Issue #23: The Only Applause is Our Own

Back in Issue #21, I wrote about "The Art of the Loyalty Walkback." The mistake we often make isn't the misstep itself, it's failing to admit it. Sometimes just coming clean is the right thing to do.

Those errors are public and loud.

But there's another error plaguing our industry that's quieter, and actually a bigger problem. We're telling ourselves the industry is doing great (and by extension, our programs and our tactics), while consumers don't feel the same.

The evidence was not hard to miss in Antavo's excellent 2026 Global Customer Loyalty Report. They put the member counter-data right next to the flattering headline numbers. Most self-reported industry research runs the good number and goes home. This report didn't.

Their report cited that 83% of program owners are satisfied with their programs, up substantially year over year, and a similarly high 83% believe their members feel valued. But flip the coin, and only 56% of members actually feel that way.

Meanwhile, the report cites that 74% of loyalty members "quiet quit" within two months of joining, and only about 3% bother to formally cancel. Because why say a formal goodbye when you walked in the front door without a formal invite.

So why does this split in the data exist? Zsuzsa Kecsmar, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder at Antavo, names it plainly. She says it's partly human nature: "It's like us, us, us, in our own little universe."

She's right. And in that little universe, we keep measuring our success with the wrong metrics: total number of members, percentage of sales from loyalty members, points earned. In the modern digital age, these are easy to inflate through auto-enrollment, apps, and one-click checkout.

What we're not focused on are the signals that tell the real health story: the percentage of points that go unspent or expire, incremental sales, engagement without a discount, advocacy and referrals. Antavo's report covered the member side of these too, and it isn't pretty. 27% of points are left unspent and 12% expire. A full 49% of members said it takes too long to earn rewards, and 41% said their rewards expire before they can use them. As I wrote way back in Issue #2, your fine print is causing major friction.

To be clear, this isn't a knock on the report. It's a knock on how we read it. We highlight the 83% in our decks and quietly skip the 56%.

But even within redemption, the brand and the consumer sit on opposite sides of a coin.

Look at Starbucks' recent announcement that its new 60-stars-for-$2 reward is now the program's most popular redemption, accounting for 60% of the total. It's the worst possible value for members, and it's the one they're choosing. Starbucks framed it as a win. I think it's a consumer confession.

Members don't trust the brand enough to save up for the aspirational, higher-value rewards. Points are here today, gone tomorrow. Award charts get devalued constantly. So consumers said, ‘to hell with patience’ and took something back from the program now. That's not loyalty, and it's not engagement. It's a coupon.

Kecsmar frames the redemption side as the real health check and points out that a point balance was never the thing members actually wanted. As she put it, points and tier statuses are "just a means to an end." The tangible result is the reward, the shorter line, the access. When members grab the fastest, easiest reward on the board with the worst value, they're not being cheap. They're telling you their loyalty is up for grabs and they don’t trust the future relationship, so they cashed in.

To their credit, at least Starbucks is talking about redemption publicaly. They're one of the few brands that measure loyalty performance on the burn side rather than the earn side. I just think they're reading the result wrong.

I won't sit here and say we need to stop running reports where we poll ourselves, or stop holding conferences where we wax poetic about how well everything is working. That alone won't solve anything. But a few shifts would at least start (and I stress start) to move the conversation and get the industry to stop lying to itself:

For more on this, read my interview with Zsuzsa below.

Antavo is a recognized leader in AI Loyalty Technology and works with major brands around the Globe. Each year, they publish their Global Customer Loyalty Report with this years report about the Age of Value. Zsucsa is listed by Forbes as one of Europe's top 100 female founders in tech, and won the International Loyalty Personality of the Year award in 2024.

#1 SMP: Antavo has published this report for a few years. Looking at the '26 data, what surprised you most?

Zsuzsa: For me, the biggest surprise was the link between loyalty and AI. Last year's report found that AI can help drive loyalty by making program management faster and easier. This year, we found the opposite is also true: having a loyalty program can make brands more AI-prepared. Training AI requires data, and Phil Shelper put it best: "loyalty programs are the best source of consented zero-party data that can be fed to AI." On a 1–10 scale, the average AI-readiness score of program owners is 6.3 — far above those with no loyalty program at all, at 4.9.

#2 SMP: You call this report "The Age of Value." "Value" is loaded in our industry, and I assumed it meant discounting, but the report is really about technology and AI. Share more the thinking here.

Zsuzsa: Funny you mention that. We had huge debates about it while working on the report. We went with the Value Age precisely because we wanted to change people's perspective: in loyalty, value should go beyond discounts. Experiences, community, rewards, and yes, promotions — all of it gives customers value, and brands should balance short-term incentives with long-term benefits. We do have stats on value in the traditional sense, and my favorite is this: 68% of customers say they know promotions are meant to influence their decisions, and they don't mind. They understand it's a value exchange: their data and engagement for rewards.

#3 SMP: Your report shows 74% of members quiet-quit within two months, but only 3.4% actually cancel. How can brands spot the quiet quitters before it happens?

Zsuzsa: I love seeing the different ways people read this one. You can read the 74% and say "that's a lot", or read the 3.4% who leave for good and say "I can still reactivate the rest." Going passive doesn't mean they hate the brand; they may have moved or be spending elsewhere for now. You still have their contact information. Introduce challenges, badges, new rewards, new tiers , or send a good promo and they'll check back.

#4 SMP: Your report calls this the Golden Age of Loyalty, but consumers aren't quite feeling that in the data. Walk me through the positioning.

Zsuzsa: We saw plenty of signs loyalty programs are in a strong position. 83% of program owners are satisfied with their program, up from 69% last year. Average reported ROI is 5.3X. Among program owners, 51.5% of the marketing budget now goes to CRM and loyalty. And 89.4% of marketers are confident that loyalty is driving value they wouldn't get otherwise. Customer sentiment is positive, too — feeling undervalued sometimes doesn't mean they hate loyalty programs. 43.2% of consumers say they're more likely to join a program now than a year ago, and 65.9% say using a loyalty program is now part of their lives.

#5 SMP: If you had to name the thing the loyalty industry tells itself that isn't true — the comfortable lie we repeat at conferences — what is it?

Zsuzsa: "We've reached the finish line." There's no perfect formula — programs should always evolve. When brands redesigned their programs in the early 2020s, satisfaction climbed. Those who invest generally get better results. Tell that to your CFO, people!

Bonus Question SMP: What loyalty program do you personally love as a member, not a strategist?

Zsuzsa: It's like picking a favorite child, but I’ll go with Paul Smith. I'm not the target audience (my husband is), but I love it because it's so creative and on brand. Paul Smith is a stamp collector, still on a London shop floor every Saturday, and the program is built around collecting stamps when you shop. It connects to the physical space: every store has an artifact with a QR code — a silver skull in the one I visited — that you scan to unlock a reward. It's a real-life treasure hunt. That's my current favorite.