Loyalty: It starts with Maslow

Abraham Maslow. You probably recognise the name from the pyramid, his Hierarchy of Needs. It's one of those ideas from your university years that "kind of" applies to the real world. Fair enough, he wrote it during WWII, which was a while ago.

Since the 1940s there have been plenty of interpretations, and just as many arguments about how right or wrong Maslow actually was. We're not here to settle that debate. We're here because, decades later, the core idea still holds up in loyalty: people don't stay loyal because of points. They stay loyal because a program meets something deeper than a transaction.

Bond.

Do your members know other members? Do you let people connect, or are they isolated in a database? Are you proactive about turning your best members into advocates, or are you just hoping they show up again?

Learn.

Do you make it easy to understand how the program actually works, from how points earn and expire to how they upgrade and redeem? More importantly, do you help members learn more about your business through the program itself, rather than just through transactional emails?

Defend.

Members spend real money with you. What happens to that trust when you devalue the program, or take something away? Setting aside breakage, how well do you communicate around changes? Do you give people a fair way to minimise their loss, or do you just quietly expire their points and hope nobody notices?

Maslow wasn't writing about loyalty programs, but the questions he raised, about what people actually need beyond the surface transaction, are exactly the ones worth asking about yours.