How to Achieve 44X More Effective Personalisation
Why do customers engage with multiple similar brands instead of forming deep, lasting relationships with just one?
For years, brands have assumed that the biggest challenge in customer loyalty is disloyalty. But the real issue isn’t that customers lack loyalty. It’s that they are loyal to many brands at once.
This phenomenon, known as “promiscuous loyalty,” means that customers spread their engagement across multiple brands, accumulating rewards, engaging with promotions, and maintaining multiple brand relationships simultaneously. Instead of exclusive brand affinity, brands are caught in a cycle of competing for customer attention in a crowded loyalty landscape.
The question isn’t, “How do we make customers more loyal?” Instead, brands should ask, “How do we create trust and relevance so that customers choose us every time?”
The answer? Customer Fidelity. And achieving it requires a shift from product-driven loyalty tactics to personalisation that serves unmet customer needs.
Why Traditional Loyalty Models Reinforce Promiscuous Loyalty
Customers today are not disengaged. They simply have options. They choose brands based on convenience, availability, or short-term benefits, not necessarily because they have a deep preference for one over the other.
There are two big reasons why this is happening.
#1 Traditional loyalty programs reward promiscuous loyalty.
Customers sign up for multiple programs, accumulating points and discounts without a strong commitment to any single brand.
#2 Company-driven personalisation is outdated.
Brands push communications based on past transactions rather than understanding what customers need right now. Retargeting and mass marketing lack context. Customers ignore communications that are not relevant to their immediate journey.
The Impact of Promiscuous Loyalty
Instead of reinforcing preference, traditional loyalty programs keep brands in the rotation but not at the top of the customer’s list.
To move from promiscuous loyalty to customer fidelity, brands must go beyond incentives and start solving real customer problems in ways that build trust.
The Power of Customer-Triggered Personalisation
A recent study by Haan, Wiesel & Pauwels found that personalising communications based on customers’ jobs on their path to purchase is up to 44X more effective than product-driven personalisation.
What does this mean for brands? Instead of predicting customer needs based on past purchases, brands should deliver personalisation that aligns with a customer’s real-time decision-making process.
Customers expect personalisation to do three things:
- Recognise their value to the brand.
- Help them get more value from the products they already own.
- Recommend better solutions when they enter the market for something new.
Why does this approach work?
- Customer-triggered communications (e.g., retargeting ads) were up to 9X more effective than traditional brand-driven email marketing.
- Customer-triggered communications integrated into the path to purchase (e.g., online portals, decision-support tools) were up to 44X more effective than generic company-driven communications.
The takeaway?
Customers engage more when brands help them make better decisions at key moments rather than simply pushing products. This insight is the foundation of Zero-Shared Data personalisation, a privacy-first approach that allows brands to deliver relevant experiences without tracking or storing sensitive customer data.
The Role of Zero-Shared Data in Customer Fidelity
If brands want to build customer fidelity, they need to provide hyper-personalised, real-time assistance without invading privacy.
Why hasn’t this been done before?
Traditional personalisation has relied on third-party tracking, cookies, and stored customer data, but this approach has fundamental flaws.
- Customers are rejecting data surveillance and demanding privacy-first experiences.
- Brands lack a real-time understanding of what customers need in the moment, leading to irrelevant recommendations.
How does Zero-Shared Data solve this?
With on-device intelligence, brands can process personal insights directly on a customer’s device without ever storing or sharing sensitive data.
This approach delivers:
- Customer-controlled data sharing—customers decide what they share and when.
- Real-time relevance—brands can respond to immediate needs without guessing or relying on outdated data.
- Privacy-first personalisation that builds trust without compromising data security.
The result? Instead of passively tracking customer behavior, brands can empower customers to participate actively in shaping their own experience. This leads to stronger engagement and higher conversion rates.
How to Move from Promiscuous Loyalty to Customer Fidelity
Brands looking to achieve customer fidelity should shift from incentive-based retention to insight-driven, need-based personalisation.
1. Identify and Support Customers’ Jobs on Their Path to Purchase. Map out the sequence and flow of a customer’s decision-making journey. Improve or remove touchpoints that don’t contribute to helping customers make better decisions.
2. Shift from Company-Driven to Customer-Triggered Communications. Traditional marketing pushes irrelevant messages. Instead, focus on delivering insights at the right moment. Use context-aware engagement to improve message timing and relevance.
3. Enable Trustable Data Exchange Through Private Personalisation. Customers will willingly share insights if they see a clear, personal benefit. Use on-device intelligence to personalise in real time without storing sensitive data.
The Future of Customer Loyalty: Serving, Not Selling
The era of transactional loyalty is over. Today’s customers don’t need another rewards program. They need brands that help them make better decisions.
Promiscuous Loyalty is a symptom of a bigger problem: brands failing to create true preference. Customer Fidelity is built through unmet-need fulfillment, enabled by trustable data exchange.
Personalisation integrated into the path to purchase is up to 44X more effective than traditional, company-driven marketing. With Zero-Shared Data, brands can achieve this without tracking, storing, or exploiting sensitive customer data.
The future of personalisation isn’t about tracking customer behavior. It’s about empowering customers to participate in creating the experiences they want. Brands that make this shift won’t just win transactions. They’ll earn lasting, exclusive customer fidelity.
Final Thought: Are You Ready to Build Customer Fidelity?
The brands that win in the future of loyalty will be those that serve customer needs rather than just their own business goals. Are you ready to move beyond outdated loyalty models? Want to learn how Zero-Shared Data can help your brand achieve up to 44X more effective interactions?
Now is the time to stop chasing promiscuous loyalty and start building real Customer Fidelity.