Last updated: 21 October, 2026

Loyalty has never had more money or more confidence behind it. Programs are reporting healthy returns, budgets keep growing, and almost every brand a customer buys from regularly has some version of one. And yet, if you ask a member why they stay with one brand rather than another, the points balance is rarely the reason. It’s usually the part of the relationship they’d miss least.

That contradiction is the real story of loyalty programs in 2026. Antavo’s Global Customer Loyalty Report 2026 surveyed 3,000 marketers and 10,000 consumers. It found that brands running programs now put 51.5% of their total marketing budget into loyalty and CRM, and 92.7% of program owners report a positive return, averaging 5.3x. 

The money is following results. We believe pure points mechanics no longer drive those results. Points and rewards have become table stakes: the entry fee for being in the conversation, not a reason to choose you. The programs pulling ahead add three things a competitor can’t copy by cloning a points structure. Those are experiential tiers, a genuine data value exchange, and rewards embedded in the product or payment experience itself. 

Why the points ledger made sense, and why it stopped being enough

The earn and burn ledger earned its place for good reasons. It was quick to launch and easy for members to understand. It also gave marketing a lever that finance could model: a cost per point, a redemption rate, a liability line. For years, simply having a program set a brand apart, and a points ledger was the fastest way to have one.

What changed isn’t that points stopped working. They stopped being scarce. Loyalty spend is now structural rather than incremental, and consumers carry memberships across so many brands that a points program reads as a category expectation, not a brand feature. When the mechanic looks the same everywhere, a points-only program ends up competing on earn rates and discount depth. That is a margin race, and it rarely produces a lasting advantage, because a competitor can match a richer earn rate within a quarter.

Antavo’s report describes the same movement from the marketer side: a shift away from promotions built only on discounts toward experiential, personalized, and data-driven rewards. It’s worth remembering that Antavo is a loyalty platform vendor, so we read this as a strong market signal rather than a neutral census. The direction, though, matches what the member data shows.

More programs, less attention for each one

EY’s 2025 Loyalty Market Study finds consumers enrolling in more programs and using them often, even weekly or daily. EY notes that this also means stronger competition for each program’s share of attention and spend. Analysis of EY’s figures by Capillary Technologies puts roughly half of consumers in more than five programs. Membership in 11 to 15 programs rose from 7% in 2024 to 11% in 2025.

Then there is what happens to points after they’re issued. Antavo’s US breakage data shows 26.2% of loyalty points go unspent and 11.9% expire unused. The report estimates that up to $10 billion in savings members leave on the table each year.

These two data sets come from different surveys, with different populations and methods, so they shouldn’t be blended into one conclusion. They do point the same way. None of this says points have stopped working; savings still motivate most members, and promotions still shape behavior. It says that a flat ledger, on its own, increasingly funds an expectation rather than a preference. Members expect to earn. Earning alone doesn’t make them choose you.

That reframes the budget question. The useful question is no longer how competitive the points are. It’s what the loyalty budget can buy that a competitor can’t copy by launching the same points structure.

Three places the differentiation is actually moving

Our view is that differentiation is moving away from how generous the reward is. It’s moving toward what kind of value is being exchanged, and where that exchange lives. Three models stand out, and most strong programs combine one or more of them with a points base rather than replacing it.

Experiential tiers: status and access, not discount depth. A points balance measures what someone has spent. A tier tells them who they are to the brand, and gives them somewhere to progress. Starbucks’ March 2026 relaunch is a clear signal. It moved from a structure where Star earning depended mainly on how members paid to three levels: Green, Gold, and Reserve. Each level offers faster earning, more personalized benefits, and premium experiences. We’ve written before about another variant: green loyalty programs that drive repeat purchases. These reward the choices members care about rather than just the amount they spend. 

A data value exchange: something back for information, not just for spend. Sephora’s Beauty Insider is the example most practitioners reach for. Members share preferences and beauty profile details, and in return they get recommendations and access that feel built for them. The principle matters more than the brand. The member gives you information and gets something useful back. The common failure is familiar: a preference center that fills up with data no downstream program ever reads. Members notice when what they told you changes nothing.

Embedded loyalty: the reward lives inside the experience. The most durable programs make earning part of the product rather than a separate errand. In the Starbucks app, ordering, paying, and earning happen in the same flow, and reloading stored value still earns bonus Stars. When the loyalty moment and the purchase moment are the same action, the program stops competing for attention because it never asks for any.

For example, a Mavlers’ client is Staypineapple, a US boutique hotel brand with 10 hotels across 7 locations. Mavlers built a “Day After Booking” email in Salesforce Marketing Cloud that sends guests to a CloudPage (no login) to share trip details and preferences. Those answers go to the property teams before check-in and stay on the guest profile for future lifecycle emails. 

What this means for the CMO’s loyalty roadmap 

The first shift is in how the program gets audited. A features checklist asks whether your earn rates, catalog, and tier count match the market. A differentiation test asks something harder: could a competitor copy this by cloning our points structure? If the honest answer is yes, that part of the program is maintenance spend, not where the next differentiation dollar should go.

The second is realism about which lever fits. Each model has different prerequisites:

• A data value exchange needs a preference center and a lifecycle program able to act on what it collects.
• Embedded loyalty usually needs a payments or product integration, owned jointly with product and finance, on a build cycle measured in quarters rather than campaigns.
• Experiential tiers need partnerships, operations budget, and a clear view of which members are worth elevating.

Most enterprises will start with whichever layer their current data and platform maturity can support, not all three at once.

The third is measurement. As loyalty absorbs a larger share of marketing budget, we expect the conversation to move beyond redemption rates. The question will be whether the program’s data and status mechanics are feeding personalization and retention elsewhere in the funnel.

This is also where loyalty and lifecycle stop being separate workstreams. Tiers and data exchange only pay off when loyalty data reaches the platform running personalization. When we help teams integrate loyalty programs with Klaviyo, much of the value comes from making tier status, preferences, and balances usable in flows and segments. Klaviyo gives lifecycle teams the segmentation and automation to act on those signals. The work is making sure the signals arrive. 

Wrapping up 

That brings us to the business end of this article, where it’s fair to say that points aren’t going away. They remain a useful, familiar foundation, and members still expect them. They’ve just stopped being the place where a loyalty program earns its differentiation. 

So before the next refresh adds another tier level or sweetens the earn rate, it’s worth asking a simpler question: if a competitor could clone your points structure overnight, would your loyalty program still give members a reason to stay?