Loyalty programmes often come under fire because they cost money – and anything hitting the P&L naturally draws finance’s attention.

Marketers get pushed toward broad price cuts, rather than investing in loyalty. Price cuts are easy to see and understand, but miss the mark on targeting and long-term value.

Proving loyalty’s impact isn’t straightforward. Classic A/B tests don’t work when you can’t exclude customers from your loyalty scheme.

When measuring loyalty, comparing members to non-members can be misleading. Loyalty members are already your best customers, so the results get skewed.

The fool proof way of measuring a loyalty scheme is intelligent synthetic controls. At HyperFinity, we build statistically comparable control groups using microsegmentation to measure true incremental value.

Loyalty can be measured on three levels:

• Annually, to track overall programme impact
• Quarterly, to assess always-on mechanics like gamification
• Campaign-by-campaign, to test specific offers and tactics

Strong measurement changes the conversation. With it, loyalty stops being a cost and becomes a profitable investment – often delivering double the ROI of blanket price cuts.

Measurement turns emotion into maths. Marketers talk in the CFO’s language and win boardroom buy-in with data-backed insight.

Automatically rewarding customers, regardless of their behaviour, kills ROI. Smart targeting avoids wasted discounts and protects margins.

If you’re trying to flip the loyalty investment conversation, start small, measure precisely and build the board’s confidence. Prove value in microsegments first – then unlock the door to long-term, strategic investment.