the
access
loyalty blog

2025 proved that loyalty programs are no longer “set it and forget it.” Inflation, shifting consumer expectations, and rapid advances in AI forced brands to move faster and think bigger.

Once upon a time, planning a trip meant hours of scrolling through websites, reviews, and booking engines. Today? Many travelers, including me, simply ask AI...

One day, I spotted someone familiar in the grocery store, but I couldn’t remember her name or where I knew her from. So, instead of saying “hi,” I ducked down...

At Access, our mission is simple: Empowering people to experience more by adding value to every purchase. That means constantly evolving our offerings to meet...

People willingly hand their money over to corporations all the time. They’re happy to do so when they get something of value in exchange: product, service,...

Loyalty is a rich and complex subject to grasp. If you've found this page, you're probably trying to understand it too. You may be starting at the beginning,...

What if everyday purchases like eating out, new shoes, groceries, a zoo visit, or a hotel stay came with built-in savings? Good news! That’s the everyday...

There’s something keeping your members up at night. Is it the neighbor's barking dogs? Probably for some. Heartburn? Hopefully not. According to a recent...

Remember "revenge travel"? (Cue the snickers and eye rolls.) Talk to anyone in the travel industry, and they’ll tell you that post-pandemic travel frenzies are...

Rewards are psychologically powerful tools for influencing behavior. People offer rewards to encourage strangers to help search for their lost items or pets....

The season of giving (and spending!) is here, and you can bet your bottom dollar that consumers everywhere are preparing for it. The question is: are you?...

It’s official! The holidays have arrived, and so have the pricey travel tags (bah humbug). With more than 50% of Americans planning to travel during...

As with most companies these days, we at Access are trying to figure out how to harness the power of artificial intelligence in general – and Chat-GPT's...

Summary: Your members are constantly bombarded with emails, videos, and chat feeds, making it challenging for membership marketers to capture their attention...

Summary: Using data from the 2024 VAESE Alumni Relations Study, we reveal key takeaways for large, medium-sized and small institutions. We reveal how staffing,...

They say the U.S. economy is growing strong. They say inflation is nearly back to normal. They say consumer spending is as strong as ever. They say...

Tackling 12 common fears about launching a non-dues revenue program Summary: Launching any new non-dues revenue program comes with a certain amount of risk....

Summary: Learn about transactional and emotional loyalty, and how to earn them. Understand the importance of member involvement, empowerment, and recognition...

Summary: Millennials and Gen Z now make up a huge part of the workforce, but they're not lining up to join membership organizations. Because they think and act...

Summary: Micro-moments are the brief, intent-driven moments when members turn to their devices to solve a problem. These fleeting moments present a powerful...

Summary: Storytelling is the often-ignored element of effective member communications, yet, it’s a vital tool for connecting with the people you care about...

Perk is such a happy word. Maybe it reminds you of your perky friend with a talent for breathing excitement into a boring day. Or perhaps it conjures memories...

In an ideal world, when new members join your organization, they immediately grasp your core purpose and understand your value proposition. Can you imagine a...

Summary: Long-term survival for membership associations, non-profit groups, and other membership organizations is not a matter of luck. Over the years,...

I joined a professional association once. Over the course of several years and thousands of dollars, this is what I had received for joining: a useful...

Not all member discount programs can really attract and engage your constituents like they promise. Here are 20 of the most important elements to look for in...

Summary In-store discounts are crucial for the success of any membership discount program. Most discount programs only offer online discounts, which are less...

What makes dining discounts a crucial component of your member benefits program's success?

So your thinking about spicing up your benefits package with some compelling new membership perks? Well, well, well, look at you being all savvy! You belong to...

How to Vet and Select a White Label Travel Portal / Private Label Travel Booking Engine Want to know how to identify a white label travel solution for your...

Inflation and other pressures have forced consumers to cut back on expenditures like membership dues. Executives of membership-based groups must expand their...

Customer loyalty is always a hot topic. We're fascinated by the factors that lead customers to form strong relationships with brands. And just like any good...

If you’re an entrepreneur looking to mint your own NFTs, or if you already have a collection of NFTs, and you’re trying to figure out the best way to market...

