The Loyalty Newswire from The Smart Marketer
From the Editor
Monday was a vacation each within the US and Canada, so we’re publishing our Newswire on Tuesday this week. We want a belated Pleased Thanksgiving to our Canadian teammates and colleagues.
The information is kind of diverse this week and there are worthwhile metrics to glean from the tales in addition to impactful analysis research from Blackhawk Community, Model Keys, Edelman, and Ingenico.
Notable is that OpenAI formally unveiled On the spot Checkout inside ChatGPT. We’re getting into the realm of Agentic Commerce, including to the dialog about how the Google Purchasing assistant will doubtlessly disintermediate manufacturers from their prospects.
We’re excited to announce the subsequent Licensed Loyalty Advertising Skilled (CLMP™) workshop, hosted by our UAE Companions, QBF Consulting. The three-day CLMP™ certification program in Dubai will likely be held on November 18 – 20, 2025 on the Rove Downtown Lodge.
When you have any questions or would really like extra particulars, please be happy to achieve out.
We’re right here that can assist you succeed. Tell us how we might help.
Invoice Hanifin, Managing Editor, The Smart Marketer
Quick Takes
ChatGPT Provides On the spot Purchasing
The panorama of e-commerce is present process a major transformation as OpenAI formally unveils its new function: On the spot Checkout inside ChatGPT. This newest integration empowers customers to purchase merchandise straight via the chatbot interface, making the acquisition course of faster, extra seamless, and more and more conversational.
Initially launched in partnership with Etsy, and with Shopify integration on the horizon, the transfer signifies OpenAI’s rising ambition to show ChatGPT into greater than only a conversational software—it’s now a buying assistant, a advice engine, and a one-click checkout platform multi function.
This new performance falls beneath what OpenAI, and trade analysts are referring to as “agentic commerce” a mannequin the place AI doesn’t simply help in decision-making however may also perform transactions on behalf of customers. OpenAI has launched a framework referred to as the Agentic Commerce Protocol to facilitate this evolution.
New CRMC Webinar: Nameless Customers: Goldmine or Blind Spot?
Nameless buyers are one in every of retail’s largest untapped alternatives, but most manufacturers battle to have interaction them. Be part of us on November 6, 2025, 1pm ET for this dialogue moderated by The Smart Marketer with Marie-Helene Cusson, Senior Director, Digital Merchandising & Analytics at RONA. Marie-Helene will share how RONA turned unknown browsers into loyal, high-value patrons with a easy, personalised, in-session method.
RONA is a number one Canadian retailer of residence enchancment and building services, owned by U.S.-based personal fairness agency Sycamore Companions. This webinar is a part of the continued CRMC Webinar collection and is sponsored by Trade Options. Register right here.
Model Keys Loyalty Leaders 2025
Outcomes of the seventeenth annual Model Keys Loyalty Leaders Record – an identification of the highest 100 manufacturers in keeping with their skill to create buyer loyalty – revealed a hanging mixture of digital innovation, leisure platforms, and long-standing heritage manufacturers amongst 2025’s leaders.
“A mix of generative AI, always-on CX, and model experiences that buyers truly need is defining this 12 months’s loyalty winners,” mentioned Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Model Keys, Inc. (brandkeys.com), the New York-based loyalty and engagement analysis agency that conducts the annual survey. “Increasingly more loyalty isn’t set in stone – it’s set in code!” Learn the whole checklist right here.
Love’s launches Love’s Media Group
Love’s Journey Stops introduced the launch of Love’s Media Group, the primary retail media community designed particularly for America’s journey stops and the primary to achieve skilled truck drivers at scale. Love’s Media Group leverages the corporate’s 662 areas throughout 42 states to create a complete promoting platform that connects manufacturers with thousands and thousands {of professional} drivers and on a regular basis vacationers.
Love’s Media Group transforms Love’s bodily and digital property right into a unified promoting platform spanning all the buyer journey—from gasoline pump screens and in-store digital signage to the Love’s Join cell app and My Love Rewards loyalty program. Tommy Greenberg has been named senior director, Love’s Media Group. Greenberg brings a wealth of retail media experience from his time at Lowe’s, the place he constructed the consumer companies workforce and operational infrastructure for Lowe’s Media Community, in addition to Roundel (Goal Company).
Amazon US Membership Hits 200 Million, however it might come at a Price
A CIRP survey in September 2025 concluded that Amazon Prime lastly hit the 200-million-member mark within the US. However this milestone coincides with some offsetting information for the ecommerce large’s flagship subscription program.
Additionally in September, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a Federal Commerce Fee case over whether or not it duped prospects into signing up for Prime and made it troublesome for patrons to cancel their membership. As a part of the settlement Amazon will present $1.5 billion in refunds to prospects that had been harmed by what FTC known as “misleading Prime enrollment practices.” About 35 million Prime prospects who had been impacted by the practices might qualify for $51 every as a part of the settlement.
Report: Liferay says 73% of Clients Skip Purchases When Digital Journeys Get Annoying
The 2025 Liferay Digital Self-Service Report, carried out in August 2025 by way of the third-party platform Pollfish, surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults to know how folks navigate on-line duties, the place friction drives abandonment, and which fixes would restore belief.
The survey exposes a expensive hole between digital funding and digital expertise, discovering that as a substitute of delivering velocity and comfort, many shoppers say they really feel like they’re doing the corporate’s work and strolling away when it turns into an excessive amount of. Liferay is a number one supplier of Digital Expertise Platforms (DXPs). Get the report right here.
