Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Loyalty Live: CataBoom’s Aaron Lobliner on Gamification, Personalization, and Driving Loyalty in 2025
Brands today face a growing challenge: how to keep loyalty programs engaging and relevant in a market filled with similar offerings. As customers demand more tailored experiences and meaningful interactions, the loyalty landscape is shifting toward smarter integrations, innovative technology, and creative strategies.
In this edition of Loyalty Live, Loyalty360 sits down with Aaron Lobliner, Chief Client Officer at Cataboom, to explore the trends and strategies brands are leveraging to create impactful loyalty programs. From balancing innovation with consistency to integrating gamification and non-transactional rewards, Aaron provides valuable insights into how brands can differentiate themselves and foster deeper customer engagement.
Good afternoon, good morning, smart Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. Want to welcome you back to another edition of Loyalty Live. In this series, we speak to leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement but, most importantly, impact customer loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Aaron Lobliner. He's a Chief Client Officer at Cataboom and today we're going to be exploring the key trends and strategies shaping customer loyalty in 2025. Welcome, aaron. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us. How are you today? Hey, how's it going?
Speaker 2:Mark. Welcome, Aaron. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us.
Speaker 1:How are you today? Hey, how's it going, mark? First off, we saw in the 2024 State of Customer Loyalty Report that 79% of brands have an interest in updating, enhancing or redoing their customer loyalty offerings. Based on your experience with clients.
Speaker 2:what are the most common types of enhancements brands are requesting in their loyalty programs for 2025? It's a good question. You know, obviously I'm going to be a little bit biased, coming from Cataboom, so you know, but in all reality, we are hearing a lot about gamification. Right, I mean, that is our world, but gamification is a really common enhancement, you know, I think with the other things that we keep hearing a lot about and it's related to us.
Speaker 2:But I think, just as we talk to different clients and loyalty platform partners, a big part is like the integrations and how things fit into the tech stack.
Speaker 2:Folks integrating things like tying data to existing CRMs or weaving in CDPs like a Braze and an OptiMove, and how those things all fit interwoven into an entire experience, right. So I think that key part of brands that are like we have to get our integrations right, we have to have our tech stack right, we have all the things talking to each other and working together synergistically. Gamification obviously can fit into the fold of that, and then, within that, things like personalization, which fits into gamification, but it's also independent of that. I think those are some of the biggest enhancements in kind of the buzzy things that keep coming up in conversations, and I think the reason we hear a lot about those is because it's related to us, right, how do they integrate us? How do we use some of the cool new technologies on our end to be able to integrate smoother and easier and faster and I think that's been a boon for us, frankly, because those kind of things are important for the clients um, those things become now fundamental, so I think that's that's.
Speaker 1:that's how I would answer that first question and how should brands incorporate these new trends in new processes into their existing loyalty strategies? You know how can brands strike a balance between innovating within their loyalty programs and maintaining consistency that's understood for their current customers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the old, you know who moved my cheese and you don't want to change things too much for existing consumers, too much, or you risk losing them, but you also want to keep it fresh and interesting. I think a lot of the things are around actually making it additive, right. It's about. I think, when you think about it and we talk to so many brands and it's a blessing that we have is about how do you give people more value, right. How do you take the experience they have, their time with the brand, the products, and how do you make sure that they add more value? And I think, when you can understand that you're providing more value and the consumer feels that, I think that's where it becomes much more relevant, and so I think those are really important things.
Speaker 2:As you strike those balances between new features and existing, how do you make it valuable? It doesn't mean it's more complicated, it doesn't mean that they need to spend necessarily a lot more time, but how are you making it more interesting and relevant to them as you do this? I think the other thing that really becomes part of that is a lot of data, right. The Loyalty360 data, too is, and some we're going to go through this in some of the next questions. So it's like you know, how do you cut through the clutter, how do you also, you know, include ways and reasons for people to engage outside of just transaction? Right, how do you make it real loyalty and not just a points program tied to purchase and I think that's where brands are also starting to go is like that's where we're going to look at incremental things and how do we drive a balance because you're providing additive value outside of just transaction. That's what we're seeing there.
