Overview: The modern CPG loyalty extends far beyond transactional points and discounts. By rewarding product usage, building community engagement, and offering premium service and access, brands can cultivate deeper, more meaningful connections with their customers and customers with the brands alike. When customers feel connected to a brand, they stay loyal, which is why it’s called loyalty.
CPG (Consumer-packaged goods) loyalty is evolving beyond traditional coupons. As brands gain new ways to identify, engage with, and build relationships with customers, the focus is shifting from rewarding transactions to creating a meaningful and ongoing connection.
In our previous article, we focused on how CPG brands are embracing retailer-agnostic loyalty with receipt scanning, flexible brand activations where customers join programs that focus on brands they feel connected to, and utility-driven loyalty through experiences and engagement that makes customers’ lives easier.
Today we’ll further explore 3 more CPG trends (#4-#6) focusing more on how loyalty has evolved to not just focus on rewarding purchases, but for product use, how communities are playing a bigger part of CPG loyalty, along with how services and access even at the CPG level create loyalty.
4. Programs are Rewarding Product Use, Not Just Product Purchase
Traditional programs reward what the consumer buys. Newer programs can also reward what the consumer does. We have seen this with Nike, where activity is rewarded.
Colgate is directly rewarding use of their products. The Colgate app allows users of connected toothbrushes and whitening products to earn “smile points” for brushing, whitening, completing challenges, and performing other activities. Those points can be redeemed for products and offers. The app also provides reminders, session tracking, brushing information, and personalized challenges – which, of course, reinforces the previous trend.
This changes the loyalty relationship from:
“Buy another product and receive points”
to:
“Adopt a beneficial habit and the brand will help, recognize, and reward you.”
That approach is especially relevant in oral care, wellness, nutrition, beauty, pet care, and other categories where the product is part of an ongoing routine. It also keeps the brand top of mind, solidifies the relationship, and offers more opportunities to provide value between purchase occasions. In the day to day hustle, reminders are always helpful!
5. Communities are Becoming Loyalty Programs in Their Own Right
We all talk about how loyalty needs to go “beyond points.” It’s difficult to foster true emotional loyalty, but one of the best ways is what some CPG companies are using: a shared interest or identity.
ARM & HAMMER’s Kitty Krew is built around the interests of cat owners. Members receive exclusive offers and content, participate in missions, ask questions, and connect with other pet parents. This positions the brand as a facilitator of the cat-owner community rather than simply a manufacturer of cat litter. Having a community to ask and answer questions or join a discussion is always a good way to get customers more involved with their passion or love for interests.
This model is especially effective for categories with natural passion, including pets, cooking, parenting, fitness, beauty, gaming, home improvement, sports and sustainability.
A community can also become a valuable source of:
- Product reviews and user-generated content
- New-product feedback
- Consumer research
- Referral and advocacy activity
- Education and expert advice
- Early testing and co-creation
The beauty of this strategy is that it gives consumers a reason to participate with the brand and with one another.
6. Premium Loyalty is Shifting from Discounts to Access and Service
Discounts are important, and all the programs we design with clients have discount-based benefits. The key shift is to move discounts away from “the center of the relationship.”
In markets offering Nespresso & You, membership levels can be based on purchasing activity, subscription participation, or the length of the customer relationship. Depending on the market and tier, benefits can include personalized offers, machine servicing, free delivery, recycling services, accessory discounts, early product access, anniversary gifts, coffee masterclasses, and invitations to member events.
This model works because it recognizes the full coffee experience. The relationship includes the machine, capsules, replenishment, maintenance, education, discovery, boutique service, and recycling – going well beyond the transaction.
For premium CPG brands, this is an important lesson. Constant discounting can undermine the very positioning the brand is trying to protect. Access, expertise, convenience, recognition, and service can create meaningful value without reducing the product to its promotional price.
