By Hadie and Costas, The BIG Handshake and The European Loyalty Association
Dubbed ”Loyalty’s friendliest meet up, that brands and retailers love to attend.”
And it sure kept to this promise!
Yes, you’ll know all about it if you were one of the 200 professionals who came along last week. Held at the Novotel Amsterdam City on 15-16 October 2024, our two-day conference filled all available space with a strong assortment of retailers, brands, and service providers from across Europe and beyond.
The event was supported by the European Loyalty Association ( ELA) and we were proud to enjoy the company of 89 different retail brands plus 18 sponsors and partners who all drank 1200 teas and coffees and consumed 400 croissants.
We learned, laughed, shook hands, swapped ideas, celebrated birthdays, displayed tech, voted, challenged our thinking, educated ourselves and played games
Watch our after-video below to get an idea of what went on!
Many of our attendees wrote about their experience on LinkedIn and we’re really happy to share their takeaways:
15 takeaways from attendees
1 - Are we asking the correct question when we’re talking about loyalty?
“One thought particularly got me from TBH Loyalty: are we asking the correct question when we’re talking about loyalty? Is it all about money, or is there something deeper inside a customer’s behaviour?”
Lorenzo Federico Ebranati – Head of Loyalty, Leroy Merlin, Italy
2 - Customizable AI conversation demo
- “Educational sessions from The Loyalty Academy and Loyaltyfactory and Dr Alastair Goode talking about consumer behaviour.
- We got to know the latest trends in loyalty withZsuzsa Kecsmar from Antavo Loyalty Cloud and how AI will be more integrated.
- Loved to see the demo of customizable AI conversation made by Apadmi and what the future holds with providing a more personalised and human-like approach.
- How to create a customer-first program with Geraldine Vercruysse and learn from the petroleum industry on thinking about the future.“
Svetlana Dimitrova – Loyalty Manager, VF Corporation, Switzerland
3 - I learned to embrace such an open, knowledgeable and diverse audience
“Having launched Bloom & Wild Rewards recently, I was keen to talk about all things loyalty.
I definitely felt a bit of imposter syndrome — being perhaps the only designer in the room — but very quickly I learned to embrace such an open, knowledgeable and diverse audience: I gained plenty of insights and perspectives outside of my own domain, and it seemed that I was able to provide the same for others too.”
Chris Allwood, Product Design Director, Bloom & Wild Group, UK
4 - Consumers are wired up for "doing" relationships
- “Customer retention is the new acquisition – focusing more on keeping consumers engaged rather than just acquiring new ones
- Consumers are programmed for relationships – loyalty isn’t just about rewards, but about connecting through social triggers and communication
- Balance is everything – introducing new ideas that don’t align with your brand’s promise can lead to disengagement or backlash
- Flexibility is key – customization and flexibility are becoming increasingly important to appeal to today’s audiences
- The ultimate value proposition blends reward and recognition; it’s essential to cater to the consumer’s rational (seeking value) and emotional (seeking recognition) side”
Romina Christina Tzempatzia, Consumer Lifecycle and Engagement Senior Specialist, ASICS EMEA, Netherlands
5 - Loyalty programs alone can’t fix weak experiences
👍 Bruna Mikan emphasised the importance of using data, especially loyalty data, to solve real customer problems. Truly understanding what your customers need is key. It’s crucial to have detailed and accurate numbers because the future is uncertain. Build various assumption-based scenarios to anticipate potential outcomes.
👍 Penny Shaw stressed the importance of having a comprehensive view of the customer journey. Identify pain points and improve the experience—because if customers have a bad experience, a loyalty program alone cannot fix it.
👍 Janno de Kluijver highlighted the importance of going beyond data—get out there, listen, and talk to your customers. Data is just the beginning.”
Stefan Tippmann, Head of People, DACH, Bond Brand Loyalty, Germany
6 - Loyalty Managers need to wine and dine the CFO
“✨ Session of the conference definitely goes to Donna Orman for ‘An Audience with the C Suite’. My key takeaway; as Loyalty Managers we need to become besties with the CFO to get support and buy in for the financials behind the program.”