If you’re interested in adding some membership perks to liven up your benefits package, then congratulations! Many businesses have used perks to deepen their...

Ray Bradbury – author of the space travel and colonization classic The Martian Chronicles – once wrote, “Half of the fun of travel is the aesthetic of...

Member discount programs can be an effective benefit, especially in times of high inflation when members are looking for ways to stretch their paychecks....

More and more large consumer businesses are purposefully devising a difficult and tiresome customer service experience to frustrate customers and generate...

I’m sure we’ve all seen at least one viral video of an unsuspecting (or overconfident) person stepping on a fast-running treadmill only to go flying off the...

If you were to look through the mission statements of most membership organizations, one phrase would stand out over and over again: “helping people”....

Words have power. Just think. I transferred that thought directly from my brain to yours with nothing but a few squiggly marks on a screen. It’s almost like...

There are 525,600 minutes in a year, and as the popular Broadway song asks: “how do you measure a year?” As we at Access look back on 2021, perhaps we’d...

You get seemingly a bazillion of them a day. Some of you probably just immediately toss them into the trash, while others carefully pore through each one,...

Open enrollment season is also known as hug-a-harried-HR-professional season. Okay, I just made that up, but the fact remains that open enrollment is a busy...

Thank goodness for the excellent folks working in the front lines of customer service. You take angry calls and solve problems until the customer is satisfied....

We’ve been sharing the inner workings of the Access’ discount network. With the help of our partnership marketing team, we discuss the current effort to...

For decades, the conventional wisdom has touted this stat: 80% of consumer spending occurs within 20 miles of home. We've cited that stat before, as have...

Last week, we released the article Superior Customer Service: Your Loyalty Program’s Secret Weapon. In it, we discussed the importance of customer service to...

Mobile phones have become so engrained in our day to day, it’s sometimes hard for me to remember life without them. When people seek to interact with their...

In case you haven’t heard, Disneyland in Anaheim, California is now selling tickets in anticipation of welcoming out-of-state guests on June 15. Oo-de-lally!...

Confession time. Whenever I have to call customer service, I always cringe, waiting for that dreaded phone tree before I ever get to talk to a person. I think...

It’s hard to believe that so many companies still devote most of their resources to new business. Don’t get us wrong, a new customer is always a worthy...

We’ve written previously about the underlying science behind why discounts are such a powerful member/customer engagement tool. Aside from the rush of...

Scratch. Bills. Buckaroos. Smackers. Dough. Green. No matter what you call it, there’s just something about cold hard cash. People have more appreciation for...

Did you see the recent statistics predicting a huge resurgence in travel this year? They’re pretty surprising, and yet not surprising at all. Recent studies...

Love at first sight can happen. Just ask Hollywood. Or if you want scientific proof, this study shows it takes about 1/5 of a second for the brain to make all...

A customer is someone who buys something. A member is someone who belongs to something. Every business should aim to have members, even those without a formal...

It’s a new year, a new opportunity to set goals and succeed in any aspect of life one chooses to focus on. The intention of a New Year’s resolution is to...

As 2020 draws to a close, the air is filled with comments like: “There’s no place like home for the holidays… too bad we can’t go.” and “Happy New Year… we...

Just like a juicy Thanksgiving turkey, the best discount programs are made with carefully chosen ingredients that come together to create a recipe for success....

The 2020 US election is complete. We hope everyone was able to vote safely and to make your voices heard. No matter how you feel about the results of any...

When membership organizations make bad decisions, we can learn a lot from their mistakes. Here is a tongue-in-cheek look at ten easy ways to scare away member...

By 2025, non-profit/membership groups will look quite different than they do today. Spurred by the far-reaching impact of the 2020 pandemic, here are ten...

We’re taught pretty young that the shortest route from point A to point B is a straight line. In many cases, this means a straight line is also the fastest and...

People fall in love with brands for many reasons. They're drawn to become loyal through value, performance, branding and their own personal ROI. Great customer...

In our last article, Communicating the Value of Membership: 6 Best Practices for Effective Communication, we discussed how your relationship with your members...

