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Loyalty platforms can help businesses organize rewards, offers, referrals and customer communications—but buying the software does not guarantee that customers will return. Retention depends on whether the program offers a clear benefit, makes it easy to earn and use rewards, and produces value for both the customer and the business.
How loyalty platforms can support customer retention
A loyalty platform provides the operational tools behind a program: it can manage members and rules, record eligible activity, issue points or vouchers, run promotions, administer tiers, coordinate partner offers and connect loyalty activity with CRM or marketing systems. Those capabilities can help a business deliver a more consistent experience across channels.
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The retention mechanism is the program, not the software alone. A reward can give someone a reason to make another purchase; recognition or tiers can make continued engagement feel worthwhile; relevant offers can make communications more useful; and referrals can give satisfied members a way to recommend the business. Each depends on a benefit customers understand and can actually redeem, as well as economics the business can sustain.
Salesforce describes its Loyalty Management product as supporting recognition, reward and retention. Antavo and Yotpo describe capabilities such as configurable rewards, tiers, referrals and omnichannel engagement. These are vendor descriptions of product functionality, not independent evidence that one platform increases retention more than another.
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What the reported loyalty figures do—and do not—show
Salesforce’s 2026 guide reports that 77% of shoppers belong to at least one loyalty program, while 35% belong to a program they have never used. It also reports that 84% of loyalty program members say programs make them more likely to repurchase. These figures describe reported participation and intent; they are not a measured retention lift caused by loyalty software. Salesforce, The new loyalty landscape.
In a Salesforce report on 2024 holiday shopping, 72% of U.S. shoppers surveyed said loyalty programs make them more likely to continue doing business with brands. That is a survey response, not a controlled comparison of customers with and without a program. Salesforce’s 2025 holiday shopping report.
A Mastercard-commissioned Forrester Consulting study conducted in January 2024 among 210 loyalty program management decision-makers found that 47% of loyalty leaders, compared with 31% of less mature organizations, reported year-over-year customer retention performance. The comparison is an association reported by a commissioned survey; it does not establish that adopting a platform caused the difference. Mastercard’s research and insights page.
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Treat these findings as context for customer attitudes and organizational differences, not as a forecast for your own program. The cited vendor and vendor-commissioned sources do not establish a representative causal retention effect for buying loyalty software.
What to look for in loyalty software
Start with the program your business needs to operate, then check whether the platform supports it in the channels and systems your customers and teams use. Common comparison criteria include:
- Program model: B2C, B2B, partner or channel incentives, subscription-style membership, or a combination. Enrollment, earning events and administration differ across these models.
- Reward mechanics: Points, vouchers, tiers, custom currencies, referral incentives, partner rewards, experiences or recognition for non-purchase activity.
- Channels and integrations: CRM, commerce, marketing, point of sale, mobile app and digital wallet connections. Confirm the exact integrations, data flows and implementation requirements for the edition under consideration.
- Administration and flexibility: Whether teams can configure earning rules, offers and journeys themselves, and what technical work or controls are required to do so safely.
- Measurement and service: Whether the platform can support analysis of member behavior, redemptions, service experience and outstanding reward obligations.
- Privacy controls: How consent, access, deletion, export, archiving and restrictions on processing are handled.
Examples illustrate the range, not a ranking: Salesforce describes CRM-connected loyalty for B2B and B2C programs; Antavo describes configurable currencies, tiers, workflows, referrals and point-of-sale or wallet engagement; Yotpo describes ecommerce-oriented rewards, VIP tiers, referrals and omnichannel loyalty. Product capabilities and integrations should be checked with each vendor for the current edition and the business’s requirements. Salesforce Loyalty Management, Salesforce Help: Loyalty Management, Antavo loyalty platform and Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals.
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Design the program to reduce friction
Make the benefit clear at enrollment
Explain what members get, how they earn it and how they can use it before asking them to join. A customer should not have to decode complicated rules to decide whether participation is worthwhile.
Make earning and redemption easy
In a Salesforce retail article, 61% of consumers said they would use rewards more if retailers applied them automatically, 51% if it were easier to track rewards, and 41% if terms and conditions were simpler. The page does not state a publication date for these figures. They point to practical design opportunities, but remain reported preferences rather than proof of a particular retention outcome. Salesforce’s retail loyalty article.
Where appropriate, show balances and progress clearly, make eligible rewards easy to find, and avoid redemption steps that require customers to contact support or remember obscure conditions. Test the full member journey, including what happens when a reward is unavailable or an earning event is disputed.
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Match engagement to the business
Not every program should reward only purchases. Depending on the business model, a program might recognize referrals, surveys or other useful engagement. The platform should support the actions the business wants to encourage without making the program’s value or rules confusing.
Build data governance into operations
Loyalty programs collect and use customer data. Decide who can access it, how consent is recorded, and how data can be exported, deleted or archived. Define any restrictions on processing and align program operations with the business’s privacy obligations. Salesforce’s documentation specifically identifies these data-management considerations for loyalty programs. Salesforce Help: Loyalty Management.
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How to measure whether a loyalty program is working
Sign-ups are a measure of enrollment, not retention. A useful measurement plan follows what members do and what the program costs to deliver.
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- Participation: Enrollment and the share of enrolled members who are active over a defined period.
- Retention behavior: Repeat purchase, renewal or other return behavior that fits the business model, alongside inactivity and lapse.
- Program use: Earning, redemption and the share of rewards that go unused.
- Advocacy: Referral activity when referrals are part of the program.
- Member experience: Satisfaction with service and with the program’s rules and redemption process.
- Economics: Reward and discount costs, margin effects, partner expenses, operating and service burden, and the value of outstanding points or other obligations.
Salesforce’s loyalty KPI documentation includes Member Services CSAT and Points Contribution to Liability, reflecting that service experience and outstanding reward obligations matter alongside customer activity. Salesforce Help: Loyalty analytics KPIs.
Interpret comparisons carefully: people who choose to join may already be more engaged than people who do not. Where feasible, use a suitable baseline or experiment to estimate whether the program changed behavior, rather than attributing every difference between members and non-members to the program. The sources cited here do not prescribe one universal evaluation method.
Choose for fit, not feature count
A platform with many capabilities can still be a poor fit if the business cannot implement or govern it, if its integrations do not match existing systems, or if the program is hard for customers to use. Compare the options against the operating model you actually need—reward rules, channels, administrative control, measurement and privacy—then validate requirements, edition limits and implementation details with the vendor. The sources cited here do not establish comparable current prices, total cost of ownership, implementation durations or independent product scores.
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