This research combines insights from 2,400 shoppers and 600 D2C brands across six markets to uncover where customers and brands align — and where loyalty strategies fall short.
Inside the report, you’ll discover:
- Why 67% of consumers believe brands prioritize new customers over existing ones
- What truly keeps customers coming back (hint: it’s not just discounts)
- The biggest friction points killing loyalty programs
- How leading brands structure retention budgets, teams, and automation
- A practical retention checklist you can apply immediately
If you’re responsible for ecommerce growth, CRM, lifecycle marketing, or customer experience, this report will help you turn loyalty into predictable, recurring revenue.
Download the free report or read our key findings first.
Loyalty programs FAQ
Based on GetResponse’s 2026 Customer Loyalty Report (2,400 consumers + 600 brands, health/beauty/wellness, 6 markets)
How often do loyal customers repurchase from their favorite brand?
64% of loyal customers buy from their favorite health, beauty, or wellness brand every month, and another 33% buy every few months. This monthly rhythm makes replenishment reminders and habit-based email flows especially effective in this category.
What is the #1 reason customers stay loyal to a brand?
Product quality is the top loyalty driver, cited by 34.36% of consumers — well ahead of discounts and promotions (21.15%), service or experience (19.13%), brand values (12.49%), and personalized offers (11.26%). Consumers stay loyal when a product consistently works, not primarily because of price.
What percentage of consumers feel brands value new customers more than existing ones?
67.3% of consumers agree or strongly agree that brands prioritize acquiring new customers over rewarding existing ones. This perception is strongest among the most frequent buyers — about 70% of monthly repurchasers feel this way, compared with 47% of people who buy only a few times a year.
Do brands actually spend more on acquisition than retention?
No — 69% of brands report a roughly 50/50 budget split between acquisition and retention. The issue isn’t investment, it’s visibility: two-thirds of consumers still don’t feel that investment, suggesting loyalty benefits need to be made more obvious to existing customers.
How many loyalty programs does the average consumer belong to?
Most consumers are active in multiple programs at once: 31.5% belong to 1–2 programs, 37.5% belong to 3–5, and 17.7% belong to 6 or more. Only 7.8% belong to none. Brands are competing for attention inside an already crowded loyalty landscape.
What channel do consumers prefer for loyalty communications?
Email is the top-preferred channel, accounting for 21.76% of consumer channel preferences — ahead of social media (16.94%), mobile app notifications (15.71%), and SMS (9.38%).
Do brands agree that email is the most effective loyalty channel?
Not entirely. While consumers rank email first, most brand teams believe social media is the most effective loyalty channel (20.37% of brand responses vs. 15.47% for email). This channel mismatch is one of the clearest gaps between what brands prioritize and what customers actually want.
What frustrates customers most about loyalty programs?
The top four frustrations are: rewards taking too long to earn or redeem (24.4%), points expiring too quickly (19.49%), generic/non-personalized offers (16.66%), and too many promotional emails (15.88%). Only about 5% of consumers report no frustration at all.