Kirsty Chalk, Marketing and Member Acquisition Leader, IKEA, UK
7 - What has worked and what hasn’t
“I was impressed by the honesty and openness with which clients shared not only their success stories, but also their struggles and lessons learned in the context of loyalty mechanisms, promotions and new approaches. It was great to hear concrete examples of what worked – and, importantly, what didn’t.”
Dominik Zacharewicz, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Loyalty Point
8 - The “megatrend” that is personalisation
“When customers understand that we want to get to know them better in order to provide them with the best possible service, most are willing to share their data. It’s not just about data – it’s about building relationships and creating real loyalty that is fun for both parties! Personalisation is the absolute megatrend in the loyalty world. 🙌
An outstanding event. The atmosphere was inspiring and we brought home a lot of valuable insights for KNISTR.
🚀” – KNISTR, Germany
9 - Focus on the top 15-20% of customers
“The conference covered many helpful contributions on the topic of customer loyalty, especially how AI 🤖 is opening up new opportunities to better understand and respond to customer needs.
One of the highlights for me was the keynote by Camilla Cramner, who emphasised the importance of focusing on the top 15-20% of customers 💡, illustrating her points with actionable examples. It was a real eye-opener on how much potential lies in valuing key customer relationships.”
Ante Roglic-Karlusic, CEO at Travel FREE, Croatia
10 - Besides tech, we need to understand how humans work to make loyalty work
“My personal opinion for the outstanding content of the event goes to Dr Alastair Goode, for his speech on loyalty and cognitive science. He reminds us that loyalty is a matter of trust.
And besides technology, data and numbers, we need to deeply understand how humans work to make it work.”
Flora Leoni, Retail Media and Data Partnership Director, Carrefour, Italy
11 - Involve the CFO early on
“An Audience with the C-Suite with Donna Orman (Nike) and Samuel Day (Direct Line):
- – “Known vs Unknown Customers”: The value that loyal customers bring to the business is crucial – and we must avoid silo building in our organisations.
- – Zero Party Data: This has tremendous value for businesses.
- – Loyalty & the CFO: Involve the CFO early in the design phases of a loyalty program to help build an understanding of its value.”
Alexander Süßel, Loyalty Specialist & Business Development, Brame, Germany
12 - 45% of attendees said AI integration is biggest challenge
“We heard from powerful speakers and brands such as:
- Charlotte Castille at Central Co-op and Flora Leoni at Carrefour Italia on retailer’s strategies of ‘crunching numbers and winning hearts’ e.g. taking analytics and translating that into real customer engagement
- Janno de Kluijver of Tango/Q8 on how they’ve stayed relevant and engaged with customers even in cases of self-service, and the importance of the right technical infrastructure to scale and support this
Interestingly, today’s attendee survey revealed that 72% would be comfortable using an AI agent of some kind – a step in the right direction for innovation! But when it comes to loyalty programmes, 45% said difficulty integrating new tech such as AI and gamification into their offering is their biggest challenge, and something that many organisations need to address.”
– Apadmi, UK
13 - Core KPIs in retail…
“The core KPIs in retail loyalty are sales, frequency and baskets. And all other metrics are primarily relevant, when influencing these three core metrics.”
Søren Haar Sundin, Had of Products, Lobyco, Denmark
14 - Be bold!
“Exciting day where I had the opportunity to share insights on the role of data in driving customer loyalty at Samkaup hf. through a panel discussion. One of my key takeaways from our discussion:
- A Call to Boldness: I encouraged everyone to be bold, experiment, and act. It’s not enough to just think about possibilities—test your ideas, build on them, and learn from the results. Action is what drives innovation and progress!”
Gunnur Gunnarsdóttir, Executive Director of Retail Operation & Human Resources Deputy CEO, Iceland
15 - Loyalty can’t make up for shoddy experiences
“One quote that I kept came from Penny Shaw: “Loyalty cannot make up for bad experiences during the customer journey.”
Loyalty is much more than loyalty programs. It is about adding value to customers every step of the way.”
Philipp Döbeli, Team Lead SaaS Sales Brame, Switzerland
We hope all our attendees will be back for TBH Loyalty 2025 and if you missed this one, we’d welcome you quite happily. Let us know if you’d like to register your interest by emailing us here hello@tbyloyalty.com
Hadie and Costas x