Sustainability in customer experience (CX) strategies promote brands that have significantly positive environmental and social impact on the world. This definition includes:
- Designing products and packaging with eco-friendly or recycled materials.
- Manufacturing with energy-efficient processes
- Complying with fair labor conditions.
- Contributing profit percentages to non-profit sustainability resources,
- Supporting community events and initiatives.
In this article we’ll focus on applying sustainability principles to customer loyalty programs. What are these exactly? Company eco-friendly initiatives that aim at maximizing customer retention and repeat purchasing through a consistent rewards system.
Typically, one can expect to discover CX-centric planning structured around points systems with gamification and contests to keep customers engaged. The primary green-connected components – discounts, free offers, birthday gifts, first dibs on brand introductions, exclusive service privileges, and other perks – deliver consumer value and loyalty recognition.
Why is sustainability important?
In 2021, sustainability had already caught on, with 64% of consumers underlining they were willing to pay more for eco-friendly products. Unsurprisingly, the same sentiment leapfrogged to 80% in 2024. From another angle:
- 46% of consumers maintain that sustainability is top-of-mind when they select their brands.
- Drilling down further, younger generations (Gen Z – 22%; Millennials – 20%) strictly follow sustainable brands.
- 77% of consumers look into the brand sponsor’s environmental record to some degree before buying from them.
What does this tell us? No matter how many bells and whistles in your brand loyalty program, the results may be severely disappointing if it ignores environmental consciousness. In other words, most modern customers reject non-sustainable brands, no matter how compelling loyalty program promotions appear.
What does a five-star sustainable loyalty program look like?
Companies structuring brand loyalty programs with sustainability as an underlying feature must ensure they overlay green characteristic benefits from end to end, including those in my introduction above. The crucial thing about this is:
- Don’t assume your customers know you offer a value proposition that aligns with sustainability.
- Sustainability must be front and center of your communications, rewards, and every aspect of recognizing customer loyalty to your brand.
Despite the many benefits of sustainability linked to loyalty, programs face significant challenges, the most prominent of which is deciding between transactional ROI and making an emotional connection with one’s customers. Why? Exciting rewards and brand differentiation don’t always align with the most environmentally acceptable options (or any green connection for that matter).
The solution is balance, balance, and more balance by establishing realistic green goals for the company from a complete overview perspective. You must insert environmental considerations in your decision-making without allowing them to create unnecessary losses that blemish the financial statements.
Consider the following example: Suppose stakeholders promoting a green loyalty program see the opportunity to improve profitability by cutting down the manufacture of products A, B, and C in their brand lineup. As a result:
- They announce that reducing the production of these lines minimizes manufacturing waste and has environmental benefits.
- Simultaneously, the company promotes resales of A, B, and C refurbished products with a similar line of thought (i.e., to address waste) at significant discounts.
Coordinated initiative messages like this improve profit and create a green image in one fell swoop.
5 loyalty program sustainability initiatives that foster a positive CX and marketing ROI
Several industries on the frontline of social and regulatory pressures innovate loyalty programs that encourage sustainability engagement at the company and customer levels. However, as described below, this varies substantially between industries, even though they share the objective of environmentally responsible behavior. Still, every successful strategy, fundamentally driven by green fundamentals, should have the following in common:
Careful selection of sustainable actions to reward
Select green actions that fit your brand’s mission and character like a hand in a glove. It means carefully strategizing specific green behaviors you want your loyalty program to encourage. For example, fashion industry programs can reward:
- Apparel purchases from eco-friendly lines.
- Customers returning used clothing articles for recycling.
- Buying refurbished used products versus new (as long as it makes ROI sense and keeps “balance” in mind).
Another illustrative example is the auto and fuel industry rewarding customers with discounts or points for:
- Selecting electric versus fuel transportation.
- Making donations to environmental organizations.
- Recycling fuel packaging to gas stations.
Finally, glowing examples emerge from:
- Tech industry companies that award bonus loyalty points to customers for accepting e-invoices instead of paper bills.
- Food manufacturers, agricultural suppliers, supermarket brands, and other food retailers:
- Rewarding points to customers for reusing packaging or buying organic options.
- Offering discounts on perishables like fruits and vegetables close to or past the expiration date.
Loyalty program software that aligns closely with sustainability rewards, communication, and modeling
Professional loyalty program software and apps must contain extraordinary flexibility to offer rewards that meet clients’ prioritized needs. Top-of-the-line options provide:
- User-friendly interfaces and dashboards connecting the CX to tiered modeling, point systems, birthday reminders, personalized messaging, loyalty monitoring, and tracking (to mention only a few drivers).
- Seamlessly achievable and manageable sustainability features when designing customer behavior and reciprocal CX rewards
Consult reputable loyalty program providers like Sogolytics to access compelling options with robust digital tools. Indeed, professional support provides the space and time for you to focus on building customer relationships while covering the technical aspects of green-centric CXs.
Rewards that tie into customers’ sustainability values
The rewards you offer for desired customer behavior must be intentionally coordinated and linked to the central theme of environmental responsibility. So, include loyalty points, discounts on future purchases, free shipping, or exclusive offers for distinctive green behavior that’ll result in the recipient securing a green reward.
For example:
- Travel or tour operators can connect their rewards to low-impact transport modes, such as free or discounted rides on trains, electric cars (versus gasoline vehicles), and buses. They may also promote that filling all multi-person transportation seats reduces the carbon footprint per person.
