User Experience and Brand Loyalty

Loyalty is failing. Gen Z & long-term commitment. 22% of Gen Z consumers consider themselves loyal to one brand is a clear warning for legacy loyalty strategies. Unlike previous generations, Gen Z doesn’t see brand loyalty as a long-term commitment, they’re loyal to moments, not just names. +43% increase in engagement and sales conversions among Gen Z Beauty brands offering "limited-edition drops" and collaborative experiences. +71% Gen Z say they would rather spend money on an experience than a product. >>Loyalty is FAILING, but why<< +Transactional systems feel outdated: Point-based rewards for repeat purchases don’t excite this audience. They expect more than discounts or free samples. +They’re brand-agnostic but experience-driven: Gen Z freely switches between brands if the experience, aesthetic, or values feel fresher or more aligned with their identity. +They buy into stories, not just products: They want to align with brands that represent something, social causes, cultural movements, or communities they relate to. >>DYNAMIC LOYALTY<< What’s this? as it name indicates its a system that rewards interaction, aligns with their values, and constantly evolves. And that is what your brand needs. → Create experience-driven loyalty programs: Offer early access to limited drops, invite-only events, or backstage content. Think like a fan club, not a punch card. +Example: A loyalty tier that unlocks tickets to a pop-up experience or an exclusive AR filter. →Let them co-create: Invite Gen Z customers to co-develop product ideas, designs, or campaign themes. Give them ownership in your brand’s creative journey. +Example: Voting on packaging designs or joining beta tester groups. →Align with their values: Sustainability, inclusivity, and social good aren’t nice-to-haves. they’re expectations. Use loyalty programs to reward actions too, like recycling, sharing causes, or supporting small creators. +Example: “Earn loyalty points by returning empties or attending a sustainability workshop.” →Deliver constant novelty: Rotate limited editions regularly. Use scarcity and surprise to create FOMO and buzz. +Gen Z doesn’t commit to a single brand, but they’ll keep returning if each visit feels fresh and share-worthy. →Go omnichannel but social-first. Should live across TikTok, Instagram, pop-ups, and web. Let them earn or unlock rewards through social engagement, not just purchases. +Example: A user gets exclusive content or perks for creating UGC with your brand. Bottom Line. Loyalty must be earned over and over through experience, relevance, and emotional connection. Think dynamic loyalty: a system that rewards interaction and go for it. Find my curated search of examples and get ready for your next HIT. Featured Brands: Balmain Benefit Chanel Charlotte tilbury Cerave Fennty L’Oreal OGX YSL #beautypackaging #beautybusiness #beautyprofessionals #experienceretail #luxuryexperiences #genz

Amazon once made $300M, with just one word. And then… they fixed it by changing “Register” to “Continue.” Let me explain. Amazon had a simple but deadly checkout flow: → Login → Register It completely blocked the user’s momentum. New users got annoyed: “I just want to buy something. Why do I have to register?” Returning users couldn’t remember their login details. Some people had up to 10 different accounts, each with forgotten passwords. What should’ve been a quick purchase became a point of friction, and so users dropped off. Cart abandonment shot up. That’s when Amazon hired a UIE (User Interface Engineer) to solve this. He suggested a tiny fix: Replace “Register” with “Continue” Add one message: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.” That’s it. One word + one sentence = less pressure. The result was $300 million in revenue Within a year of this UX tweak: -Purchase completion rate jumped by 45% -The first month saw an additional $15 million in sales -Within a year, it generated $300 million in new revenue At Headspur Technologies, we live for these moments. Quiet, compounding wins are born from deep user understanding. Because great UX is often about removing the one thing that makes people pause. In this case, it was the pressure to “sign up” :) #UX #change #growth

