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When was the last time you abandoned a loyalty program - not because it didn’t reward you enough, but because it simply asked too much of you?
Maybe you forgot to scan your card at checkout. Maybe you didn’t realise your points were expiring. Or maybe you just didn't need another card to add to your wallet.
For today’s time-poor consumer, loyalty isn’t about how much they can earn, it’s about how easy it is to earn it.
Recent research from Honeycomb Strategy, The Science of Loyalty, identified that programs that win aren't the ones with the flashiest rewards, but the ones that remove friction from every step of the journey.
The Loyalty Paradox: More Members, Less Engagement
Today, the average Australian consumer belongs to eight or more loyalty programs but actively engages with only five.
The gap between signup and ongoing participation is where loyalty breaks down.
Retailers often focus on growing membership numbers, but the real challenge lies in keeping customers engaged beyond the initial join moment. Why? Because customers are overwhelmed. They're managing too many programs, that offer different rewards mechanisms, meaning there are too many hoops to jump through.
Honeycomb's findings reinforce what behavioural science has long shown: the more effort a customer must invest to stay loyal, the less loyal they become.
Why Friction Kills Loyalty
Friction can take many forms - manual signups, missed scans, delayed reward notifications, confusing redemption rules - but the result is the same: lost engagement and lost sales.
Customers don't want to think about loyalty - they want it to just work.
Attention is now a scarce commodity. Shoppers have limited mental bandwidth, and loyalty programs are competing with every other digital experience in their lives for a slice of that attention.
If a program asks too much, even small steps like remembering to open an app or scan a barcode can cause customers to drop off.
The Simplicity Advantage
Simplicity isn't just good UX, it's a loyalty strategy.
Honeycomb's study shows that programs with the highest engagement share one key trait: they make earning and redeeming rewards almost invisible. Rewards are instant, automatic, and seamlessly tied to natural shopping behaviour.
For retailers, this simplicity also pays off behind the scenes. Reduced friction leads to higher participation rates, cleaner data capture, and better insights into how loyalty actually drives incremental spend.
From Frictionless to Effortless: Loyalty's Next Leap
At Slyp we live by a very simple formula: Value - Friction = Engagement, and that means removing the barriers between the transaction and the reward, ensuring customers don't have to remember to engage - they simply earn as they go.
This is where technology is quietly transforming what's possible. Retailers can now match purchase-level data (the what) with individual customer identity (the who) to deliver rewards that are deeply personalised and instantly applied.
It's no longer about rewarding every customer the same way - it's about rewarding the right customer, for the right product, at the right time.
That's the promise of loyalty done right: no extra steps, no missed scans, no wasted rewards.
Why This Matters For Retailers
Loyalty fatigue isn't inevitable, it's self-inflicted. Programs fail not because customers don't care, but because they care about convenience more.
If retailers want to drive true incremental spend, they need to build a program that:
• Fits effortlessly into the customer's existing behaviour
• Delivers instant value and recognition
• Uses data to ensure every reward feels personal and relevant
• Eliminates unnecessary effort and friction from the process
When the experience feels natural, engagement follows - and spend follows engagement.
The Bottom Line
As Honeycomb's research suggests, loyalty today isn't about more benefits, it's about fewer barriers. The retailers who win will be those who design for ease, not excess.
Because the truth is simple: customers don't fall in love with loyalty programs, they fall in love with experiences that make life easier.
Source: Honeycomb Strategy, The Science of Loyalty