Antavo Customer Benefit Cosmetics’ Rachel Mercer Won Rising Star of the Year at the 2026 Loyalty Leaders Awards
April 24, 2026
Antavo congratulates Rachel Mercer of Benefit Cosmetics on winning Rising Star of the Year at the 2026 Loyalty Leaders Awards, celebrating her outstanding work on the Benefit Loves loyalty program.
The Loyalty Leaders Awards celebrate the people, brands, and teams shaping the future of customer loyalty. Judged by a panel of industry leaders and academic experts, the awards recognize standout work in building stronger customer relationships, driving engagement, and moving the loyalty industry forward.
The Rising Loyalty Star is a category spotlighting emerging loyalty talent making a meaningful impact through fresh thinking, creativity, and customer-first execution.
“Rachel is the operational architect of “Benefit Loves,” a program that redefined beauty loyalty by blending service bookings (like brow bars) with traditional retail rewards. The “Star” Factor: Her approach prioritizes Emotional Loyalty. By focusing on “CX-first” initiatives, she successfully bridged the gap between physical retail experiences and digital engagement, making the app a “beauty best friend” for Gen Z and Millennial consumers.” – Statement of Nomination for the Loyalty Leaders Award.
Benefit Loves is Benefit Cosmetics UK’s free, app-led loyalty program, powered by Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud. It was created to give customers more reasons to engage with the brand, not only when they shop, but whenever they interact with Benefit.
Through the loyalty app, members can collect “hearts” for online purchases, boutique shopping, referrals, app download, product reviews, challenges, and beauty service bookings, making the experience feel more personal, playful, and rewarding.
The program also brings Benefit’s in-store and digital experiences closer together. With Antavo’s technology, Benefit can personalize content, run gamified experiences like badges and prize wheels, manage rewards and referrals, and support in-store reward redemption. Members can redeem their hearts for rewards made available in the app, with current examples including product bundles, branded merchandise, and member-only offers.
Results of the Benefit Loves loyalty program:
- 20.3k+ members have enrolled in the loyalty app in the first 9 months,
- 80% of engagement comes from members between 20 and 30 years old,
- 16.17% of members have transacted twice or more,
- 50.17% of members participated in the Bene-BFFs challenge,
- 30k rewards were claimed in total, with the Welcome Reward constituting 53.98% of the total claimed rewards,
- Benefit Loves won Mobile Innovation of the Year at the 2024 Retail Systems Awards.
“I just want to say thank you to everyone who believed I was worthy of this award, I am the most passionate about customer experience so winning for this is particularly special, I am honoured and humbled by this recognition, but I am not the only one that should be recognised for this programme it is a team effort and I’m grateful to everyone who works on this with me and works towards making our Benefit Loves app as best as possible for our members. There are many that are involved in this powerhouse but to name a few; Antavo, Mobikats, Bloomreach and Carla Raven” – Rachel Mercer, Loyalty Operations Manager at Benefit Cosmetics (LVMH)
“Congratulations to Rachel on this very well-deserved recognition. Benefit Loves is a great example of how loyalty can feel joyful, personal, and genuinely useful for customers. We’re proud to work with the Benefit Cosmetics team and to see the program continue to bring emotional loyalty to life in such a memorable way.” – Zsuzsa Kecsmar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud
What is Antavo?
Antavo is the AI loyalty and incentives platform that brings together loyalty, promotions, and agentic AI to turn customers into regulars: the customers who come back on their own, buy more often, and bring others with them. For more than a decade, Antavo has powered identity-led loyalty strategies for brands including SKIMS, Paul Smith, KFC, Flying Tiger, and Hyatt’s Inclusive Collection. Marketers build, change, and launch programs and promotions themselves, without waiting on engineering. Learn more at antavo.com.
Media Contacts
Antavo
Eva Bacsi, Global Head of Marketing
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Frequently asked questions about Antavo
What can brands build with Antavo?
Brands use Antavo to run the whole loyalty and incentives program on one platform: points, tiers, challenges, streaks, referrals, clubs, and rewards beyond discounts; promotions and incentives for members and non-members alike, from bonus points and promo codes to bundles and cart-level offers; and agentic AI built in. Everything runs online, in store, on mobile, and in wallet, and marketers launch it themselves.
Who uses Antavo?
Antavo works with mid-market and upper-mid-market brands across fashion, retail, beauty, travel, hospitality, restaurants, and sports in North America and Europe: multi-market, omnichannel brands with a strong identity and customers worth keeping, including Paul Smith, KFC, SKIMS, Rip Curl, Benefit Cosmetics, and Hyatt's Inclusive Collection.
How long has Antavo been around?
Antavo was founded in 2012 and has been building loyalty programs for more than a decade, with teams across Europe and North America serving brands worldwide.
Why do brands switch to Antavo?
Most loyalty programs get stuck: reduced to a discount engine, generic to customers, or too rigid to evolve. Antavo removes those compromises. Brands get a program that feels unmistakably their own, loyalty and incentives on one platform, and the depth to handle tiers, expirations, refunds, and many markets at scale. Their own marketers run it: a tier change in an afternoon, live when they press the button.
How does Antavo use AI?
Antavo's agentic AI is built in, not bolted on. Two named agents do the work: the AI Loyalty Expert, which turns your ideas into a build-ready program, and the AI Analyst, which turns your data into clear answers and reports. Both work inside Antavo or connect to Claude and ChatGPT, and every answer is grounded in your own program and data.
What does Antavo integrate with?
Antavo is API-first with real-time webhooks and deep pre-built integrations, from Shopify, Klaviyo, Braze, and Bloomreach to the CRMs, CDPs, ESPs, and POS systems you already use. Antavo plugs into the stack you already run rather than replacing it.