The smartest companies don’t just sell products. They engineer perceived value. Take Five Guys Enterprises. Their fries are legendary, not just because they’re good, but because of the experience built around them. You pick a size. They fill the cup. Then, they throw an extra scoop straight into your brown bag. That last scoop breaks every rule of finance and operational efficiency… but it makes the brand unforgettable. Because psychology > arithmetic. The human brain disproportionately values what it didn’t expect. That extra scoop signals generosity, abundance, and hospitality, attributes that trigger emotional loyalty far more effectively than a perfectly balanced cost sheet ever will. Put the decision in the hands of a “rational” operator, and they’d increase the cup size. Put it in the hands of a CFO, and they’d eliminate the freebies entirely. Both would destroy what Five Guys actually sells: the feeling of getting more than you paid for. And this isn’t new. When Jeff Bezos proposed free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime, finance called it a disaster. They projected a loss of $1.7B, and they were right. But what they didn’t calculate was perceived value. Prime generated $17B in the same year because customers changed their purchasing behavior. Convenience became a habit. Loyalty became a reflex. That’s the symbiotic power of branding, marketing, and sales: People don’t buy the product. They buy the feeling the product gives them. In leadership, the lesson is simple: • Don’t let spreadsheets suffocate imagination. • Don’t let “efficiency” erase emotional value. • Don’t forget that humans make decisions emotionally first, rationally second. The brands that win aren’t just operationally sound, they’re psychologically relevant. And the leaders who win aren’t just optimizing processes, they’re architecting experiences. Sometimes the greatest ROI comes from the simplest thing: One extra scoop of fries. #BrandStrategy #MarketingPsychology #Leadership #CustomerExperience #ValueCreation #BusinessStrategy #FiveGuys #PerceivedValue #CX #SalesAndMarketing #Innovation #GrowthMindset #LeadershipDevelopment

One of the biggest takeaways I spotted from Intuit Mailchimp’s analysis of the 2024 holiday shopping season is that the new year is ripe with new opportunities to drive loyalty. Here’s why → 64% of orders from Mailchimp customers with connected stores came from new customers during Cyber Weekend 2024. That's a huge opportunity to grow your loyal customer base! And research we produced with Canvas8 tells us that the best kept secret to driving loyalty is actually grounded in science. Our Loyalty Wheel reveals 4 key drivers of loyalty: 1. Reward: Our brains love rewards. Create a sense of reciprocity by offering exclusive deals, personalized discounts, or early access to new products. 2. Memory: Make it easy for customers to remember (and repeat!) positive experiences with your brand. Design a frictionless customer journey, offer subscriptions for frequently purchased items, and send well-timed reminders. 3. Emotion: Foster an emotional connection that goes beyond transactional exchanges. Align your brand with causes your customers care about, share authentic stories, and build a sense of community. 4. Social Interaction: Encourage customers to share their love for your brand with friends and family. Create opportunities for user-generated content, run refer-a-friend programs, or host exclusive events. And here's how to put it all into action: 🎉 Surprise and delight: Gift your customers with unexpected rewards. And just not generic discounts. Offer exclusive experiences or partner with like-minded brands to create unique offers. 🛝 Streamline every touchpoint: Remove friction in the customer journey with automation. From browsing to purchasing to post-purchase support, make it easy and enjoyable to do business with your brand. 🎯 Prioritize personalization: Craft your messaging and build authentic connections. Use data and AI analysis to understand your customers' values and preferences and use those insights to create content that resonates. 🤗 Give VIP treatment: Make your customers feel like VIPs. Give them early access to new products, invite them to exclusive events, or feature them on your social media channels. Download Mailchimp and Canvas8’s The Science of Loyalty and The Strategic Loyalty Playbook for a deep dive into the science, complete with actionable strategies and inspiring examples: https://bit.ly/49FJayO Make 2025 the year of the loyal customer. You got this.

