To earn customer loyalty, tap into human behavior

The modern digital marketplace is fragmented, and customers are complex. To move the needle on customer lifetime value, loyalty must be more than just a program, earned through customer experience and maintained by emotional connections. Brands that tap into the science of consumer habits and identity are best positioned to deliver relevant, meaningful experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

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The power of habit

Habits drive around 40% of our behavior. By deeply understanding existing consumer habits, brands can identify opportunities to create products and experiences that reinforce or respond to them. Tap into their habits, and you’ll become more deeply embedded in your customers’ daily lives.

Explicit vs. implicit rewards

Loyalty programs fail when they overemphasize explicit rewards. The most impactful loyalty frameworks strike a balance between the explicit and the implicit – delivering tangible benefits while building long-term implicit value that forges emotional connections and integrates the brand into customer identity.

Integrated insights fuel constant learning and action

For brands to succeed in the modern consumer landscape, they must have the ability to translate data into insights, and insights into action, at the speed of business. Insights, iteration, tactical deployment and robust analytics must work hand in hand to meet the customer needs of now.

Emotional loyalty: The ultimate goal

Deep connection lays the groundwork for positive emotional experiences. Knowing the customer well means understanding what is meaningful and impactful to them, creating the opportunity for brands to elicit strong emotions. And when customers have strong positive emotions, they want to share them with the world.

Material is uniquely structured to understand customers at deeper levels and get new, loyalty-building ideas into the market, faster.

Behavioral Science Advantage

True customer centricity demands a deep understanding of the human factors behind consumer decision-making. Material’s team of behavioral scientists has decades of experience decoding the intricacies of human behavior, unlocking insights that help the world’s leading brands take their customer relationships from transactional to transformational.

Loyalty Program Design & Strategy

We support brands with an experience-first approach from concept through design, modular build, launch and evolution. Our loyalty strategy revolves around customer-centric experiences to create stronger connections for long-term customer retention.

Program Management & Operations

We provide thorough program management, overseeing tech stacks, complex data systems and business rules, integrating solutions across the commerce and program experience.

Loyalty Analytics & Measurement Services

Using an insights-led approach coupled with activation to unveil new opportunities powered with analytics, we measure how and why people behave and provide prescriptive recommendations backed by predictive analytics and forecasting.

Loyalty Marketing & Design Services

CRM/Messaging services are integrated with our loyalty experiences and supported with strategic, award-winning work across concept creation, product design, content strategy, digital experiences and technology.

Technology and Customer Data Services

We are platform-agnostic and vet 100+ systems/platforms across data, loyalty, messaging, AI, commerce and mobile to ensure partners fit our clients' needs. We provide complete data management services to understand the full device graph across the loyalty ecosystem, integrating disconnected databases and crystallizing data to gain a single, actionable view of each customer.

Let’s talk.

Let’s discuss how we can make a Material difference for your customer relationships.

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Campaign Loyalty

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Client stories

TARGET

Revealing Human Insights to Build Deep Customer Connections

Dr. Pepper Perks

Leveraging Deep Human Understanding to Reinvigorate Customer Loyalty

Empowering Employees to Deliver a Memorable Experience: How Omni Hotels & Resorts Grew Customer Loyalty

Delivering a Modern Loyalty Program with Mouth-Watering Rewards

Perspectives

Stop Trying To Create Loyalty, Start Creating Habits

Loyal customers are the holy grail of brands, but loyalty isn’t something you can manufacture with offers and coupons. Material’s 3-part Habit framework incorporates behavioral context, cues and reinforcers to understand the why behind human decisions, and how to turn habits into loyalty.

Why Brand Fandom Matters - 5 Secrets to Drive Customer Loyalty & Retention

Here are the 5 secrets Material has learned after working with hundreds of brands for creating successful, enduring fandom for any brand.

Your Loyalty Program Is Broken — Here’s How to Fix It

Our experts offer three rules to take your loyalty program from simple transactions to one that builds deeper relationships and elevates customer experiences.

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Material is a global strategy partner that combines deep human insights with modern technology – a proprietary science + systems approach that speeds engagement and growth for the world’s most recognizable brands and innovative companies.