You work so hard to ensure your membership provides value to your members. But it won’t do you any good if your members don’t know about it. The last thing you...

Summer vacations certainly didn’t pan out this year like we all envisioned. Most Spring Break travel was re-routed to the back yard as the entire country...

Much has been studied about the customer journey. The world’s largest brands and corporations have all contributed to the pool of knowledge. They’ve studied...

In March, I set up a Zoom meeting with my family for the first time in my life. Between loud kids of all ages, varied internet speeds, my screen mysteriously...

Want to know how to identify a discount program that can effectively attract and engage your members? This comprehensive buyer's guide gives you the tools you...

You may have noticed our blog has been quiet for a few weeks as we focused elsewhere during the recent outbreak of COVID-19. Or, if you haven’t noticed because...

Typically, organizations partner with a discount program provider, but what about creating one yourself? This article discusses critical factors to help you...

There are many ways to define customer loyalty. First and foremost, customer loyalty occurs when an individual consistently engages with a brand through...

Getting free stuff is great, but… There’s always a little skepticism that comes with a “free” price tag. What’s wrong with it? Does the quality level match the...

Last week, we outlined the process for calculating an actionable number to describe each member’s level of engagement in the article, Gauging Member...

Can you add up the number of members you have? Yes. Can you calculate your quarterly profits? Yep, easily. But can you put a solid number to something as...

If you don’t like receiving gifts, then stop reading.

And just like that, 2019 came and went - yet another prosperous year in the books. And we couldn't have done it without our incredible team of employees here...

We've written previously about the power of building strong relationships with merchant partners. But to highlight our partnership marketing team at Access,...

I’ll never forget how tiny my daughter was when she learned to say “thank you.” If you gave her a marshmallow, you were guaranteed an enthusiastic “thank you.”...

Amazon.com dominates the e-commerce space, and is otherwise wreaking havoc on free white-labeled discount programs. Only discount programs with in-store...

It's a dark, cold night. We're gathered outside around the campfire. There's a noticeable uneasy feeling lurking in the air. So with flashlight in hand, our...

The holidays are nearly here, along with everything they bring: excitement, gifts, feasts, decorations, celebrations… Member loyalty. At least for clients of...

Three things about me... ...I’m a Millennial, median income-earning female. Why did I tell you this? Because simply knowing my age, salary and gender make it...

Researcher Gary W. Toyn has long investigated the challenges faced by organizations across the membership spectrum. In this study, Gary turns his attention to...

Your discount membership programs can have a powerful effect on your members' quality of life. That’s a serious statement. Having the power to affect someone’s...

Last week, we discussed the importance of a great onboarding effort in the article “What is Onboarding? The Next Critical Step in Your Loyalty Program.” And...

Congratulations! You’ve attracted yourself a new member and you’re bound to be best friends forever, right? The reality, unfortunately, is that most members...

Happy Labor Day! Here on the Access Loyalty Blog we talk a lot about member engagement and how to earn it. We dive deep into the world of member loyalty and...

In simplest terms, successfully managing (and growing) any membership organization boils down to two key objectives. Member acquisition. And member retention....

With summer winding down, back-to-school season is in full swing. Many parents have started the annual, costly ritual of shopping for another school year.

I live in a small town and our only shoe store, Payless Shoes, recently went out of business. And while their liquidation sales were awesome – $2 per pair boys...

It seems these days everyone has a loyalty program – coffee shops, restaurants, airlines, education associations, hotels, retailers, etc. And if you’re not...

Access is often used by subscription services as a way for them to bring added value to their product and customers. Discounts offered on or with these...

I have a confession to make. I’m 31 years old (almost 32 actually) and I LOVE Disney more now than I did as a kid. In fact, here’s a little list of all my...

You’ve probably heard it called customer success – after all, that’s what it’s known by in most of the business world. Here at Access, we call it client...

When it comes to running a member benefits or loyalty program, your mama had it all figured out. In honor of mothers everywhere (including mine who's been a...

The term “generation” refers to a group of people born around the same time that share similar experiences and other commonalities. Over time, there have been...

Some businesses seem to have it made. They have a faithful following that only seems to grow year after year.

