On April 1st, 2025, over 120 loyalty professionals gathered at Planet Group Arena in Ghent for the BENE Loyalty Day, a leading conference showcasing the latest innovations in customer loyalty across Belgium and the Netherlands. With sharp keynotes, hands-on workshops, and some of the industry’s most forward-thinking minds, the day revealed where loyalty is heading and how brands can keep up.
Here are the five most impactful takeaways that loyalty marketers can’t afford to ignore.
1. Personalisation Is Non-Negotiable
A clear message from BENE Loyalty Day 2025: generic loyalty programs are dead.
Matthijs Kooijman said it best during a panel discussion on Gen Z: “People don’t want to be seen as data points, they want to be seen as individuals.”
This applies across generations, but especially for Gen Z, who’ve grown up with hyper-personalised platforms like Spotify and TikTok. Brands can’t expect a one-size-fits-all loyalty approach to resonate with an audience used to content and rewards that are customised to their preferences and behaviour.
From Q8’s tailored communication strategies for EV drivers vs. fuel customers, to Air France–KLM using AI to engage infrequent flyers, the most successful programs are driven by smart segmentation, data, and tech-enabled personalisation.
2. Emotional Loyalty Builds Unbreakable Bonds
Emotional loyalty was a recurring theme, and for good reason. While transactional rewards might attract initial sign-ups, they rarely create long-term engagement. What does? A feeling of belonging.
Merkle demonstrated this beautifully in a session on “human loyalty.” Drawing from cases like Albert Heijn and Porsche, they showed how mixing rational benefits with emotional hooks (like exclusive experiences, sneak previews, or community pride) makes loyalty feel more like a relationship and less like a punch card.
And as Thomas Rypens of Club Brugge pointed out: “Fans don’t just support the club, they feel they are the club. That’s the kind of connection brands should aim for.”
Rypens emphasised how fandom can be a model for emotional loyalty: community, passion, shared rituals. Loyalty programs that tap into these feelings don’t just retain customers, but also create brand ambassadors.
3. Gamification Enhances Customer Engagement
Let’s be clear: gamification isn’t about turning your loyalty program into a video game. It’s about making the customer journey feel rewarding, intuitive, and addictive – in the best way.
At the Burger King workshop, participants co-created ideas for revitalising the “Royal” loyalty program. Suggestions ranged from geo-triggered offers (like getting rewards for driving past competitors) to collectible digital game cards, showing how brands can use simple mechanics to drive behaviour.
Gamification encourages:
- Repeat engagement: via streaks, levels, or surprise rewards
- Data sharing: by turning boring forms into progress bars
- Community competition: leaderboards, challenges, shareable stats
When done right, gamification creates a loop of positive feedback that keeps customers coming back. Not for the points, but for the experience.
4. Human Loyalty Requires Connected Strategies
One of the most nuanced conversations at BENE Loyalty Day revolved around the integration of media, CRM, and loyalty.
Too often, these are siloed efforts: CRM sends one message, marketing another, and loyalty yet another. The result? A fragmented customer experience that feels disjointed and impersonal.
The solution is to merge emotional and rational touch-points. As Merkle put it: “Loyalty is no longer a department. It’s a mindset that needs to live across the entire customer journey.”
This includes:
- Unifying your brand voice across email, app, in-store, and rewards
- Using loyalty data to shape media campaigns and CRM flows
- Ensuring every team understands how their channel contributes to loyalty
The brands succeeding in the loyalty game are those building systems that see the whole person, not just the transaction. That’s what customers expect, and reward.
5. Gen Z Loyalty: Flexibility, Identity, and the Fear of Boredom
If there’s one group loyalty marketers are still figuring out, it’s Gen Z. And that’s understandable. They’re not just younger Millennials. They’re wired differently.
At BENE Loyalty Day, a panel moderated by Tom Peace unpacked the Gen Z paradox: they crave novelty, personalisation, and recognition, but are less habit-driven and less loyal in the traditional sense. According to Zsuzsa Kecsmar from Antavo: “Gen Z wants no plastic cards. More financial benefits. Ultimate flexibility.”
Some key Gen Z loyalty insights from the event:
- Exclusivity beats discounts. Think early access to events, VIP experiences, or content drops.
- Gamified progress feels more meaningful than static point totals.
- Identity expression matters. Let users customise their profile, share their achievements, or choose their own rewards.
Also important: Unless the experience makes it feel worthwhile, Gen Z doesn’t hand over their data easily. Gamification, personalisation, and trust are key enablers for earning their engagement.
Final Thoughts: Loyalty Has Evolved... Have you?
If one message rang loud and clear at BENE Loyalty Day 2025, it’s this: Loyalty is no longer about bribing customers. It’s about building relationships.
That means integrating emotional, behavioural, and experiential strategies into a loyalty ecosystem that feels human, relevant, and worth talking about.
Whether you’re a legacy brand or a challenger, the takeaway is the same:
- Use personalisation to show customers you know them.
- Use emotional storytelling and rewards to make them care.
- Use gamification and smart design to keep them coming back.
As Philip Shelper aptly warned in his keynote: “If your loyalty program is boring, it’s already broken.”
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