There is way too much BS around branding. We should stop talking about logos, colours, or catchy taglines. The fight worth fighting for today is: memory. And memory is built with structure. And guess what’s the hardest thing to do these days? Being memorable. Your audience is:  – Overstimulated  – Overloaded  – Under-committed  – And doesn’t give a flying fudge about you or your AI. They scroll past 10 brands before tea time. They see 5,000 ads a day. They forget what they saw yesterday, and they’re not even trying to remember. So if you’re not strategic about how you show up... You don’t just lose attention, you never had it in the first place. That’s why the best brands aren’t the loudest. They’re the most structured. They build memory by design and repetition. Using the 5 Cs of brand building: → 1. CLARITY If your team can’t explain what you do and why it matters, your audience won’t either. It’s the reason you exist, the problem you solve, and the position you hold. How well your brand is understood outside depends on how well it’s understood inside. No alignment means no clarity. Action: Ask five teammates what the brand stands for. If you get five answers, start here. → 2. CONSISTENCY Repetition builds reputation. Brands don’t get remembered by changing their message every quarter. Consistency means saying the same thing in a thousand ways, creating the same cue every time. 🍟 (You probably just made one thanks to that emoji.) It’s not boring...it’s predictability done right. Action: Check your channels. Does the same story show up everywhere? → 3. CADENCE If you don’t show up regularly, you don’t exist. People forget the one brilliant post from two months ago. They remember who kept showing up. Cadence builds memory, staying top of mind for when they’re ready to buy. Action: Set a minimum rhythm. Not for likes — for recall. → 4. CREDIBILITY Trust is the real currency. Anyone can talk. Only brands that do what they say earn belief. Credibility is slow to build, fast to lose, and impossible to buy. Action: Show proof. Stories. Results. Receipts. → 5. CULTURAL RELEVANCE Great brands don’t follow culture, they feed it. They listen, adapt, and reflect what their audience cares about now. Because people don’t connect with what’s different. They connect with what’s true to their world today. Action: Look at the conversations around you. What truth can your brand express first? The brands that win are the ones that show up with structure. Be easy to understand. Be consistent in message. Be present. Be trusted. Be culturally relevant. Because brand building isn’t about what you look like. It’s about what people remember when they need you.

Running an agency and driving millions in revenue taught me many things, but one thing in particular… You can’t solve all your problems just by throwing money at it. 💸 Trust me. I’ve seen brands waste huge budgets on campaigns that look great but flop because they lacked one thing - emotional connection. Tracksuit gets it. Their Emotion Effect report breaks down why emotional connection isn’t just nice to have—without it, even the most high-end campaigns flop. Here’s what I’ve learned firsthand about avoiding the 7 deadly sins of emotionless advertising:👇 1. Greed: Throwing money at ads without a story. Big spend ≠ big impact. I’ve seen brands with half the budget crush competitors by nailing emotional storytelling. 2. Wrath: Screaming “BUY NOW!” in all caps doesn’t work. Adding surprise-and-delight elements boosted open rates (and revenue) in one campaign we ran. 3. Sloth: Short-term sales over long-term loyalty? Nope, it’s just lazy to only focus on quick wins. I’ve turned email lists into loyal communities by focusing on emotional connections. 4. Lust: Chasing immediate results. Only 5% of buyers are ready now—storytelling drives demand and builds positive brand associations for the other 95% so when they’re ready to buy, they come to you. 5. Pride: Features don’t sell—feelings do. We doubled conversions by focusing on customer stories over specs. 6. Gluttony:  One ad does not rule them all. Stop using one creative for multiple objectives across the entire marketing funnel.   7. Envy: Copycats don’t win. Leaning into a brand’s unique identity has led to cult-like followings for my clients. Want the cheat code to emotional advertising? Tracksuit’s Emotion Effect Report has the evidence you need and a multitude of real life examples to back it up. Grab it here 👉 https://hubs.li/Q02Zh05D0

Most businesses compete on price, features, or convenience. But the most successful brands compete on experience. Krispy Kreme’s “Big Apple” donut isn’t about ingredients — it’s about perception. At $11, it costs 4x more than their standard product. Yet customers line up late at night to buy it. Why? Because it's wrapped in an experience: lights, energy, a cheering crowd, and a sense of exclusivity. When you create an environment where your product feels like an event, people will pay more — not for what you sell, but for how you sell it.

