It’s no secret that I feel customer loyalty programs are fundamentally broken.

Despite decades of effort, most loyalty strategies today have settled into a dull transactional rhythm—earn, burn, repeat. It’s no wonder American households now juggle 29 different program memberships on average, and most of them gather digital dust. The reality is this: today’s loyalty programs are indistinguishable from one another. They’re boring. They’re forgettable. And worst of all, they fail to generate meaningful customer relationships.

But what if we stopped trying to bribe loyalty and instead started to earn it?

Engagement is the new currency—and it’s time loyalty programs started paying real dividends. That’s why I have created technologies and design approaches don’t just entertain or distract. They drive measurable business outcomes—with KPIs that go far beyond vanity metrics.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Consider this: acquiring a new customer costs 5 to 25 times more than keeping an existing one. Yet, most brands still spend the lion’s share of their budget chasing new audiences while neglecting their existing ones.

A Bain & Company study found that increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by 25% to 95%. That’s not a rounding error—that’s a strategy shift.

And yet, traditional loyalty programs keep pushing the same tired formulas: static points, stale rewards, and meaningless badges that feel more like marketing afterthoughts than true engagement systems.

Engagement That Performs: Our KPI-Driven Results

At PUG, we’ve spent over a decade perfecting the science of engagement, turning gamified experiences into business performance engines. We build programs that don’t just look good—they work. Here’s what we mean:

• Repeat Participation: 63% to 82% of users come back multiple times.

• Year-Over-Year Active Participation: 36% to 61% stay engaged year after year.

• Deep Engagement: Up to 35% respond to over half the calls-to-action.

• Sales Lift: Campaigns regularly deliver 6% to 30% revenue increases.

• Social Sharing: Boosts of 22% to 33% in viral activity.

• Churn Reduction: Decreases of up to 71% in customer attrition.

These aren’t theoretical numbers. They’re the result of actual programs, built on our Picnic™ platform, deployed with clients ranging from global consumer brands to entertainment giants.

Why Our Approach Works

Gamification, when done poorly, is a gimmick. When done right, it’s a framework for purposeful, long-term engagement.

We don’t do points-and-badges theatre. Instead, we build experiences powered by:

• Meaningful progression: Systems where users feel growth, not just accumulation.

• Psychological motivators: We tap into curiosity, mastery, status, and social identity.

• Behavioral economics: We design around what really drives decisions.

• Personalization and relevance: No two journeys are alike. Our programs adapt.

And critically, we measure everything—using real-time analytics to track progress, optimize performance, and demonstrate ROI. This is where our proprietary Steve’s Net Engagement Score™ (SNES) becomes a game-changer, quantifying engagement not just by clicks, but by choice, consequence, and time pressure.

The Future Belongs to the Brands That Truly Engage

Nearly 70% of Millennials say they won’t stay loyal to a brand without a strong loyalty or engagement program. And 27% say they actively seek programs that offer competition, social interaction, and game-like experiences.

The message is clear: engagement is not optional. It’s expected.

But here’s the problem: most brands are still stuck using outdated tools and tactics. They slap on a badge, push a push notification, and wonder why it doesn’t stick.

At PUG, we’re solving this problem at the root—delivering structured, rewarding, psychologically rich experiences that transform customers from passive participants into active, passionate advocates.

Ready to Stop Guessing and Start Measuring?

The good news is that great engagement is not magic—it’s design. And we’ve spent years perfecting that design.

If you’re ready to stop throwing money at loyalty programs that don’t move the needle, and instead build something that delivers proven results, let’s talk. We’ll show you how to build a program your customers actually care about—and how to measure its impact every step of the way.

Because engagement isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a bottom-line business strategy.