The 5A Loyalty Framework

Loyalty programs—all of them—are a form of gamification. They encourage continued engagement with a brand with rewards, incentives, or other benefits in exchange for purchase or engagement behavior. Points, tiers, discounts, punch cards, exclusive perks... all these rewards and the process of earning them demonstrate driving behavior through rewards which is one of the core aspects of gamification.

However, this isn't the entirety of what constitutes loyalty. In marketing, loyalty refers to a customer's ongoing preference for and commitment to a brand, product, or service, demonstrated through repeat purchases, positive word-of-mouth, and consistent engagement over time. A holistic understanding of loyalty, looking beyond rewards to the full relationship with a brand, is necessary to design products and services that support it.

I created the 5A framework to help describe the facets of loyalty to clients after consuming a generous amount of literature on loyalty in different verticals and how it is measured and understood.

Audience

There is no loyalty without an audience. A targeted audience that actually benefits from your product or brand. They find value in what you have to offer AND they have access to it. For example, your high-end hotel chain only has an audience who can afford it and is willing to pay for the luxury. Your audience has to enter the stores your products are sold in. Your audience has to have a need for your SaaS solution.

The search for product-market fit is about finding that audience. Who are we building for? Who are we marketing to? And how do we communicate with them?

After the audience is established, we expand access to them by increasing the touchpoints. How often do we communicate with the audience? What channels do we communicate across? How present are we in their social media feeds? How often are our ads seen? How can they interact with the brand beyond simply purchasing? This is how the audience can interact with the brand across all channels to build and expand awareness.

Awareness

To engender loyalty, an audience must be aware of the brand and what it has to offer. This means marketing, branding, and word-of-mouth.

Branding is the process of creating and shaping a distinct identity for a business, product, or service in the minds of consumers. It encompasses the visual identity (logo, colors, fonts) as well as the tone of voice, messaging, and even mascots.

Even for well-established brands, continuous marketing helps ensure the brand remains top-of-mind. And any new products or features are always in need of fresh marketing. This serves as a constant reminder of what the brand has to offer. General brand awareness is often measured with the conveniently named brand awareness surveys.

For some products, like Coca-Cola, it can be as simple as having a consistent brand so people know what they are looking for when shopping. When it comes to more complex products like your SaaS service, ongoing communication both in and out of the product is required throughout the customers' lifecycle. All this is vital that the customer can eventually take action.

Action

?Sometimes referred to as behavioral loyalty, this is how the audience will interact with the available touch points and take actions desired by the brand. The most obvious example is making a purchase. But other actions can be expressions of loyalty especially when considering services paid for by subscription.

• Opening emails and saving coupons
• Visiting stores/websites and browsing
• Opening an app and taking action
• Liking a social media post
• Writing reviews and giving recommendations

Key performance indicators (KPIs) often track measurable customer actions, particularly those occurring in digital environments where interactions are easier to monitor. I can't easily tell how many of my regulars are visiting the brick-and-mortar store but I certainly can see how many times they visit my website or open my app.

Somewhat harder to measure but still a key part of our understanding of loyalty however is affect.

Affect

Affect is the emotional response to the brand, generally the desired response is positivity. Sometimes referred to as affective commitment or attitudinal loyalty, this is how the audience feels about the brand. Affect is often measured by surveys including Net Promoter Score which reflects how likely a consumer believes they will recommend the product or brand to another consumer.?

Affect is heavily influenced by memory—memories of previous interactions with the brand and product as well as associations with sensory memories. I previously wrote about this referencing the DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie. A bad customer experience can destroy positive affect and turn off a consumer for good.

Even if a customer is turned off by your brand and product that doesn't always mean they don't still have a form of loyalty though because there's still aversion.

Aversion

Aversion is the emotional response triggered by the prospect of losing something familiar or valuable, often driven by the discomfort, effort, or risk involved in replacing it.

While in personal relationships, we typically associate "loyalty" with positive affection and commitment, in the realm of consumer behavior, loyalty can often stem from the aversion to the potential loss of what is familiar, even if that familiarity is no longer ideal. This makes it a vital aspect of understanding retention and behavioral loyalty.

True Loss Aversion

True loss aversion comes about when the customer has invested something in the brand that will be lost if they leave. Often loyalty programs attempt to take advantage of this by allowing customers to earn status or points which would be surrendered or wasted if they switched to a competitor. This type of loss aversion is also sometimes used to drive action by adding expiration dates.

This very weekend I'm taking a little getaway because I had some travel rewards that would expire if I didn't make a purchase. I was not excited about having to book the trip on Expedia's schedule rather than my own which could impact my attitudinal loyalty. But also provides a clear example of how aversion plays a major part in purchasing behavior. Since I preserved the rest of the points I didn't spend, I'm likely to keep making purchases with Expedia because I remain averse to losing the points.

Aversion to Switching Costs

Switching costs are the perceived costs and inconveniences of changing from one solution to another. These are often a combination of factors including costs such as:

• Researching, selecting, and signing up with a competitor
• Migrating content and preferences to a competitor
• Building the habit of driving to a new store, perhaps one slightly less convenient
• Monetary costs associated with ending contracts such as gym memberships or cellphone plans
• Convincing your family that store-brand apple juice is just as good as name-brand
• Buying and setting up new physical devices including phones or smart home components
• My family has shopped at this store for generations

One notably high and interesting switching cost in marketing technology is the email deliverability warm-up process This is a strategy of gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from an account, domain, or IP address over time to build a positive reputation with email providers like Gmail and Outlook so your emails aren't marked as spam. If a company changes martech tools, enough of the sending infrastructure changes that this process has to be restarted. Depending on the size of your email file (how many customers you reach via email), this process could take up to 6 weeks during which you aren't able to communicate to your full audience via email (a similar process will also affect SMS or RCS text messages).

When we perceive these switching costs as high, we are more likely to stick with what we have even if we know the current option is not ideal. As long as it satisfices, we stay with what we have.

Satisficing—a portmanteau of satisfying and sufficing—is a decision-making approach where one settles for a product or solution that meets a customer's minimum requirements rather than seeking an optimum choice. When it comes to loyalty, if something is satisficing, it doesn't have to be that great. Rather, it has to meet the customer's needs enough to make them not willing to pay a switching cost.

Conclusion

Loyalty is far more multifaceted than points, perks, and punch cards. The 5A framework illustrates this progression—from the foundational and tangible elements of loyalty, like audience and awareness, to the more nuanced and less visible factors of affect and aversion. This creates a comprehensive picture of how consumers interact with, feel about, and stay committed to a brand.

Understanding loyalty in its entirety allows marketers, product managers, designers, and business leaders to craft strategies that go beyond surface-level engagement. By considering both the immediate actions customers take and the emotional and psychological underpinnings of their decisions, brands can foster deeper, more enduring relationships.

Loyalty isn’t just about keeping customers; it’s about understanding why they stay.

Heather Arbiter is a Product Manager and Gamification/Game Designer with training and fascination with behavioral science. She studied loyalty to help advise clients such as Marriott and Verizon on their loyalty programs while working with Andrew Zimmermann presently of Behavior Design Collective who was a valuable sounding board in developing the loyalty framework. Heather has experienced branding and rebranding processes at three of her previous companies. She's created and balanced loyalty programs for digital products and real-world experiences and worked closely with marketing teams and clients on loyalty, promotions, and communication strategies.

FeatureFriday is a biweekly newsletter about the intersection of product, gamification, and behavior written with a personal touch. This is the 31st edition of the newsletter.