Speaker 1:In our state of customer loyalty report, we saw that 72% of brands felt that there is a sea of sameness regarding customer loyalty programs. Basically, as you know, it's hard to differentiate between different programs. Can you share an example or two of a brand who has successfully differentiated itself through a unique strategy, campaign, reward or customer loyalty offering?
Speaker 2:itself through a unique strategy, campaign, reward or customer loyalty offering. It's amazing how many times we've heard these words from clients. Right, I saw the data. I think that's an at minimum. I think a lot of brands feel that way and I think brands are looking at how do they leverage their existing loyalty provider to do more. I know the world features a lot of replatforming and a lot of that is driven it's like how do you differentiate your program? And I think technologies like ours allow you to augment existing platforms and do some different things without having to do wholesale changes in many cases.
Speaker 2:Just as a as a way to directly answer this question, you know I can put a specific lens on on fast fast food or QSR, and you know I I it's like two or three programs that come to mind that we've done just in the last year or so. You know how do you differentiate, right? So a lot of QSR programs are very transactional, right? You're going to, you're going to get a certain number of sandwiches and you're going to get some points and you get a free thing. You know, you see this with pizza. You see this across, and there's some that are terrific and there's some that obviously have some opportunity areas. You know. Look at you know program we did with Chipotle earlier in the year and how they really focused on brand benefits and using a really really elegant quiz trivia mechanic and driving you know BOGO burritos and really using this to differentiate by actually using gamification to focus on brand benefits and like, oh, wow, I didn't realize this is what they do for sustainability or the quality of the product and how they you know how they treat their employees. So that's a really great way of how you're really driving out of the sea of sameness, because you're given a reason to engage and have great incentives. But also like, oh, I didn't realize that about the brand. Oh, that's pretty cool. You know, we've done some amazing programs with Taco Bell where, within their loyalty program, one of the things they do is a roundup to charity, and so we actually have created a custom game that's highly reusable for them, that allows them to earn a coin to play in a skill game that lives within their app, and then they can actually unlock free product directly to the thing.
Speaker 2:So, instead of just round up the charity and then it happens, you round up the charity and now you also get a coin to play in this game. It just makes it so much interesting. Now they have something fun to do, and so these are ways that you can start to differentiate. These are core things. But now, how do we add a layer? How do we add some fun? How do we make it different? So now we're giving people a reason to now. Oh, you know what I will do that? That sounds cool. Okay, that's different than somebody else is doing. A lot of people have a round of the charity, but nobody was doing it the way Taco Bell is doing, right, a lot of people do trivia, but not quite the way Chipotle was doing. Now, chipotle, it's different, and you're seeing the velocity and I can't share the numbers, but the velocity of people engaging in this thing is is incredible. It's frankly incredible and that's why they keep doing them. So you know, I think that's one category and a couple examples for you that really have been like wows.
Speaker 1:One of the big areas of interest is non-transactional rewards, such as exclusive experiences or benefits incorporated into loyalty programs and strategies to strengthen the customer engagement and differentiate their program. Can you talk a little bit more about how brands should be looking at and considering?
Speaker 2:these non-transactional rewards. I mean obviously very biased again, but gamification is a great way to pull that forward. But I think of, in this case, most brands have some kind of sponsorship it's a sports, it's a music, it's an artist, it's a whatever, a charity, and so I think, as you think about those exclusive experiences like having gamification, even things like sweepstakes or chances to instantly win, or unlocking discounts or offers to concerts or tours, those are a great way to do that. So you take your loyalty program. Obviously you want to drive transaction, obviously you want to get people to engage, but you can use these tools that may be, you know, some kind of corporate sponsorship or whatever, and it can really now provide relevance to people.
