Loyalty is formed subconsciously, deep in the brain, through repeated experiences. Like our animal cousins, human loyalty doesn’t start with thought. It starts with behaviour.
And here’s something powerful: People change the way they think to match their behaviour. If they’ve chosen you, used you, invested in you — their brain wants that choice to make sense. That’s how loyalty forms.
We design loyalty by shaping subconscious behaviour.
Engrama helps organisations understand, shape and reinforce the customer behaviours that create long-term value. Using behavioural science, customer economics and AI-powered data science, we design systems, programmes and experiences where loyalty becomes the natural outcome.
We pinpoint the behaviours that matter and the subconscious triggers behind them. Then we align your organisation around the forces that shape those behaviours.
We create propositions and journeys that hard-wire positive habits. By applying behavioural science, we build experiences that customers instinctively return to.
We manage customers like a stock portfolio — aligning pricing, promotions and incentives to nudge behaviour, curb discount reliance and strengthen returns.
You don’t need a full transformation to work with Engrama. Most clients engage us when they want clarity, a behavioural lens, or targeted intervention that moves the needle quickly. Below are some typical examples.
Diagnostic of the behaviours driving and hindering value — identifying habit loops, friction points and behavioural vulnerabilities. Includes clear prioritisation and recommended interventions.
Habitualise behaviour in the first 30–90 days. Reduce drop-off, strengthen expectation, capture the right data for value prediction, and accelerate repeat purchase or usage.
Rapid engagement to sharpen your value promise, simplify choices and align value signals across pricing, experience and incentives.
Structured session to help teams find leakage, correct mixed signals and replace margin-eroding discounts with behaviour-led value.
Simple review of customer value trends using historical data without getting into sophisticated lifetime value modelling.
Examples: increasing repeat purchase of a category, boosting adoption of a feature, reducing churn at a known drop-off point, improving conversion.
You may be designing new components of your customer programme, planning a roadmap of improvements, looking to review elements of your strategy or starting from scratch. Our consultants can help you develop new perspectives on how you can shape customer behaviour to deliver profitable growth.
Workshops that help you define opportunities and develop inspiring yet practical solutions
Advanced analysis to identify priority areas for customer reinvestment
Engaging programme designs structured to shape behaviours at key inflection points
Commercial models and customer-level P&Ls that turn board members into believers
Rapid reviews of your customer base, membership or strategies facilitated using AI
Sophisticated customer journeys using the latest in technology and psychology
Maybe you can find the answer to a question you have been thinking about in the section below.
Long-term success comes from a profitable loyalty programme and profit comes from treating loyalty as a business in its own right. Leading operators monetise loyalty currency, sell data insights, and create partner ecosystems that expand customer spend.
Applied science enhances each profit lever:
Psychology: Reward thresholds and timing drive incremental spend.
Neuroscience: Habit drives memory retrieval, reduces cognitive load, and increases engagement.
Behavioural economics: Loss aversion and sunk cost effects encourage members to stay invested.
Data science: Identifies value opportunities and optimises reward economics.
Many CFOs assume loyalty programmes are just a cost centre. In reality, the most successful schemes (airlines, hotels, banks, and retail coalitions) are structured as profit centres. They generate revenue and margin through many levers, the most common are listed below:
Breakage (Unredeemed Value): 15–40% of points/vouchers are never redeemed, releasing pure profit back to the P&L.
Redemption Margin: Rewards usually cost far less than their perceived value — from excess stock and wholesale rates to supplier-funded vouchers.
Partner Funding: External brands buy loyalty currency (e.g., airlines selling miles to banks) above the face value to members. The resulting revenue, including breakage, is pure margin, making loyalty currencies highly profitable. Loyalty operators also make commissions when members purchase from partners, with transactions tracked via affiliate or payment links.
Incremental Spend: Loyalty members typically spend 10–35% more than if they had remained non-members, driving uplift in margin.
