I have a friend in the loyalty business.  By that I mean loyalty programs:  airline miles, hotel points, punch-cards from your favorite sub shop.  We were talking recently and the conversation got me to notice:  A lot of loyalty programs don’t really advance their own brand.  Sure, they’ll keep Customers coming back (But is it really “loyalty” if you’re more or less giving them stuff to encourage their return?  A topic for another day, I suppose.), but consider the dynamic of the entire concept.

Sure, some of these make pretty good sense, at least on the face:  Fly with an airline a bunch, you’ll accumulate enough ‘miles’ to use toward…another flight.  Visit a restaurant a lot, get a free side or even main course.

But in addition to the conceit of buying off your Customers to continue to come around more (rather than, say, reliably providing brand-aligned experience every time for every Customer), notice that the “reward” for their “loyalty” is…more of your own stuff.  Seems a little redundant.  Maybe the thought is that, your Customers have demonstrated that they like what you offer (they came in the first place), so why not give them more of what they like, right?  On the other hand, they’ve also demonstrated their willingness to pay for what you sell.  Everybody likes free stuff, but if you think about it, don’t most of the products and services you purchase yourself come without such incentives?  Perhaps the ubiquity of loyalty programs has made us all a little immune to the reality that, in most circumstances, we don’t really need them to encourage us to buy what we want to buy.  If they do it well, we’ll come back, even without the freebies.

But what if you’re still interested in recognizing and rewarding your Customers for their continued patronage?  Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Many brands are already doing certain things that I think could help point us toward a better approach.

As a slight aside, consider that when you fly First or Business Class internationally, most airlines will provide an amenity kit at your seat with things like toothpaste, skin cream, lip balm, and the like.  Some airlines offer similar kits to their Economy Class passengers as well, but the difference is that, up in the pricier seats, they’re offering higher-end products:  Boutique brands that, while they may not necessarily align with the brand of that specific airline in usual practice, they are representative of the experience premium passengers may be expecting.  Further, many airlines provide high-end linens (often luxury names you’d recognize) and other accommodations along with the hardware up there.

That’s not a loyalty program, but we can expand the approach:  Match what you’re offering with products and amenities that aren’t even yours but that further the experience you’re intending for your Customers to have.

A good example I saw in action was last year during ski season.  Copper Mountain had what they called their Scan Challenge, and it worked as you might expect:  As their scanning system registers you going through the gates to get on the lift, it’s counted as another day on the mountain…come more days, receive more prizes.  Some of these prizes were actually Copper-related: a day of free close-in parking, free Fast Tracks to skip the lines, etc.  But some were merchandise from brands that a typical skier or boarder would appreciate, including Coal and YETI.  (If you don’t ski or board, just go with me, these are brands folks who do would recognize.)  There was a twist here in that it was only for season pass holders, so the incentive wasn’t to sell more (single-day lift tickets, say), but rather to encourage those who’ve already invested to use what they’ve bought.  Now, I’m sure that with things like on-mountain food and drinks and pass-holders bringing their friends along to join them for a day of snow, the upside for Copper was probably positive.  For that matter, these brands are prominent in their slope-side retail stores as it is already.

And so, I suppose the key for loyalty programs that want to get out of the buy-our-stuff/get-more-of-our-stuff cycle is to think like Copper does:  With whom do you normally partner anyway?  And, based on your Brand Promise, what other brands would your Customers find appealing?

The travel industry, I think, has got a good start on this:  airlines, car rental companies, and hotel chains already have systems whereby travelers can share and swap points between trusted partners.  They even have online marketplaces where you can swap your points for no-kidding merchandise.  In some instances, those vendors are even familiar brands from the travelers’ experiences (i.e., you can buy that linen from your First Class trip).

That’s a start, but for those travelers who rarely take advantage of such offers, they may not even be aware that, for example, a certain hotel chain really rounds out the trip and is a great match for the experience I just had with the airline…and car rental too, for that matter!

Moreover, these partnerships aren’t really based on promoting anybody’s Brand Promise…and you can see that by how frequently these partnerships shift between companies.  They’re all quite interchangeable and little thought seems to be put into whether the experiences they’re trying to offer to their traveling Customers by way of these partnerships are anything like those of their partners.  If a luxury airline teamed up with a luxury hotel brand, that’d be something.  Or if you could be assured reliability in both your rental car and your airline, that’d make sense.  But let’s think past travel.

What if a fast-casual restaurant offered something other than a free dish if you eat there often enough?  What if the marketers and loyalty folks at that corporate chain (or even a mom-and-pop restaurant in town) considered what the idea of “Fast/Casual” meant in other parts of a Customer’s life?  What would that look like?  Is there an analogy for that type of dining experience (not too costly, but still a special change from having to do-it-yourself, and not a simple drive-by experience either) in other goods and services?  Stores, products, other service providers?  It’s not high-end, but not cheap-discount; and the benefit is that you’re doing something slightly different from the usual.  Come to think of it, there are probably airlines that match up a bit with that sort of brand experience!

I don’t have the answers here, but I wonder what we’d see if folks in the “loyalty industry” thought about more than just a “free sub” in honoring their frequent Customers.