plain Sight
Let’s face it: retention gets overshadowed by acquisition. It’s shinier, flashier, looks good on paper, yet it costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep hold of an existing one. It’s not girl math, it’s just math, period. Loud and clear, actually: higher basket sizes, repeat visits, rising app downloads, and lower churn all translate directly into commercial wins.
Our customers’ loyalty programs prove it:
- 34% transactions YoY among LuisaViaRoma‘s program members.
- 22% growth in overall average purchase frequency for Club Rip Curl.
- 43% YoY increase in the number of hotel bookings claimed through the loyalty program for Hyatt’s Inclusive Collection.
5 Actionable Steps to Transform Loyalty Into a Revenue Center
Underscoring both the cost and value of customer retention with stakeholder-friendly numbers is key! You can be running the world’s most profitable loyalty program, but if people only see the cost and not the value of customer retention, they won’t buy into it!
Here’s how to make the case crystal clear:
- Gather all stakeholders and determine your KPIs upfront: Industry-wide benchmarks and individual KPIs should both be determined upfront and incorporated into your loyalty concept.
- Get yourself a tech stack with the right reporting capabilities: Show how loyalty boosts purchase frequency, basket size, and lifetime value.
- Learn about your loyalty technology: It might seem like an afterthought, but actually understanding what your engine is capable of, and how it drives growth should be your baseline.
- Launch pilot tests: Quickly test new features or tiers to gather ROI evidence without a full rollout.
- Pay attention to customer preferences: Active and engage them through channels they actually use, and become part of their daily routine.
Invest Your Marketing Dollars Wisely – Here’s What to Look Out For
Not every loyalty engine is equal, so make sure to choose wisely. Look at the technology cost, obviously, but don’t neglect other factors, like:
- Ease of use: Will your marketers be able to create Workflows without taking up precious IT resources?
- Implementation support: Will you have to figure out data migration and program implementation mostly on your own, or will your tech vendor offer support?
- Length of the learning curve: The faster your loyalty team will be able to operate the new tech, the better. Look for vendors who offer courses and practical educational materials to fast-track the process.
Technology keywords to look out for:
- No-code workflow editors: This is the capability that will guarantee that marketing teams can build retention journeys without leaning on IT.
- API-first, headless loyalty solution: This will make the integration with existing systems (or future ones) painless.
- Profiling and omnichannel gamification: These will enable you to turn loyalty into an everyday habit, not a seasonal campaign.
How to Frame Loyalty ROI – The Cost and Value of Customer Retention – To the Boardroom
When presenting the cost and value of customer retention to the board, focus on ROI: divide program profit (incremental member revenue minus costs) by total program costs (tech, people, rewards, marketing). Reinforce that loyalty ROI is a long-term play, often taking 12–14 months to mature, with industry benchmarks showing an average 5.2X ROI.
Go beyond financial returns and showcase the broader impact of loyalty:
- Highlight strategic benefits like higher engagement, stronger brand advocacy, and better data for personalization.
- Use segmented reporting to prove uplift compared to non-members and showcase reduced reliance on discounts.
- Emphasize that advanced loyalty technology ensures transparent, reliable measurement of program performance.
By framing loyalty programs as revenue-generating, data-rich assets — not cost centers — you’ll earn the board’s confidence and secure buy-in for the future.
Your Next Loyalty Move: Be Future-Proof With AI
If there’s one thing to take away, it’s that the worth of customer retention far outweighs its costs — and loyalty is the toolkit to unlock it, exactly why you should not only think for the present, but also for the future! Investing in AI-driven loyalty technology isn’t just solving today’s challenges; it’s building future-proof customer retention strategies.
Antavo’s Timi AI, a self-trained loyalty expert, guides you with tailored recommendations, acting as a true digital team member. The Planner helps you visualize and map loyalty program concepts up to 10 times faster, aligning teams and accelerating implementation. Meanwhile, the Optimizer transforms loyalty data into clear, actionable insights to help you refine and improve your campaigns over time.
Together, these AI-powered tools empower marketers to create programs that adapt, evolve, and deliver long-term results. By embracing next-generation technology, you ensure your loyalty efforts remain relevant, resilient, and impactful in a rapidly changing market.
A Loyalty Program Shouldn’t Be a Side Project – It Should Be a Growth Engine
When you consider that loyalty delivers 5.2x ROI and brands already invest 31.4% of their budgets in retention, the math speaks for itself. The cost of customer retention is an investment in lifetime value, while the worth of customer retention compounds year after year.
Ready to take things to the next level? Make sure to get in touch with Antavo’s experts by booking a demo to see our platform’s capabilities.
And don’t forget to check out how KFC UK & Ireland achieved their incredible results!
Zsuzsanna is a Loyalty Specialist with years of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. Zsuzsanna is known for having an analytic approach and high-level communication skills, helping her deliver engaging content. In her free time, she enjoys watching Formula 1 and listening to endless Taylor Swift playlists.
