What We Learned in 10 Years — And Changed Because of It

Purpose of Article Series

In October, we relaunched our CLMP™ Program both online and for in-person training formats. Additionally, December 1, 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the Loyalty Academy™ and the CLMP™ designation we issue. We set out a decade ago to build the first practitioner-led, globally relevant curriculum for loyalty marketing professionals and to establish a global standard for what it means to not only understand the loyalty discipline but utilize it within the organizations that loyalty marketers operate – brands, loyalty vendors, agencies, and consulting practices.

More than 1,300 professionals across 59 countries later, we’ve learned a few things — including what we got right the first time, and what the industry has outgrown.

We’ve refreshed and added to the curriculum to now require completing 14 core courses prior to passing our assessment exam. We did more than a cosmetic clean-up; we rewrote concepts that the industry has evolved past, added frameworks that weren’t needed a decade ago, and moved the entire program to a mobile-first platform so that CLMP™ candidates anywhere in the world can learn on their terms.

These three articles are a preview of some of those enhancements and new views on the discipline of loyalty. They are a genuine look at three of the conceptual shifts that drove the refresh — and why we think they matter for the way loyalty gets practiced today and over the next decade ahead.

If one of them makes you want to look at what’s inside, that’s the point. Check out full details of our CLMP™ Program at LoyaltyAcademy.org.

— Aaron Dauphinee, CLMP™

CMO, Wise Marketer Group

We Stopped Asking Who Owns It to Modernize Loyalty Business Models

By Aaron Dauphinee, CLMP™ | CMO, Wise Marketer Group | Executive Faculty, Loyalty Academy™ | October 2026

The most useful question to ask about a loyalty program is no longer who owns it. It is how it creates value. Our refreshed Course 104 on Loyalty Business Models is built around that shift.

The practitioners who can explain how their program creates value, not just who owns the currency and members, are the ones who lead the strategic conversation for loyalty. They’re the SMEs in the room when the CFO asks whether the program is a cost center or a revenue driver. They’re the SMEs that can explain the design logic when a partner asks why the earn rate is set where it is. They’re the SMEs that know how and why the business models for loyalty have evolved over the past 30 years.

Let me tell you what these SMEs know. Here are three things that make the old frameworks insufficient.

1. The ownership taxonomy describes structure, not purpose.

When the CLMP™ curriculum launched in 2016, it sorted loyalty business models by who ran the program, who carried the points liability, and how revenue flowed. Proprietary programs were brand-owned. Coalition programs shared one currency across brands. Multi-partner models split the financial load in various configurations.

That was the right starting point for a new practitioner then, and it still explains why programs are built differently. But ownership tells you primarily who holds the liability. It certainly doesn’t tell you who the program is for or how it delivers value.

2. The market has moved faster than the categories.

• Coalitions have fragmented, consolidated, been internalized, or simply shut down. Using Canada as a microcosm, in 2018, Aimia agreed to sell Nectar to Sainsbury’s for $105 million. In 2019, an Air Canada-led group completed its purchase of Aeroplan from Aimia. Now in 2026, we see AIR MILES reframed into BMO’s Blue Rewards. Shared currency is a structural choice, not a strategy. The member experience still has to hold together for the model to work.
• Enrollment is everywhere; preference is scarce. In the Wiser Research U.S. consumer study (October 2025, 2,070 consumers), 88% said they were active members of at least one program that uses points or a similar reward currency in the prior 12 months. Bond’s 2025 report puts the average at 17.4 memberships per consumer, and says active programs continue at 50% of those enrolled. The bottom line is that most programs are in wallets, but far fewer are in consumer minds.
• Ecosystem models don’t fit either box. 38% of shoppers said they would engage more if they could choose brands that send marketing communications through one program or app, according to our Wiser Research. And we’re seeing multi-product financial coalitions in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, super-app integrations and embedded rewards that are neither “proprietary” nor “coalition.” They’re the emergence of a new design logic.

We recognized that the old taxonomy described how programs were owned. The new question we’re asking is how they create value, and that leads to better program design.

3. “How does this create value?” is a much more useful question.

This lens surfaces three things the ownership lens simply hid:

• The financial model: where the margin actually comes from.
• The data strategy: what behavioral information the program produces, and who benefits from it.
• The member value exchange: what members give and what they get back. The data shows the exchange is working in one specific way. Our Wiser Research shows that 57% of shoppers agreed that the chance to earn points influences them positively enough to ignore competitors’ offers. The value exchange is real, it’s narrow, and must be designed with purpose.

This question also works across program types and is not restricted or forcing loyalty practitioners into rigid business model definition. This matters because most practitioners now recognize and are managing fluid models.

Our refreshed course keeps the history, but steps into more modern light. Liability structures inherited from an earlier era still constrain many programs, and practitioners need to understand them. But the anchor has moved from what category do they operate in? to how does this structure and its mechanics create, share and sustain value?

So what

Explicit business model assumptions make programs stronger. Every design decision (the reward structure, the earn rate, the tier logic, the partner integrations) flows from a model assumption, whether or not anyone has written it down. The loyalty practitioners who can state these model assumptions are the ones the organization will trust with strategic decisions, as well as operational decisions.

Get Modern: Course 104, Loyalty Program Business Models, is one of 14 courses in the CLMP™ curriculum. Explore the full program at LoyaltyAcademy.org.

Sources: Wiser Research, U.S. Customer Loyalty Insights Report (October 2025, n=2,070), p. 15; Wiser Research, Retail Insights Brief: Convenience & Fuel (Winter 2026, n=1,650), pp. 6, 10; Bond Brand Loyalty, The Bond Loyalty Report 2025 (with Visa), USA executive summary, fielded January–March 2025; Aimia sale of Nectar, reported 2018; Aeroplan sale to Air Canada-led group, completed January 2019.