A paradigm shift blowing toward B2B
Only 69% of consumers indicate they are loyal to specific retailers (2024), a decline from 77% compared to 2022. Saving today for a free coffee in three months – that's no longer what customers are waiting for. They want to be understood and valued.
In B2C, the power of generic loyalty programs – one type of stamp card with one type of reward for thousands of customers – has been declining for some time. Customers want loyalty solutions that go beyond the generic, transactional model. With the advent of new data integrations and AI, it becomes possible to offer personalized loyalty programs that focus more on purchasing behavior, and sometimes even on ethics and emotion.
Many loyalty discussions focus on B2C, where opportunities are more surface-level. B2B loyalty is more complex, but at least as valuable. This development goes hand in hand with the shifting role of B2B suppliers from product provider to service provider. It's not about giving discounts on your assortment, but about making your customers successful.
Interesting customer loyalty strategies to implement include:
Knowledge-based rewards: Access to exclusive training and expertise as a reward for loyalty
Service integration: Loyalty points that can be redeemed for premium support or consultancy hours
Partnership benefits: Early access to new features or beta programs
Hygiene loyalty: Loyalty as a standard part of the service, not as a separate program
Data integrations and AI: the game changers in customer loyalty
Data integrations as connectors
Real-time data integration is no longer a nice-to-have, it's the foundation. Without a unified view of your customer, loyalty remains guesswork.
The fragmentation of customer data has always been one of the biggest challenges of loyalty management. SAP's Business Data Cloud approach now offers good solutions for this.
The ability to combine data from sales, service, marketing, commerce, and third-party sources in real-time opens doors to completely new loyalty strategies. We can now, for example:
Create customer journey loyalty that incorporates all touchpoints
Set up behavioral triggers based on subtle signals from different systems
Develop ecosystem loyalty that includes partners and suppliers
The integration between SAP Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Emarsys, and the new loyalty module makes it technically feasible to achieve the following:
Channel-agnostic points collection and redemption
Contextual rewards received based on their preferred channel
Seamless experiences during channel switches
Unified status maintained regardless of interaction point
AI as personalizer
Modern loyalty systems distinguish between two dimensions:
Transactional loyalty: what the customer buys, how often, for what amount
Attitudinal & behavioral loyalty: how the customer reacts, what they think of the brand, how was the service
This means that a 'gold' customer who spends a lot but also has many complaints is approached differently than a 'silver' customer with positive experiences.
The biggest breakthrough we expect plays into this and comes through the integration of AI in loyalty systems. SAP's new AI Foundation and the extensive Joule functionalities offer possibilities that were unthinkable two years ago. For the first time, we can achieve true 1:1 personalization, not only in content but also in timing, channel, and context.
Some concrete examples:
Predictive loyalty: AI predicts when customers are likely to churn and automatically triggers retention actions
Dynamic rewards: Rewards that are automatically adjusted based on customer behavior, seasons, and market conditions
Sentiment-driven engagement: Loyalty actions that respond to customer sentiment from service interactions and feedback
Ethics and transparency
A trend we see emerging more strongly is the focus on ethical loyalty management. Customers are becoming more critical about how their data is used and want transparency in reward structures.
Ethical loyalty is not only morally right, it's also commercially smart. Customers who trust your loyalty program are much more valuable than customers who participate out of habit.
SAP's focus on ethical AI frameworks and transparent data governance aligns perfectly with this trend. Our advice is, for example, to:
Use transparent algorithms in their reward systems
Offer customer control over data usage and privacy settings
Offer sustainable rewards that align with societal values
Apply fair distribution in access to benefits
A new era for B2B customer loyalty
We see that we are at the beginning of a new era in customer loyalty. The combination of AI, real-time data integration, ethical frameworks, and omnichannel capabilities in SAP Loyalty CRM creates new opportunities for companies to build genuine, valuable relationships with their customers.
SAP's roadmap for 2025 and beyond provides the technological foundation for this transformation. But technology alone is not enough. Success requires a fundamental rethinking of what loyalty means: from transactions to relationships, from programs to experiences, from rewards to appreciation.
The organizations that understand this and act accordingly will not only achieve higher customer loyalty, but also build a sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly complex market.
Are you ready for the next step in customer loyalty that gives you this competitive advantage?