Loyalty has always been essential to the success of businesses and organizations. And we don't really see this changing anytime soon. And yet, while the role...

When planning for college, I believed journalism was the best (maybe only) choice I had to earn an actual money-making career based on writing. Even though I...

As we mentioned, one of Access' core products is discount programs; bundles of valuable merchant offers sourced by us and offered to consumers through our...

I’m a self-proclaimed Potterhead (a nickname given to fanatics of the Harry Potter series). Needless to say, one of my favorite trips as an adult (yes I said...

Membership groups are trying to adapt to the increasing demands of members who want personally relevant value from the organizations they join. Here’s why...

Those of us here at Access like to think of our little corner of the world as the happiest place on earth. Singing, dancing, group hugs...you know, the kind of...

You might call me a Millennial. I was born right there on the border of what’s considered a Millennial and a Gen Xer. I can sympathize with both, including the...

Have you ever asked yourself what creates loyalty? We have. In fact, we’ve filled several pages devoted to gathering the latest facts and stats about all...

Entering the world of social commentary has its consequences. Just ask Gillette. In case you missed it, the razor-making powerhouse recently released an...

One of the great things about working at Access is its positive attitude towards work-life balance and employee wellness. As a result, I get to spend more time...

Have you seen our Loyalty Statistics: the Ultimate Collection page lately? If not, you should. It’s ballooned to a jaw-dropping 1000+ statistics curated from...

It’s no secret that MoviePass has been making major moves lately in an attempt to stay alive. When it first came out, MoviePass promised its subscribers the...

The holiday spirit is in the air at Access this time of year. When you walk through the office halls on any given day in December, you're bound to see...

We’ve discussed often on this blog how customer engagement begins with employee engagement. In fact, we strongly believe the best path to happy customers is to...

Ever walked away from a brand you love with a sour taste in your mouth after joining their loyalty program? It’s telling that while consumers belong to an...

Whose job is it to create member / customer loyalty for your organization? Account managers? Customer service reps? Maybe YOURS? You may even have a team in...

You may have noticed this blog contains many articles explaining why strong relationships are important in the business world. Organizations need a good...

Perks, rewards and loyalty programs are becoming increasingly popular these days. It seems like they’re everywhere – coffee shops, restaurants, clothing...

As America’s largest discount network, we at Access have a long history of working with fundraising organizations (of all shapes and sizes) to help them raise...

Last week in this article, we introduced you to Access Fundraising (formerly TriQuest Fundraising), a new division of Access Development that has spent its...

We discuss loyalty on this blog a lot – mostly in regards to customer loyalty, member loyalty and employee loyalty. After all, Access Development is the...

Let’s face it. Many membership professionals have struggled with low engagement for so long, some may wonder if their program has been damned to membership...

This is the API that Access built. This is the data that’s easier to share Because of the API that Access built. This is the member who is saving today Thanks...

For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. For instance, it was fun eating the Halloween candy you should’ve been handing out to...

In this day and age, when consumers have more choices on where to spend their money, and more economic incentive to be overly selective about those choices,...

Stated simply, customer engagement is the depth of the relationship a customer has with a brand. It’s a fair question that’s being asked with more frequency,...

There’s a longtime adage in business that says it costs five times more (or even more) to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. It’s cited all...

2018 is the year you're going to make a ton of money. Even more than you're already making. Some of it will come from new customers. But the majority of it...

December is a fun time around Access. Holiday decorations are up (and a contest for best-decorated area is underway), employees are catching the spirit, and...

It seems like we're several years into "personalization" as the hot topic in marketing and sales. You can easily lump it in with other buzzwords like...

When Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in June of this year, brick and mortar grocers collectively shuddered: Amazon, the king of commerce, had...

For many, coupons have strange connotations. They're something moms cut out, or they're only used by poor folks or the elderly. In reality, the opposites of...

You’ve probably heard all the same talk I did. “Robots and AI are the future!” “Automation and personalization are the next great wave of customer engagement!”...

Your customers have a voice. Your customers use that voice to leave feedback about your business within seconds on social media and online review platforms...

Whatever the relationship, there’s one thing that’s valued most. Trust. Most know it’s easier selling to an existing customer than acquiring new ones. While...