Success, whether personal or organizational, is never built on motivation alone. It’s built on habits and discipline. But when is a habit really a habit? Look at the 'Habit Curve'...we THINK we have formed a habit a few weeks into a new routine but studies show that most "habits" drop off after a few weeks if people don't see visible results. So...real habits are really only formed when it doesn't even feel like a conscious effort- when it’s just part of your routine, your identity, or how you operate. Like brushing your teeth! This is so relevant to how we develop ourselves as individuals AND how entire businesses scale and succeed. Habits aren’t just personal- they shape teams, cultures, and entire organizations. The way people communicate, solve problems, give feedback, or make decisions… all of these are organizational habits that either support success or hold a team back. So here's what you need to know... If you want habits to stick across an entire team, you need more than encouragement—you need structure. 📌 Make it part of the routine. If something is important, don’t treat it as optional. For example, if you want people to give regular feedback, don’t just expect them to. Make it a standing agenda item in team meetings and ask "What’s one thing we did well this week, and what’s one thing we can improve?" 📌 Remove unnecessary friction. If a habit requires extra effort, people won’t keep it up. Make it easy, visible, and seamless. For example, if people struggle to follow a new process, don’t just send another email about it...embed it into their workflow and use automated reminders in their task management system. The easier it is to remember and do, the more likely they’ll do it. 📌 Create shared accountability. Individual habits fade when there’s no reinforcement. For example, if you want teams to raise issues proactively, introduce a weekly problem-solving huddle where everyone is asked individually to share small inefficiencies they noticed. When the whole team expects it, no one feels like they’re "the only one speaking up." It shifts from an individual effort to a team norm. 📌 Measure what matters. What gets measured gets maintained!! For example, if you want better cross-team collaboration, track it. Count how many interdepartmental projects are completed each quarter. Recognize teams that worked together well to help people stay committed. ⁉️ Let's share what works... What’s the most effective way you’ve seen a team or organization turn a great idea into a real, lasting habit? Leave your stories below 🙏 ‐-------------------------------------------------------------- I'm Catherine, a LinkedIn Top Voice specializing in Lean Leadership. I provide 1:1 leadership coaching and facilitate the deployment of Lean across multiple industries

You don’t build loyalty through rewards—you reward customers for already being loyal. Big difference. Loyalty programs are primarily designed for customers who have already demonstrated consistent engagement and loyalty to your brand. The goal isn’t to create loyalty through rewards, but to recognize and strengthen it. By offering rewards, perks, and recognition, you can maximize their lifetime value, whether by increasing purchase frequency, boosting basket size, or encouraging referrals. Tactics like tiered rewards, exclusive access, and personalized incentives help reinforce their commitment and make them feel valued. 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀:  For customers with the potential to become loyal, the strategy shifts. These customers have shown higher engagement but haven't fully crossed into the loyal customer category. To convert them, 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 is key. Tailor rewards based on their behaviors and preferences to create a sense of exclusivity and recognition. It’s also crucial to stay top of mind through strategic touchpoints—whether via targeted email campaigns, loyalty app notifications, or personalized offers that speak directly to their interests. Offering a path to higher-tier rewards as they engage more frequently can further motivate them to commit to your brand long-term. 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀:  Casual customers require a different approach. They won’t become loyal overnight, and the objective here is gradual nurturing. For this segment, it's all about increasing touchpoints and staying relevant. Broader offers, such as discounts, time-sensitive promotions, or entry-level rewards, help keep them engaged without overwhelming them. The goal is to activate them periodically, ensuring they interact with your brand from time to time. By keeping consistent offers flowing, you maintain visibility, and over time, some of these casual customers may transition into the potential loyal customer segment. ----- Ultimately, loyalty is about retention, not conversion. The focus is on maintaining a strong relationship with those who already support your brand and steadily nurturing others to deepen their commitment over time.

I'm delighted to announce our latest research with Microsoft Advertising, which uncovers where customer journeys most often break down, and what that disconnect means for trust, conversion, and loyalty. Today’s shoppers move seamlessly across devices and channels, but the customer journey isn’t always as joined-up as it should be. Shoppers' expectations are higher than ever before, and they are intolerant of poor experiences. Our research found that device preference (e.g mobile, tablet, laptop, gaming etc) differs considerably across different age groups. And even within the same age group, preferences switch as purchase intentions rise. Consumers often want to start the discovery stage on mobile, but as purchase intent grows, they switch to laptops to have a more immersive experience. Brands that deliver a consistent experience across channels, device, platforms and more, inspire confidence, trust and boost conversion rates. The report focuses on four key pressure points: 🔍 Discovery – the complexity of how consumers search across screens and devices 🤝 Trust – the importance of consistency across every channel, device and ads. 🛒 Conversion – when shoppers click, but get disjointed experiences that drive them away 🧠 Personalisation – what ‘relevance’ really means in the AI era Built on insight from 2,000 UK consumers, Microsoft Advertising data and real brand examples, the report helps businesses turn unified commerce from concept into a practical strategy. 🔗 Get the full picture – download the report now https://lnkd.in/e9abZQQW