Speaker 2:You know we haven't have clients that may have multiple sponsorships, and one thing I'm a really big fan of is is being able to pick your prize that you're playing for, right. So now you give the element of choice. If I'm going to oversimplify, but if you have an NFL sponsorship and a CMA country music award sponsorship, let's just pretend you have two choices. Well, if I'm not, if I'm going to play, I may want to play for the NFL prize, but if my wife wants to play. Maybe she's not interested in the NFL, but she'd be really interested in going to the CMAs. So now you could have one program right. You have two different price choices. Now you've reached both my wife and I right, and so that's a great way you can start to weave some of those things in there, so it works.
Speaker 1:When you look at new technologies such as AI, gamification, zero party data collection, which do you believe will have the greatest impact on customer loyalty in 2025, and why?
Speaker 2:I almost think that's not fair for me to answer this. So, yeah, I mean, you know, the reality is, I think they're all interwoven and AI is its own thing. I think a lot of great loyalty platforms and I think there are a lot of members of Loyalty360 that have a really great investment in AI and AI is a lot of that logic and how you're serving up data to the right people and what is the right messaging and what is the right point structure, and I think there's some great things out there. I've seen, I think it's still there's. I think, if you fast forward even two or three years, the the AI, integration and loyalty is going to be profound.
Speaker 2:The next two, though gamification and the zero first party data, to me are actually one thing, because gamification is a tool to capture that and when you take, when you make something fun, when you make something engaging. We have lots of mechanics now where we can do some really cool things that consumers engage in. They have fun, they may or may not even realize they're doing it, and you can capture this rich data based on how people engage, and now that can feed back. Go back to the conversation about integrations. Those things are all integrated feeds right into a CRM or CDP. A Braze, an OptiMove. Those kind of companies can now do something with that data personalize the data.
Speaker 2:How do you get your next message? Based on what we learned? Who gets what? That's where it really sings, and I imagine that also ultimately flows back to AI, right, and so that's where these things are really working is like. We can use this loyalty program to capture and engage and motivate consumers. We're driving behavior around transactions. We're also using this as a tool for our clients to become smarter marketers. And how do they find more consumers? How do they engage these people better? And so, using tools like gamification to drive first party data, that AI can now take that data and do really smart stuff with. That's where this really works together. It's not A, b or C, it's how it all works together.
Speaker 1:Gamification, as you know, has become a popular strategy for driving engagement in loyalty programs. And what are some successful examples of gamification in customer loyalty and how should brands use them, or how are they using them to enhance customer experience?
Speaker 2:there's I. I I wish we had a long time to go through this. I could sit here and probably show you 20 examples. I I picked out a couple that I think are really interesting. Um, we just uh, our, our new client, loblaws.
Speaker 2:Obviously, in canada, um just has a, a great program for the month of december that they're using engaging within their loyalty program. It's really a simple mechanic but I think simple works. But they have it integrated all throughout their system. So we talked back about integration hooks. It's all wired throughout their whole tech stack and how everything synergistically works together. It's tied into different manufacturer partners and different offers so consumers can come and engage and play daily. There's amazing offers and rewards. All sorts of metrics are in place to track the behaviors and the incrementality. So that's a really cool program. On its outside, looking in, it's super simple. On the inside it's super amazing, and how they're building this as a trackable experience to drive very, very specific behaviors. You know I compare that versus another new program.
Speaker 2:If you have a chance to see it at KFC, kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia, they have like an evergreen program that just launched in their app using one of our games. Very different than Loblaws from an objective is they're using a kind of a catch game and it's a kind of like an eight bit creative idea that they skin the game with and instead of just playing the game and see if you want, or playing the game and entering the sweepstakes, they actually have created three levels and so they gamified. The gamification where each level you play gets a little bit harder. So the first one you have to like catch 10 drumsticks in a bucket and then the next one's like 14 drumsticks. Each level unlocks a series of offers. Now offers get progressively better. So the better you perform, the better you can unlock offers and it's an evergreen thing where they can change out the offers Super rich, engaging. They're already seeing terrific results.