Access has always been very good at customer relationships. We wouldn’t have experienced steady, uninterrupted growth for 30+ years if we didn’t have a good...

As engagement, loyalty, and customer success pros, we have a lot of tools to work with. Loyalty programs, incentives, gifts, rewards, content, data, and...

Having a good email database is the first step towards a successful email marketing campaign, but there's more you need to do to achieve that success. Everyone...

Every customer is a member. At least, that's an argument I've tried to make a couple times here. To me, "customer" implies someone that completed a...

Movies and novels throughout history have convinced us that there is such a thing as “love at first sight.” And you know what: it’s true! People do randomly...

So long as you are not doing business in a third-world country, the target market for your business is definitely using email. By the end of 2024, more than...

In the world of work, people take a job because it provides a source of income and benefits. They excel at work, and run through brick walls for their company,...

As a parent, you can bark at your kids all day and they won't hear a word. But somehow they can recite every inane word uttered by their close friends. Kids...

Are you mad at a business right now? Maybe the laundromat lost your favorite shirt. Perhaps the local chicken place served up fried vermin instead of chicken....

Here’s a quick experiment for you: open up your email inbox, and hop over to your promotions tab. What do these marketing emails look like? I’m seeing highly...

If you need to water your lawn, you grab a hose. If you need to get in shape, you purchase a gym membership. And if you need to stem customer churn, you get a...

Is there such a thing as a 30-day plan to guarantee customer engagement and loyalty? Nope. But we’re firm believers that there are specific steps every...

We all want those ride-or-die customers—the ones who are the first in line to buy your new product, test out your new services, or boast on social media about...

Sometimes change stinks. New Coke. When the "Most Interesting Man in the World" turned into one that was just "Sort of Interesting." That one time a major...

We produce a ton of content on the topics of customer engagement and loyalty, discount programs, member benefits, rewards and incentives, consumer research and...

“People who run marathons have lost their @$%@#$ minds!” That was my primary thought around the time I hit mile 20 in my first marathon experience. My body...

It was game three of the World Series, 1932. The New York Yankees versus the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Score tied 4-4. An aging Babe Ruth steps up to the plate...

It's fun to invest in something that can lead to greater loyalty and engagement. Maybe it's a loyalty program, complete with gamification and micro-rewards...

It can feel really good to go along with the crowd. There's not much risk in wearing a Golden State Warriors jersey, buying tickets to a Taylor Swift concert,...

You have to give a lot of credit to new technology companies. They've brought so many good things to life. Like emojis, automated vehicles, and drones that can...

Most readers of this site (and any other website) won't make it past this first sentence. Heck, most of them didn't even make it past the headline.

It is with extremely heavy hearts that we say goodbye to a dear friend and colleague. Dave Cook was an Access standard, serving as our Vice President of...

We've been saying for a few weeks now that discount programs are an effective tool to drive engagement and acquisition. But how do you know it's doing those...

Recently I wrote about how everyone in an organization, in some way, owns customer satisfaction. Even if you never interact with a customer directly, the work...

(This is a guest post from our friends at Credit.com) Attracting customers to your business is an important first step, but it's hardly the end of the road....

For seven years we've published articles and tips on engagement and loyalty. We've developed a great readership and have had the good fortune of starting some...

How do you monetize a loyal customer base? Well, they're already customers…so they're already monetized, right? But there's more they can give you. There are...

What's the quickest way to lose a customer? Have a bad product. What's the quickest way to lose a customer AND their friends/family? Have bad service. Or, to...

Let me ask you a question: Who owns the customer experience at your company? Who's responsible for making sure people return again and again? Account managers,...

Step 1: Get loyal customers Step 2: Profit That's the dream! We all know step one is a pain in the rear, but once you get the loyalty and engagement, the money...

Nobody likes popups on websites. They're intrusive. Invasive. Repulsive. But they work. Go to the most popular online marketing blogs right now, and you'll be...

If you work in customer/member retention, at some point you've asked yourself in desperation, "What in the &#%@ do these people want?" Some days it feels like...

Anyone can get customers. Customer acquisition can be gamed by throwing money, hiring more sales people, even outright trickery. Customer loyalty is a much...

