INCENTIVIZE 2024: Top 5 learnings from last year’s loyalty & promotions summit

It was an incredible day of knowledge-sharing and community-building - and we were delighted to hear customers saying it was the best event they had been to in terms of the relaxed, open and insightful atmosphere we created.

With a jam-packed day of keynotes, panels and workshops, we wanted to share 5 of the top takeaways from the summit, highlighting the trends set to define the future of the incentives space.

Before we dive in, a huge thank you to all of our sponsors who helped make INCENTIVIZE 2024 possible - including our platinum sponsor Braze, gold sponsors mParticle and Apply Digital, silver sponsors Commerce Layer and Impact, and bronze sponsors absolutelabs, Miltton, Newstore, Odicci and Sanity.

Christoph Gerber, Talon.One co-founder and CEO, started the summit by highlighting just how critical incentives are to a company’s bottom line - with the average discount rate hovering at 18%.

The reality is that most CMOs today still underestimate the importance of promotions. But how many marketing topics touch 18% of your revenue? How many marketing topics reach the CEO’s desk? And how many marketing topics regularly get investor airtime? 

We at Talon.One truly believe that incentives are one of the most lucrative improvement areas for a brand to focus on, and an amazing opportunity for marketers to move the business forward. Any small improvement point to how brands run incentives – a bump to average order value here, a smaller discount there – can create massive value. We regularly find that improving your incentives mix, even by just a fraction of a percent, rolls up to millions of dollars of savings.

Watch Christoph’s full keynote below: 

Next up, we heard from David Fischer, founder and CEO of cult luxury streetwear brand Highsnobiety. Over the last 20 years, David has had a front-row seat - and often a hand influencing - the trends shaping today’s consumer behavior. 

At INCENTIVIZE, he spoke about how the old rules of brand loyalty no longer apply. Drawing on examples from Skims, Balenciaga and Birkenstock, David shared how working with a couple of influencers, or investing in a TV campaign, isn’t enough to push your product anymore. Brands need cultural credibility to build long-term loyalty. Cultural credibility is aligning with the zeitgeist, connecting with movements in culture, and sharing your customers’ values.

David encouraged businesses not to think in terms of reach and figures, but instead in building emotional connections and fostering community around brand, product, and moment. The most important takeaway? Consumers don’t want to be spoken to, but spoken with.

Our first panel of the day looked at how retailers can move away from blanket, one-size-fits-all incentives to smart, segmented promotions that protect margins. One of the most important learnings was to keep promotions simple to the consumer - especially with all of the diversification options for promotions, and more data availability helping retailers to be more precise. No shopper wants to hold up a queue while looking for their voucher codes, find out a session has expired, or realize their codes aren’t stackable. 

That said, our panelists reminded audience members that it’s rare to get your promotions strategy right at the first try. But the cost of doing nothing is often neglected when thinking about new investments. The only way to learn is to start implementing and iterate based on results. 

No conference in 2024 is complete without a deep dive into AI. What does that look like in the loyalty space? Marissa Fuchs, Alliances Leader at Braze, shared how AI can help build loyalty and trust between brands and consumers.

One of the most interesting use cases Marissa shared for AI in loyalty was its potential for predictive loyalty - allowing brands to drive more sign-ups and higher loyalty redemption with customizable predictive models that help identify, target, and engage customers most likely to perform any loyalty-based action. Watch Marissa's full keynote here.

While INCENTIVIZE was the week’s main event, we had a whole host of events running throughout the week, starting with a two-day loyalty masterclass run by The Loyalty People and Loyalty & Reward Co. We also organized our inaugural Client Advisory Board and ran our yearly Partner Day.

Many of our customers shared how valuable it was to get away from their day-to-day work and connect with industry peers to share learnings and inspiration. At the summit, it was amazing to see groups of people who had spontaneously met each other, who were equally laughing and joking while chatting about experiences and strategy. Plus, almost everyone stayed not just for the drinks but for the full after-party - which in our eyes is a sign of a successful event!

We’re delighted to have facilitated this community-building and are looking forward to continue building out this new collective of incentives experts.