Darkish Shops Revolutionize e-Commerce Achievement in MENA Area
Right here’s a actuality examine on what is taken into account fashionable in retail. In city facilities like Dubai, Riyadh, and Cairo, the necessity for near-instant supply is rising quickly. Shoppers anticipate every part from groceries and private care merchandise to prepared meals delivered to their doorsteps in beneath half-hour.
The answer is to create “darkish shops”, small achievement facilities that bridge the hole between customers and retailers. Borrowing the identical idea as “ghost shops” that grew to become well-liked in the course of the 2020 pandemic, darkish shops are the retailer’s model of the idea pioneered within the restaurant class. That doesn’t reduce its significance however presents a lesson in why shortly embracing each “shiny ball” may be as a lot distraction as productive.
Hy-Vee Launches New Youngsters Membership Designed to Interact with Future Customers
The target market is getting youthful, as Iowa based mostly grocer Hy-Vee has launched “Youngsters Membership” to deliver smiles to little buyers this fall with actions all year long to teach and interact round meals and wellness.
The Hy-Vee Youngsters Membership is open to children of all ages. The free membership comes with a number of advantages that make buying extra pleasurable for youngsters and their households. Youngsters obtain personalised identify tags, birthday playing cards with particular perks, and entry to unique treats like free cookies, fruit and stickers throughout retailer visits. Shops will recurrently host themed occasions reminiscent of seasonal celebrations, cooking and crafts, character occasions and scavenger hunts.
The Smart Marketer Technique Transient Sequence: The New Loyalty Playbook – Chapter Two
This Smart Marketer Technique Transient (WMSB) was created in cooperation with ebbo and is titled “The New Loyalty Playbook.” This eBook reveals how manufacturers can grasp right now’s loyalty fundamentals: bridging emotional loyalty, value-based choices, enhanced realities, and the all-important selection issue.
In case your final objective is to embed buyer engagement inside a behavior loop that repeatedly delivers satisfaction, “The New Loyalty Playbook” will assist construct a sturdy framework for lasting development and impactful outcomes. Obtain it right here.
New Technique Transient: Fixing the Loyalty Advertising Attribution Riddle
Within the newest of our Smart Marketer Technique Transient collection, From Imaginative and prescient to Actuality – How Loyalty Information Powers the AI Advertising Revolution, explores how loyalty applications may be the final word drivers to remodel aggressive benefits into salient returns and evolve into an enterprise-wide asset.
Our valued thought accomplice within the creation of this eBook is Kobie – the right match for The Smart Marketer to deal with this heady subject. Listed below are some excerpts that may make you need to obtain this useful resource as quick as attainable:
- “In lots of organizations, loyalty applications nonetheless stay in a shadow. This shadow is known as the “value heart.” And it may possibly blind even the perfect of intentions.”
- “Attribution is commonly the Achilles’ heel of loyalty advertising.”
- “AI turns loyalty from a fabled story right into a verifiable dataset – one which improves with each swipe, click on, or scan.”
Fb and Instagram to Provide Subscription for No Advertisements within the UK
Meta is launching an ad-free subscription for Fb and Instagram within the UK, responding to UK Info Commissioner’s Workplace (ICO) steering on personalised promoting. For a month-to-month charge, customers can select an ad-free expertise, with the fee being £2.99 for internet entry and £3.99 for cell apps, reflecting the charges charged by Apple and Google for in-app purchases. Customers who do not subscribe will proceed to see adverts as regular, sustaining the prevailing service.
Meta mentioned in a press launch that it continues to imagine in an ad-supported web, which ensures free entry to personalised services for all and that personalised adverts assist folks uncover related, new services whereas permitting British companies to achieve the shoppers almost certainly to be enthusiastic about what they provide. In accordance with Meta, each pound spent on our adverts drives on common £3.82 in revenues for these UK companies selecting to promote.
Co-Model & Journey Rewards 2025 is in NYC 28-29 October 2025
Loyalty revenues have grown considerably vital to airways, motels and journey firms and the most important a part of that comes from co-brands. Journey continues to develop – with some home weaknesses in some markets – however there are different headwinds rising. Whether or not it’s the tax man, regulators or rising competitors from non-card funds there’s loads to be taught and put together for.
The Co-Model and Journey Rewards occasion, offered by AI Join, is a one cease store, whether or not you’re a loyalty program, an issuer or one of many many different gamers in a fancy ecosystem, to attach with prime presenters and trade friends. Register right here.
Emotional Loyalty – Can it Be Created with a Machine?
Psychological well being issues are rising globally and in lots of elements of the world, remedy is pricey or just unavailable. AI exhibits promise in early detection and prevention. Researchers at Stanford not too long ago experimented with massive language fashions that may analyse journaling patterns and detect early indicators of emotional misery. They discovered that whereas AI isn’t a alternative for remedy, it may possibly assist folks discover patterns in their very own minds earlier than they spiral uncontrolled.
Nevertheless, dangers abound. A latest investigation by The Guardian warned that remedy chatbots, although useful to some, might foster emotional dependence or worsen signs in susceptible customers. Learn this to discover the influence of AI on Psychological Wellness.
Jobs in Loyalty
There are numerous gifted folks in search of full-time and contract positions in loyalty advertising. Thankfully, there are alternatives accessible from each manufacturers and suppliers. We checklist a sampling of what we’re conscious of right here.
Please click on via the hyperlinks if supplied or contact us right here to be taught extra and apply for these positions.
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