Epsilon’s Chris Wissing: Treating Loyalty as a Cost Is the Biggest Mistake Brands Make
WASHINGTON, DC — Points programs and redemption catalogs are table stakes. The brands that build lasting loyalty are the ones that show up unexpectedly, in moments that matter, in ways customers might never have anticipated.
“I asked a question yesterday for everyone to highlight what was their most memorable customer service experience. In every single case, not a single person said, ‘Oh, I got double points on a Tuesday,’” Chris Wissing, chief product officer at Epsilon, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Epsilon Loyalty Summit. “In every single case it was, ‘I was not expecting X and I got Y.’”
That gap between what brands typically measure in loyalty programs and what customers actually remember is where Wissing sees the biggest opportunity — and the biggest misconception.
The cost fallacy
Loyalty programs carry real operational and promotional costs. The mistake, in Wissing’s view, is stopping there.
“Thinking of the loyalty program as just a cost model is really not the right strategy for a brand to take. You need to look at how that data collection, that customer relationship building, can be used in other aspects of your business,” Wissing said. “Treating it as a cost aspect is probably the biggest overall fallacy that I’ve seen from a number of different brands.”
The data captured through loyalty programs has applications well beyond marketing, touching customer service, product development, and the increasingly important territory of agentic commerce.
Identity ties it together
First-party data capture through loyalty programs provides the foundation. What unlocks its full value is connecting it to second and third-party data assets through a coherent identity framework, enabling brands to understand life events, social influences, and behavioral signals happening well outside their own ecosystem.
“We need to have an identity framework to tie all those things together. We haven’t even taken full advantage of the ability to tie those first party data interactions with third party events,” Wissing said. “That can make a tremendous difference to how a brand interacts with their consumers.”
Surprise and delight: the real rewards
The memorable loyalty experiences Wissing hears about consistently share one quality. Someone extended grace, went above and beyond, or delivered something entirely unexpected. That kind of moment cements loyalty in ways that point multipliers simply don’t.
“Those experiences that translate to really personal benefits to an individual — that’s what everybody remembered and that’s what cemented that loyalty to a brand,” Wissing said.
Agentic commerce raises the stakes
As agentic shopping evolves to act on a consumer’s behalf, the depth of first-party data a brand holds becomes a competitive differentiator. The richer the loyalty-informed data set, the better positioned a brand is to deliver relevance through AI-driven experiences.
“The more data you have on a particular customer, the more that you’ve been able to capture in a first party data context with a loyalty program should only be able to make that experience better for the end consumer,” Wissing said.
WASHINGTON, DC — Points programs and redemption catalogs are table stakes. The brands that build lasting loyalty are the ones that show up unexpectedly, in moments that matter, in ways customers might never have anticipated.
“I asked a question yesterday for everyone to highlight what was their most memorable customer service experience. In every single case, not a single person said, ‘Oh, I got double points on a Tuesday,’” Chris Wissing, chief product officer at Epsilon, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Epsilon Loyalty Summit. “In every single case it was, ‘I was not expecting X and I got Y.’”
That gap between what brands typically measure in loyalty programs and what customers actually remember is where Wissing sees the biggest opportunity — and the biggest misconception.
The cost fallacy
Loyalty programs carry real operational and promotional costs. The mistake, in Wissing’s view, is stopping there.
“Thinking of the loyalty program as just a cost model is really not the right strategy for a brand to take. You need to look at how that data collection, that customer relationship building, can be used in other aspects of your business,” Wissing said. “Treating it as a cost aspect is probably the biggest overall fallacy that I’ve seen from a number of different brands.”
The data captured through loyalty programs has applications well beyond marketing, touching customer service, product development, and the increasingly important territory of agentic commerce.
Identity ties it together
First-party data capture through loyalty programs provides the foundation. What unlocks its full value is connecting it to second and third-party data assets through a coherent identity framework, enabling brands to understand life events, social influences, and behavioral signals happening well outside their own ecosystem.
“We need to have an identity framework to tie all those things together. We haven’t even taken full advantage of the ability to tie those first party data interactions with third party events,” Wissing said. “That can make a tremendous difference to how a brand interacts with their consumers.”
Surprise and delight: the real rewards
The memorable loyalty experiences Wissing hears about consistently share one quality. Someone extended grace, went above and beyond, or delivered something entirely unexpected. That kind of moment cements loyalty in ways that point multipliers simply don’t.
“Those experiences that translate to really personal benefits to an individual — that’s what everybody remembered and that’s what cemented that loyalty to a brand,” Wissing said.
Agentic commerce raises the stakes
As agentic shopping evolves to act on a consumer’s behalf, the depth of first-party data a brand holds becomes a competitive differentiator. The richer the loyalty-informed data set, the better positioned a brand is to deliver relevance through AI-driven experiences.
“The more data you have on a particular customer, the more that you’ve been able to capture in a first party data context with a loyalty program should only be able to make that experience better for the end consumer,” Wissing said.
