This article was based on the interview with Featuring insights from Raj De Datta, CEO and Co-Founder of Bloomreach by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
Loyalty isn’t dead. It’s just been grossly misunderstood. Traditional loyalty programs—built on points, perks, and promo codes—are fading into irrelevance as customers shift their expectations. They no longer reward brands just for consistency or price. Today’s consumers demand more: personalized experiences, seamless interactions across channels, and recognition beyond the checkout page.
Raj De Datta, CEO and co-founder of Bloomreach, believes loyalty must be engineered into the entire customer journey—not tacked on as a retention gimmick. In this conversation, he unpacks why loyalty is in crisis, how AI can help marketers flip the equation, and what leadership needs to do to finally break the channel and data silos that are holding customer experience back.
Loyalty Is No Longer a Program—It’s the Product
According to Bloomreach’s research, loyalty has reached a generational low. Nearly half of consumers say they’ll switch brands if they can save a little money elsewhere. That’s not just price sensitivity—it’s a failure to create meaningful experiences.
“Consumers care more than ever about the quality of the customer experience. But the experience hasn’t improved while choice has exploded,” says De Dattafor-social-media-conten….
He points to aggregators like Amazon and Walmart as examples of where customers now place their loyalty—not to the brands they buy, but to the platforms that make buying easiest. If brands want to win back that relationship, they need to stop viewing loyalty as a lagging metric and start designing for it from the first click.
Consequential AI: Skip the Hype, Follow the Impact
AI is everywhere, but most of it is noise. De Datta draws a clear line between what he calls “consequential AI” and everything else.
“If it doesn’t move the needle by double digits on growth or cost, or fundamentally improve customer experience, don’t bother,” he explainsfor-social-media-conten….
In practical terms, that means AI should:
- Power autonomous marketing agents to handle tasks like audience targeting or campaign assembly
- Optimize experiences in real time, not just automate busywork
- Anticipate customer needs based on behavior and preference—not just past purchases
But the most overlooked implication of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t inside the marketing team—it’s in how customers behave. Chat-like experiences, natural language search, and conversational commerce are quickly becoming the norm. And brands that fail to adapt to these new expectations risk becoming invisible.
Personalization Replaces Points—But It’s Not Either/Or
If your loyalty program still revolves around points, your customers are already tuning out. But that doesn’t mean perks are obsolete. They just need to be smarter.
“Personalization is now a table stakes expectation,” says De Datta. “Loyalty programs won’t go away—but they’ll have to be personalized in what they offer, when they offer it, and how they respond to each customer’s preferences”for-social-media-conten….
He cites an example of a partner who dynamically adjusts incentive offers based on whether a shopper is brand-loyal, price-sensitive, or browsing a specific product category. Loyalty is no longer about volume—it’s about timing, tone, and relevance.
And, importantly, personalization must extend across every customer touchpoint—not just in email subject lines, but in the offers presented on site, the recommendations surfaced by AI, and even the in-store experience.
Omnichannel Loyalty Is the Endgame
The best loyalty programs don’t feel like programs at all. They’re woven into the customer’s life so seamlessly that it’s impossible to tell where the brand ends and the experience begins.
De Datta offers Patagonia as an example. Whether you walk into a store, browse online, or receive an email, the message is clear and consistent: this brand knows who you are and what you care about.
“The best omnichannel brands don’t think in terms of channels. They think in terms of presence,” he saysfor-social-media-conten….
The key? A unified customer profile shared across all touchpoints. If a store associate can’t access the same data that your website uses to personalize offers, then your omnichannel strategy isn’t complete.
And it’s not just about tools—it’s about incentives. Too many companies have separate teams for email, stores, and e-commerce, each optimizing for their own KPIs. De Datta recommends aligning everyone to a shared metric, like lifetime value per customer.
“When you structure your team around the customer, not the channel, loyalty becomes a natural byproduct,” he explainsfor-social-media-conten….
Conclusion
The loyalty playbook is being rewritten. Programs alone won’t cut it. Brands must now architect entire experiences around their customers’ expectations—personalized, omnichannel, and powered by AI that makes outcomes better, not just faster.
Raj De Datta and Bloomreach are pushing loyalty out of the marketing silo and into the heart of experience design. The message to leaders is clear: if you’re still tracking points while your competitors are building lifelong preference through relevance and intelligence, you’re already behind.
And the real loyalty test isn’t if your customers come back.
It’s if they ever want to leave in the first place.