Speaker 2:So that's where you can see is like examples of gamification can be around something sitting in an app short term program, around holiday and vendor partners, something like KFC. That's an always on thing trying to drive much more rich engaging behavior. There's lots of fun ways we do it, like another one we have have Footlocker uses us in just a whole host of very strategic ways, but one of them is around point mitigation. Right, so how do you use gamification to mitigate point liability in a program, but do it in a way that the consumers have a lot of value, and so that's become a very fundamental part of what that client's doing. And, frankly, point burden in the loyalty program has become one of the number one use cases of gamification across our six or seven dozen clients around the world and how they use gamification to drive some of these specific examples of behavior change.
Speaker 1:As customer interactions continue to span across digital and physical channels, how should loyalty programs integrate both in-store and online experiences for a seamless and cohesive customer journey? How can brands create loyalty programs that work across these different touch points mobile app, in-store, website, social media while maintaining a unified customer experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I go back. So my roots were in retail and shopper marketing, on the agency and on the retailer side, and I still go back to the old days where it is around, I think, the customer journey or the shopper journey, if you want to put it in that lens. When you think of retail or even QSR and some other categories, you know we used to think it in a much more linear way A, b, c, d and somebody's shopping and, as obviously we know, that environment. Even if you're deciding where to go to lunch or where to buy a Christmas present or where to get your groceries, it's not always A, b, c, d and so it can be a bit varied. And I think when you think about digital and physical, when you think about how these things are, it's like how do you then find a way to capture, engage and motivate people and having resources and reasons to engage in value added ways around those pre?
Speaker 2:I always think of it like the pre, during and post shop.
Speaker 2:Right, when somebody is in pre shop, it could be in a number of ways, but how does a CDP or AI or different tools within the program allow them the access to experience?
Speaker 2:Maybe it's playing a game so they can unlock an offer, like KFC the KFC example I shared Maybe it's some other type of experience we did a great thing where we were leveraging a combination of physical and digital for at home, the home home goods retailer, amazing client and they did a virtual scavenger hunt, but it was tied to physical, so you had to go find all five sections in the store, scan the QR code on the POS in order to play each of the five games right and each had unique chances to win and drive into very specific things that they wanted to in the shopping experience.
Speaker 2:So that's a great example of okay, like, say, a KFC or a Loblaws, which is a lot more around pre, you can have different opportunities for people to engage during and then, similarly, you can have all sorts of reasons to engage post-shop. So it's providing the tool set and then making sure that consumers have reasons like this is going to have some value to making my experience more relevant, my shopping trip more valuable. I'm going to save money or I'm going to discover something new that I might, that I might love, right, that's that. That's where those things are working.
Speaker 1:What barriers do brands face in achieving real time personalization and how can they overcome these obstacles? You know, how can brands ensure that their personalization efforts feel authentic and not invasive to the customer?
Speaker 2:So I'll keep this one simple. But it's really data Like. I see we hear this all the time Brands have just it's the data flow. There's so much data, there's so much opportunity using the data. Where does it flow? Is it real time? Do they have to do batch files? What are the you know? How does it fit into their CRM? Are they using a braze or an opti-move?
Speaker 2:Optimove to really do some next level things. I think that's where the challenge is right. So the barriers are a lot of. It is IT and integration and really getting that. There's some that have it all the way to a 10 out of 10. And there's a lot of them that are probably at a three and they're like I got to get to a six this year and I think that's a really important part of like, okay, you got all this data, so what? And then now you got to do some stuff with it, and so I think that's a really important part.
Speaker 2:And then you know, personalization efforts feel can really feel authentic. I mean, I, you know I'm most familiar with our platform, but, like, we have the ability where you can create a single program and then version it the creative, the offers, the prizing so you'd have one program with four or five or N versions where somebody can be directed to a certain experience. If they're I'm just going to oversimplify male, female, young, old, millennial, whatever could have different creative, it could have different prizing, so you now can now start to really start tailoring those things. So it feels authentic, because that's all you see. And now the idea is you've leveraged all this great data and AI that you have in order to make sure that you get the thing that's best for you. So that's how that can also come to life.