To open 2016, we put forth a bold suggestion that would help every company create better customer engagement and loyalty. We doubt any of you took the new...

It's hard to believe that another year is already at an end, but the cold weather and snow outside our office are constant reminders that 2017 is just around...

It seems like just last week we were suggesting companies take their 2016 business development budgets and dump all that money into customer loyalty. But time...

Consumers carry big sticks these days. Just ask anyone who's ever been tasked with online brand management. Nothing can bring a large corporate empire to its...

Normally, this space is reserved for discussion of customer engagement and loyalty, of discount programs and oodles of statistics. We're going to very briefly...

At this point, customer engagement still feels a bit nebulous. Some, including yours truly, have put definitions and ideas around it. For the most part, it's...

As it turns out, marketing hype folks are onto something with this idea of "hyperlocal." After all, we just published research that shows consumers are staying...

92% of consumers aren't going beyond 20 minutes to make routine purchases. That's the big takeaway from our recent survey on consumer spending proximity. (Be...

Is it possible we're overthinking customer engagement and loyalty? A quick glance around at some of the commentary in the industry hits on some deep concepts....

A few weeks back we discussed the ways that blogging can be used specifically to engage and retain customers. It's one of the great things about social media -...

We've all done business with a company that clearly does not give a crap about earning customer loyalty. It's. So. Frustrating. They take your money without...

Stay with me here. A user is your customer. A customer is your user. But the user experience (UX) is a very different animal than the customer experience (CX)....

There's a very good chance that if you're reading this, you stumbled over here from one of our stats pages. In case you're new to our blog, allow me to...

Don't worry, this isn't another internet marketing guilt trip about why you should be blogging. Well, at least it isn't a guilt trip. Most internet marketing...

There are many retail pundits who say you shouldn't market your business with discounts. They say you'll damage profitability and bring in a bunch of customers...

Sometimes, it's best to just ignore what customers are saying. Is that blasphemy? We've preached "customer feedback is as precious as gold" as much as anyone....

The first popup on the internet was probably built with good intentions. "I really want people to see my message, so I'm going to float it above the page to...

"What exactly does Access Development do? Some kind of programming?" With a name like Access Development, we get that question frequently. But most people...

That's a ridiculous sandwich. And not the greatest photo, admittedly. That's what it looked like as leftovers about six hours after a recent team lunch. But...

Think of a professional association or membership organization you’re a member of. Now think of the benefits you get from being a member of said organization....

Technology is advancing rapidly. As in, “Is the Terminator a possibility?” is an actual conversation occurring in the technology world right now. Virtual...

Take a peek outside your window right now, and chances are you’ll see a small herd of wandering teenagers and Millennials, staring at their phones and...

Last week a post on the Access Perks Blog questioned whether employee loyalty is actually good for the employee. In many companies the answer is no. In those...

Consumers are terrifying. Directly or indirectly, they control the fate of every business. Yet they’re often erratic They’re prone to love you one minute and...

Loyalty programs don’t build loyalty. Right? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to believe, according to many popular business pundits? Let’s run with that. Let's...

Putting a clock to something makes it more exciting. Imagine sports without a clock. At some point, the ref just decides that’s enough basketball and blows the...

Access was the first discount program in the world to launch a mobile coupon network and app, My Deals Mobile. In the beginning, people were only just coming...

You’re doing what we suggested earlier this year and thinking of customers as members, right? After all, they’re yours for the taking every time they want to...

You should be sending more emails. Yes, we just talked about how email is in trouble. Yet here we are suggesting you increase your sending frequency. You still...

As an early Gmail user, I was fortunate enough to grab a short, common email address. Like having a basic, simple name on Twitter, I like to think it has some...

It shouldn’t surprise you that many of us here at Access are coupon junkies. Our primary product is discount programs, after all. It’s not uncommon to see team...

Consider, for a moment, all of the little elements that play a role in customer loyalty. Pricing, branding, peers, performance, experience, whims, proximity,...

Does it seem like more brands are wanting to have a DTR conversation with you? In case you’re not familiar with the acronym, DTR means “define the...