Dotdigital has launched an AI-powered loyalty platform as new research highlights the growing importance of personalised loyalty programmes and customer retention.
Dotdigital, a customer experience and data platform, has launched Dotdigital Loyalty, a native loyalty solution designed to help marketers build, manage and optimise loyalty programmes within the Dotdigital platform.
The launch follows the company’s new Customer Trends Index report, conducted with Censuswide, which surveyed 4,000 consumers across the UK, US, Australia and Singapore. The research found that 53% of consumers said loyalty programmes are important to their future relationship with a brand, while only 15% believe the marketing messages they receive are “very relevant.”
The new solution connects customer behaviour, rewards and marketing automation in a single ecosystem, enabling marketers to build more personalised loyalty strategies.
ALSO READ: The Trade-Offs That Reveal True Customer Centricity
Among the findings:
- 62% of consumers want points-based loyalty programmes, making them the most popular reward model.
- 53% want free shipping as a reward, followed by cashback (52%) and free gifts or samples (45%).
- 43% want brands to recognise birthdays and anniversaries through exclusive rewards.
- Only 15% of consumers believe the marketing they receive from brands is highly relevant.
The data also highlights generational and regional differences.
Millennials are the generation most motivated by loyalty programmes, with 59% saying they are important or extremely important when deciding whether to remain loyal to a brand. Meanwhile, 62% of Gen Z consumers prefer free gifts and samples, while 54% of Gen X shoppers prioritise free shipping and returns.
Regional preferences are equally distinct. 47% of Singaporean consumers want personalised discounts, 72% of Australian shoppers cite product quality as their biggest driver of loyalty, and 43% of UK shoppers place free shipping and returns at the top of their loyalty wish list. In the US, 46% of consumers said they have increased their spending to reach the next loyalty reward.
Industry research also suggests that acquiring a new customer can cost up to 25 times as much as retaining an existing one. Dotdigital’s findings reinforce that loyalty programmes influence customer behaviour, with 45% of global consumers reporting increased spending over the past year to reach the next reward tier.
“Customer acquisition has dominated marketing investment for years, but retention has become an important growth opportunity for brands today. Our research shows consumers are willing to increase spend, stay longer and engage more deeply when brands reward loyalty in meaningful, personalised ways. With Dotdigital Loyalty now live, marketers can connect loyalty data directly with customer communications across every touchpoint. Combined with the platform’s Agents and our MCP server, we’re helping marketers use AI to strengthen acquisition, retention and advocacy,” said Milan Patel, CEO of Dotdigital.
ALSO READ: Enterprise CX Budgets Are Growing. What Separates the Investments That Pay Off?
Dotdigital Loyalty enables brands to build and manage loyalty programmes natively within the Dotdigital platform, combining transactional and behavioural rewards with customer data, marketing automation and AI-powered personalisation.
Features include flexible points earning, tiered loyalty programmes, rewards management, analytics and native integrations with Dotdigital and Shopify, with additional ecosystem integrations planned.
The launch completes Dotdigital’s connected customer lifecycle proposition, spanning acquisition, retention and advocacy.
Following the acquisitions of Alia, an AI-powered ecommerce pop-up platform, and Social Snowball, an affiliate and influencer marketing platform for Shopify brands, businesses can now acquire customers, nurture long-term loyalty and turn their most engaged customers into advocates through a connected ecosystem.
Early customer adoption is already delivering results.
“A dedicated loyalty offering had been missing from Pacific Packaging Australia for several years. After reviewing several options, we chose Dotdigital’s Loyalty solution. Launching PackPoints has been a significant step forward in creating a more engaging customer experience. The implementation was straightforward, the collaboration with the team was excellent, and the programme is already helping us encourage repeat purchases and strengthen customer loyalty,” said Sabi Brar, Managing Director at Pacific Packaging Australia.
Amplitude is a product analytics platform, enabling businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics. The platform leverages the capabilities of 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring, sentiment analysis, etc. Currently, Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 employees worldwide.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software provider, offering robust CRM and automation solutions. Some of its products include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software. Guided by its inbound methodology, HubSpot enables companies to prioritise innovation and customer success.
Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks is a global AI-powered business software provider. Its tech stack includes a scalable and comprehensive suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams, ensuring value for immediate business impact. Its product portfolio includes Customer Service Suite, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshsuccess, and Freshservice. Freshservice for Business Teams has helped several global organisations to enhance their operational efficiency.
Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
The company offers comprehensive cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gaming Consoles, Microsoft Advertising, Copilot, among other things, to help organisations offer enhanced CX and ROI. Its generative-AI-powered speech and voice recognition solutions,such as Cortana and Azure Speech Services empowers developers to build intelligent applications.
IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
Uniphore is an enterprise-class, AI-native company that was incubated in 2008. Its enterprise-class multimodal AI and data platform unifies all elements of voice, video, text and data by leveraging Generative AI, Knowledge AI, Emotion AI and workflow automation. Some of its products include U-Self Serve, U-Assist, U-Capture, and U-Analyze. Its Q for Sale is a conversational intelligence software that guides revenue teams with AI-powered insights, offering clarity on how to effectively keep prospects engaged.
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
8×8 offers out-of-the-box contact centre solutions, assisting all-size businesses to efficiently meet customer needs and preferences. It offers custom CRM integrations support and integrates effortlessly with third-party CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and more. Offering global support in all time zones & development teams in 5 continents, its patented geo-routing solution ensures consistent voice quality.
Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