Speaker 1:And how do you think customer expectations will evolve in 2025? We know for a number of years they've been growing. The customers want to have a relationship. There wants to be some empathy and reciprocity with the brand. How do you think customer expectations will evolve in 2025? And how should brands be prepared to meet them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this one this is my lens on it I think everybody wants to feel special, right. If you look at you look at X, you look at Instagram, like everybody wants to be a VIP right. Whether they are or they're not, they want to be a VIP and I think consumers kind of demand that and I think programs can do that. You know, whether you call them a VIP or not, people want to be treated special and, frankly, they'll chirp if they're not in a lot of cases. So how does the program, how do all the elements within a program help do that? How does somebody make them feel special? How do they be a VIP right?
Speaker 2:If you're American Airlines and like you go like, oh yeah, I'm platinum, you know like and oh, you know, you feel really important, right. And same thing is, like I'm part of this program, I want to feel special. So that's the user experience, that's the rewards, you know, that's the economy of the program, how the points, and then things like gamification. You can have games tied only to certain member tiers. Maybe that's to drive somebody up to a higher tier or to reward a VIP tier with special offers or different things. So that's how I think, that's where you think about consumer expectations. Most of these are tools people already have, but how do we then use that to make people feel special, to be a VIP? And that's where you're going to really start to drive a lot of this true loyalty going to really start to drive a lot of this true loyalty.
Speaker 1:How can brands keep up with evolving customer preferences while managing the risk of overwhelming their customer loyalty programs with too many features and too many benefits?
Speaker 2:I like to call this keeping things brilliantly simple, right, like we're in this world, like, if you know, mark, if you go and ask whatever you know, your friends or your colleagues or your spouse, like, hey, what's going on? Oh, it's so busy, oh, I'm so busy, everybody's busy. Well, I don't know, somehow everybody has a chance to watch everything on Netflix and never be behind. And there's still, there's still super busy. So, whatever you have, you roll with it, everybody's busy. So, how do you, how do you, keep things simple, Right, and I think the simple things are often the best thing, and the reality is, it's a perceived thing as much as a real thing, right, the perceived likelihood or the perceived reality of how intense something is. And so, keeping an experience straightforward, making things fun yeah, I think we do really good, like. If you've seen some of our taglines, I like to say you know, we do serious fun, right, it's serious, it's business, but it's also fun. That's how things break through. It's okay to have fun for most brands, right, like, and having things that are fun is a way to break through. You have fun, you have an incentive and I think, like in our world, it's about honey and vinegar or carrot and a stick. Like how do you make it very relevant and interesting? You know what Made people smile a little bit, Like oh, that was surprising, oh that's interesting, oh that was kind, it was cute, whatever Like, and I think that's how you start to keep up with evolving preferences and you don't overwhelm people. It's like, oh, that was a fun 60 seconds or 90 seconds of my day, like I'll do that again, like and we're seeing that.
Speaker 2:And that's where, like certain types of these programs, when somebody does an instant win, the average person's playing in many cases four to six times. If it's like a month long program, like now that you think about it, somebody is going to say like, yeah, am I going to be overwhelmed? Well, people are voting with their thumbs and they're coming back four to six times and spending 90 seconds. And brands are going like wait a minute, I just got somebody to spend five, six, eight minutes with my brand, more than they usually would have because of this thing, and they had some fun and now they can try attribution back to, you know, rewards or offers or prizes, like it actually works and it's kind of cool, right. So that's where I go. Like how do you keep things brilliantly simple. That's what I have.
Speaker 1:Aaron, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great hearing your perspective on customer loyalty and what trends we should be cognizant of in 2025. And we look forward to learning more from you and your team in the coming year. So thank you again.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That was super cool. I'm glad we got to chat and look forward to the next one. These are awesome.
Speaker 1:To everyone else. I want to thank you for taking the time to listen today. Make sure you join us back for another edition of Multilife soon and hopefully enjoy these top trends for 2025. Have a wonderful day, have a happy new year.