Brands Say Loyalty Matters. Customers Aren't Convinced

Brands talk a lot about the importance of customer loyalty, and the investment appears to back that up. Our recent research among 2,400 consumers and 600 e-commerce brands found that 69 percent of brands split their budgets evenly between acquisition and retention.

Despite this, customers see things very differently. Two-thirds of respondents believe that brands value new customers more than existing ones. This belief rises to 70 percent among "loyal customers" who repurchase from their favorite brands every month.

The disconnect between reality and customers’ perception is striking. Brands are putting comparable investment into acquisition and retention, so why aren't their existing customers feeling the benefit?

Loyalty Needs to Feel Like Loyalty

The research suggests that a majority of customers are frustrated by their favorite brands failing to adequately reward their loyalty, with some of the problems being surprisingly basic. For a quarter of respondents (24 percent), rewards taking too long to earn or redeem was the most common complaint, followed by loyalty points expiring too quickly (19 percent), receiving generic offers (17 percent) and too many promotional emails (16 percent).

Brands want to cultivate loyal customers for a simple reason: loyalty translates into repeat, regular revenues. Almost two-thirds of the consumers we surveyed buy from a favorite brand every month.

The irony is that these frustrations become even more pronounced among these return customers — the very people brands should be working hardest to keep. Of those who repurchase every month, 44 percent say rewards take too long to earn or redeem and 31 percent are frustrated by points or rewards expiring too quickly.

Loyalty shouldn’t feel like hard work for repeat customers. Interestingly, bigger discounts or price promotions aren't necessarily the best tactics for driving loyalty. Product quality remains a stronger driver of loyalty than discounts. What customers want, however, is recognition: 90 percent say it's important to feel recognized or rewarded by the brands they buy from, while 91 percent value being treated as a loyal customer rather than simply another buyer.

Make Relevance Count

Personalization has been a hot topic of debate among marketers for years. Marketers want to tailor their offerings based on customer preferences but don’t want to stray into appearing intrusive or creepy to customers.

Rather than being wary of personalization, there's considerable willingness among customers to share information when the benefit is clear. For example, 91 percent would provide data regarding skin type and health goals for better rewards. Despite this, 30 percent of brands still cite lack of data as a top challenge in building loyalty.

While 93 percent of consumers say they would likely join exclusive/VIP experiences, only 12 percent of brands currently use these programs. The top blockers cited by brands are budget (28 percent), limited tools/tech (24 percent), proving return on investment (17 percent), and data gaps (15 percent).

Our research found that email is the channel customers most prefer to hear from their favorite brands in, yet the brands rate social as the most effective loyalty channel. This is another clear but subtle mismatch between what consumers want and what brands prioritize.

Treat Retention as a Growth Metric

Brands clearly care about loyalty: almost all of the brands surveyed agreed it will be important to their business over the next two years to three years.

In 2026, however, it's increasingly important that a brand’s commitment to loyalty is obvious and visible to customers.

First-party data and coordinated, automated communications can be deployed to make customers feel understood rather than simply targeted. Brands should also measure retention as rigorously as acquisition, including repeat purchase, time to second purchase, customer lifetime value, and ROI.

For brand marketers, the message isn't always necessarily to spend more on loyalty, but to make existing retention investment more visible, valuable and measurable.

Mac Ossowski is the COO at GetResponse, an email, SMS, and automation platform.