- The mobile device and HVAC industries can take advantage of sustainability consciousness by offering reward points, discounts, and gifts to acquire energy-efficient appliances and smartphones made from eco-friendly materials.
Customized communications
This is one of the most crucial aspects of a loyalty program. You may be doing everything to the letter regarding brand alignment with green responsibility. However, if it doesn’t register with customers’ thoughts and emotions, it likely goes right over their heads. In this regard:
- Promote your loyalty program through social media, emails, advertising, and PR whenever and wherever your planning and budget allow, with green consciousness front and center.
- Connect your brand to events and junctures that convey your company aligns with sustainability and that you support your customers in doing the same.
- For businesses relying on Gen Z and Millennial patronage, whatever you see above and below as green-centric actions, double the intensity.
- Staying consistently in customers’ earshot and close vision with audio, video, and text messages drives home that loyalty is much more than repeat buying.
When you’re looking after the planet and encouraging others to do the same, you’re building value for both your brand and our environment simultaneously.
Clear metric goals and continuous improvements
Looking ahead, sustainability exists in an incredibly dynamic environment with unpredictable ebbs and flows. As a result, you must monitor and measure your loyalty program’s green initiatives to measure customer reactions. Eco-friendly activities resonate differently with different customers, even for the same brands. You don’t want to waste investment on green promotions that don’t create consumer excitement or encourage brand loyalty.
Sogolytics and other professional CX consultancy resources advise pulse surveys, CSAT, and NPS research options immediately after a sustainability activity to know if it moved the needle. Determine every metric that provides insight to obtain ROI cause-and-effect insights that give meaning to how far your loyalty program has taken you and where it can still take you.
Companies showing us how brand loyalty with sustainability succeeds.
Here are examples of exceptional green loyalty strategies that show why investing in sustainable business development pays massive dividends in the short- and long-term.
Adidas’ adiClub
Everybody knows the iconic sports apparel giant, operating in countries worldwide and competing with mainstay brands like Nike and New Balance. Members earn points to access fantastic rewards surrounding the company’s products and services in the US, UK, France, Russia, Colombia, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Argentina, Australia, and many other countries
Customer credit allocations for sustainability behavior are a prominent focus in such things as:
- Recycling old Adidas products.
- Completing challenges that support green causes, including non-profit organizations the company supports.
Costa Club
Costa Coffee changed hands from the founders (Italian brothers) to Whitbread (in 1995) to Coca-Cola Company in 2019 for $4.9 billion, reflecting 3,400 stores in 31 countries (with 2,121 in the UK) and over 6,000 Costa Express vending machines. The stakeholders equip each store with autonomous coffee machines serving thousands of customers daily.
The company’s sustainability stands out in two crucial respects:
- Costa Club ties its brand to organic “green beans,” serving beverages reliant on ground or whole bean products from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms.
- It motivates its customers to accept branded reusable cups when buying coffee, allocating points that quickly result in complimentary beverages for Costa Club members
Both the above reflect as “in your face” green promotion messages that attract increased store traffic, strongly connecting the brand to saving our planet.
Patagonia
The apparel company does not offer a strategically central, points-based, structured customer loyalty program, as demonstrated by others in this article. Why? The company views everything it does as bolstering a green-driven CX and, along with it, brand loyalty.
Indeed, sustainability is a cultural mainstay, with one of its core missions showcasing the company as “in business to save our home planet,” guiding material choices and supply chain decisions, and even employee volunteer programs. In other words, environmental consciousness isn’t a secondary vision; it’s culturally ingrained, creating a resilient customer loyalty willing to consistently pay premium prices in an intensely competitive market.
- For instance, Patagonia pioneered using recycled polyester in their fleece garments, significantly reducing the environmental footprint.
- The organization went so far as to give a sustainability-centric title to a piledrive initiative – “The Worn Wear” recycling rewards program that revolves around reclaiming and reusing used Patagonia products. This initiative involves:
- Sending out regular messages, urging customers to return old clothes to the brand’s stores, earning points (uniquely offered for this project).
- Making refurbished (looking as good as new) Patagonia brand products available at irresistible price reductions in-store or online or as free rewards for points accumulated (also used to purchase new products).
- Configuring text and scripts (attached to videos and audio ads) to underline the brand’s efforts in reducing textile waste and encouraging the purchase of sustainable Patagonia products (versus new) wherever that fits into consumers’ lifestyles
Plae – Comfortable shoes for adults and kids on the go
There’s no mistaking the single-minded diver behind this brand – it connects customer loyalty directly to social impact, offering a program that converts points to support various environmental and social causes monetarily. Therefore, the vision behind loyalty build-up from buying Plae brand footwear is boosting philanthropy, the epitome of social sustainability. Some meaningful causes include non-profits immersed in carbon footprint reduction and social justice initiatives.
Conclusion
From the above, we can see that while point-based systems still impact these initiatives significantly, customer loyalty programs are entering a new phase — sophisticated, purpose-driven strategies at the organizational core. It’s a striking shift in customer engagement and business strategy, where a massive customer consciousness toward our planet’s preservation overlays marketplace behavior. The more a business can show itself fully onboard with that emotional outpouring, the more its brands will consolidate customer retention and a consistent growth path.
Sogolytics understands that shaping the customer journey to seamlessly move through crucial touchpoints is integral to success, and that involves covering CX’s ethical and environmental aspects. Contact us today to learn how to springboard off sustainability and create a competitive advantage.
