Overview: The evolution of CPG loyalty is moving away from traditional, channel-specific reward programs toward flexible, utility-focused engagement strategies. By leveraging retailer-agnostic platforms, flexible brand-level activations, and practical digital tools that help make everyday a little easier for consumers, CPG companies can cultivate direct, lasting customer relationships regardless of where or how their products are purchased.
If there is one certainty in life (beyond death and taxes), it’s change. In the loyalty business, things are changing fast. One area where we are seeing change is in consumer-packaged goods (CPG). For CPG companies, loyalty has always been harder to build than it is for direct B2C companies like retailers, airlines, or hotels. Most CPG purchases happen through supermarkets, mass merchants, pharmacies, marketplaces, and other intermediaries. The retailer processes the transaction and usually owns the customer relationship, while the manufacturer may know very little about the person who actually bought the product.
This is where the change is happening. Receipt scanning, connected packaging, mobile apps, communities, subscriptions, retailer partnerships, and artificial intelligence are turning otherwise anonymous buyers into known, engaged consumers.
Great! So now CPGers can hand out more coupons, right? Actually, that’s changing as well. These customer identity strategies are enabling better engagement, giving existing customers better reasons to choose the brand again, explore more of its products, incorporate it into their routines, and ultimately recommend it to others.
But yes, coupons are still part of the mix.
Over the next 3 articles, we are going to highlight the top 9 trends within CPG loyalty, each article focusing on 3 of the 9 marketing trends. The first 3 trends focus on how the brands interact with the customer…and how the customer interacts with the brand(s).
1. CPG Loyalty Is Becoming Retailer-Agnostic
The first major shift is from programs tied to one purchase channel to programs that recognize customers wherever they shop. CGP programs have gotten smart and let customers upload receipts easily to their platforms, providing points or rewards for all eligible products on one receipt (while also capturing data on what else the customer is purchasing). From a customer perspective it’s simple enough to continue to do. From a CPG perspective, it’s a way to see how customers are interacting with all your brands along with what else they buy.
We love what P&G has done, for example. The company has reimagined P&G Good Everyday (yes, grammatically it should be “Every Day”) and its traditional brandSAVER platform as the current P&G brandSAVER program. Members can scan receipts, answer surveys, earn points, access coupons and rebates, enter sweepstakes, and redeem rewards across a portfolio of more than 60 P&G brands. Rather than asking consumers to join separate programs for Tide, Crest, Dawn, Charmin, and other products, P&G creates one relationship across the broader household portfolio.
Nestlé has taken another retailer-agnostic approach through its relationship with Fetch. Consumers upload receipts from different retailers to earn rewards, while Nestlé receives insights into where people enter its portfolio and what else they buy. Nestlé has said this data helped identify Costco as an important point of entry for Vital Proteins and showed that DiGiorno was competing not only with frozen-pizza brands but also with quick-service restaurant occasions.
Bottom line on this one? A CPG loyalty program should travel with the consumer no matter where they buy the product, not force the consumer into the brand’s preferred sales channel.
2. The Market is Moving from Permanent, Monolithic Programs to Flexible Brand Activations
Some CPG companies are taking a different approach. Instead of one enormous enterprise program, they are moving toward a modular model consisting of an underlying customer platform supported by brand-specific rewards, games, promotions, and experiences. This is where customer brand love (or obsession!) takes root and the customer focuses on the brands they feel strongly tied to and want to be involved in updates, rewards are just extras.
Kellanova, for example, has operated brand-level programs such as Pop-Tarts Crazy Good Rewards, where members earn points from verified purchases and redeem them for merchandise, tickets, gift cards, and other rewards. The company also runs rotating receipt-based offers and promotions across its brands.
We like the “personalized” approach here, which creates a relevant experience for each brand. Multi-brand CPG companies can adapt the loyalty proposition to each audience. A Pop-Tarts consumer, a Cheez-It fan, and a MorningStar Farms shopper may buy for very different reasons. From a CPG perspective, on the back-end they can match the customer identity, data, receipt-processing, and reward infrastructure without forcing the customer into the same customer experience. This lets the customer choose which product or brand he/she feels a connection with and which rewards programs to participate in.
The strongest design may be one loyalty platform underneath, with different brand experiences on top.
3. Utility is Becoming More Important than Currency
Let’s face it…your customer does not need another app that merely displays a points balance. Unless you want it to sit on the phone screen gathering “e-dust”, the app must make the product more useful or make the consumer’s life easier.
We like what McCormick’s Flavor Maker ecosystem has done. Its app has combined recipes, personalized meal suggestions, digital pantry organization, shopping lists, meal planning, cooking videos, product purchasing, and rewards or discounts. McCormick is not simply rewarding someone for buying a bottle of seasoning; it helps that person decide what to cook and how to use the products already in the pantry.
That creates a much stronger relationship than an occasional coupon. A discount may influence one transaction. A useful meal-planning tool can influence the consumer every week. Customers are interacting with McCormick more frequently than just buying spices, they are looking for ideas on how to use the products already existing in their profile and cabinet. This program naturally makes sense and makes the customers day to day easier and purchases more interactive.
For CPG companies, the question should be:
What recurring problem can our loyalty experience help the consumer solve?
For a food brand, it may be meal planning. For a beauty brand, it may be a skincare routine. For a pet-care brand, it may be feeding guidance. For a household brand, it may be cleaning tips and tricks, replenishment reminders, or product selection.