Direct Member Revenue: Customers may purchase points or top-up with cash + currency. They may transfer currency. They may also pay for added value services or membership tiers. Every time a member transacts, the loyalty programme makes margin.
Retention & Lifetime Value: Reduced churn means higher lifetime profitability and locked-in future spend.
Data & Media Monetisation: Loyalty data powers internal efficiency and external revenue streams via insights and advertising.
Working Capital Float: Points are issued today but redeemed later, giving operators an interest-free cash float. For example, American Airlines reported a $9.65bn loyalty liability in 2024, of which only $3.6bn was expected to be redeemed in the next 12 months. That liability is effectively an interest-free loan from customers, saving the company hundreds of millions in financing costs.
Behavioural science proves that loyalty is less about conscious choice and more about subconscious drivers like habits, sunk costs, and reduced cognitive effort. Techniques such as reciprocity, default settings, and friction management help customers stay without needing constant incentives. Neuroscience adds depth by showing how rewards and trust cues activate brain pathways linked to repeat behaviour. LLMs like ChatGPT operate using neural networks developed based on computer models of how the brain works. These kinds of models will increasingly be used to influence and habituate customer behaviour.
The next generation of loyalty will move beyond points and promotions. Advances in neuroscience, behavioural economics, and AI-powered data science will enable brands to predict and influence decisions with greater precision. CMOs who embrace this science-led approach will shift from transactional programmes to ecosystems of trust, habit, and belonging — creating loyalty that competitors cannot easily replicate.
Yes. While human behavioural principles are universal, application differs by sector. For example, retail banking, grocery, travel and hospitality have widely different objectives, economic models, products and services, capabilities and, more importantly, customer behavioural patterns. Moreover, every organisation is different, with a market positioning, brand and customer base that is unique to their industry, even if it overlaps with competitors.
Engrama’s philosophy is to adapt scientific insights to each organisation’s unique customer context — ensuring loyalty programmes deliver both profit and customer attachment.
Boards want evidence that loyalty drives financial outcomes, not just engagement. This means spending time ensuring that measurement frameworks and methodologies are impossible to argue with. Don’t focus purely on last click attribution or member versus non-member spend. No-one on the board will take it seriously.
Robust Metrics: The strongest cases show proven incremental lift in customer lifetime value (CLV). This means tracking purchases pre-and post enrolment using payment data or constructing a robust hold-out methodology.
Direct Revenue: It also means a clear focus on generating direct revenue for your programme from customers and partners. Direct margins are much more difficult to disbelieve.
At Engrama, we help leaders connect these financial metrics to the underlying science of customer behaviour. This allows CMOs to explain not just that loyalty works, but why it works — turning a marketing expense into a strategic growth lever. Give them a number, tell them why they should believe that number, and give them a rationale for why that happened. Then tell them what next.
Most failures stem from treating loyalty as a marketing cost centre rather than a profit centre. If your programme is seen as a cost centre, the more customers you enrol, the higher the cost incurred. If the programme is seen as a profit driver it is scaleable. If it is cost, it is something to be cut. The customer value proposition will be diluted until it stops being effective.
Other common pitfalls include over-reliance on discounts, weak customer insight, and failure to align with human decision-making. Applied science fixes this: psychology (habit formation), neuroscience (trust and reward signals), and behavioural economics (value trade-offs) ensure loyalty strategies are both profitable and resilient.
Programme failure is the flip side of programme success. The most profitable loyalty programmes combine commercial mechanics with human science. If you neglect either, your programme will likely fail.
If you would like to find out how we would approach a challenge that is on your mind then email us at hello@engrama.co.uk or set up a 30 minute meeting by clicking the button below.
We, and our partners (such as Google), use optional tools including tracking tags and cookies to tailor your online experience, improve our products and enhance services for the organisations we work with.
To find out more visit our Cookie Policy page. Click ‘Accept All’ to enable them, ‘Reject All’ to decline or ‘Cookie Settings’ to select your preferences.