Alec Haase’s Post

Want to know the only thing the average American consumer loves in the summer more than Hot Dogs and Baseball? Loyalty Programs. In fact, the average American is enrolled in 17 loyalty programs. 🤯 You may think I'm bluffing, but think about it for a second—you'll probably be just as surprised as I was to find you're close to that number after you add up your favorite shops, airlines, and grocery delivery companies. Retailers everywhere are catching on to this trend by rolling out, revamping, or considering launching their own loyalty programs. Gartner estimates that one in three businesses without a loyalty program plans to create one by 2027. But why? The reason is simple: loyalty programs deliver immense value to consumers while enabling brands to gather critical first-party data. This data helps brands understand customer behavior and preferences, fueling their retail media networks and personalized marketing efforts that transform casual buyers into loyal advocates and significantly boost LTV. I had a chance to work alongside loyalty experts like Praveen Koushik Satyanarayana, Atimanas Biswal, and Tom Peace, Certified Loyalty Expert™ , to dive into what makes loyalty programs tick. Check out our thoughts, and let us know what you think! https://lnkd.in/eRZukqSV #martech #retailmarketing #loyaltyprograms #firstpartydata

🔥 Retail Media Networks are on fire right now!🔥 As their popularity soars, traditional onsite retail media placements like sponsored search and display ads are getting crowded. This saturation, paired with the increasing ad spend on retail media, is driving more retailers to expand their RMN offerings to offsite channels such as email, paid social, and beyond. Praveen Koushik Satyanarayana and I recently explored the rise of offsite channels in retail media and how retailers can immediately start expanding their offerings offsite. Check out our insights and share your thoughts! https://lnkd.in/gkQVbrAB #retailmedia #martech #adtech

2024: Everything is (still) an ad network. Big news from PayPal this morning as they invest further in the buildout of their own ad network. The news shouldn’t come as a surprise however, as more and more financial companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. are following retail brands by launching their own ad businesses to capitalize on their treasure troves of first-party data. The ads team PayPal has an enormous opportunity ahead of them with the ability to tap into the consumer insights generated from billions of transactions through services like Venmo to enhance cross-channel advertising. Very excited to see how Dr. Mark Grether and team innovate here! #adnetworks #adtech #firstpartydata https://lnkd.in/edjTkR5h

America's Pastimes: Retail and Baseball ⚾ I had an awesome time this week with all our Hightouch partners (s/o Iterable) and retail customers at the Customer Relationship Management Conference (CRMC) in Chicago. There were so many amazing sessions from brands like Anthropologie, Ulta Beauty, Blain's Farm & Fleet (Blain Supply, Inc.), Wawa, Inc., The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (and more) discussing how today's retailers are utilizing loyalty programs to drive customer engagement and brand loyalty. It's clear that the future of retail lies in first-party data. Whether for loyalty programs, retail media, or web personalization, it was inspiring to hear directly from industry leaders like Dena Pizzutti, Jim Hallock, Doug Jensen, Andrew Hendricks, Nicole Phillips Bernhardt, Ian Dewar, and so many others about how their teams are driving innovation in retail through data On a personal note, I also got to knock Wrigley off the stadium bucket list ✔️ Excited to be back next year! #retail #martech #retailmedia #loyalty #crm

Well, that's a wrap! Iterable Activate '24 surely was one to remember. The Highlights: 🏆 Hightouch was named Iterable's technology partner of the year.   🚀Our co-developed feature, Iterable Smart Ingest, can now be used (for free) by every Iterable customer ⌚Aoife O'Driscoll wowed the crowd with a killer presentation on how WHOOP leverages the power of data to unlock human performance. Throughout the conference, I had the chance to deep-dive with so many amazing marketing teams - learning about their goals and the challenges they face. Through each conversation, it became abundantly clear that today's marketers are becoming more aware of the customer data they have available and are each eager to put it to work, personalizing loyalty programs, web experiences, and cross-channel campaigns. Now, more than ever, marketers are sick of dealing with disjointed Martech stacks, halfway-done CDP implementations, and waiting for data teams to get them access to the data that they need. Instead, they are looking for Martech solutions to help them self-serve data - all on their own. As today’s 2024 Martech Landscape report from Scott Brinker is released, keep an eye out for the trends and tools building around the idea of "composability." The next wave of Martech is being built on (or at least integrated with) the data warehouse - aiming to help marketers finally "get out of data jail" to self-serve from the valuable data that they’ve had all along. I have a feeling we'll need to bring a lot more "get out of data jail" tee-shirts to the next conference 😎 #MarTech #ComposableCDP #IterableActivate

Congratulations to the entire PetSmart organization for today's launch of the NEW Treats Rewards program! With over 67 Million pet parents in their Treats Rewards program, Petsmart has created a shining example of what a loyalty program should look like for modern brands. Speaking on behalf of everyone here at Hightouch, we couldn't be prouder to help power these efforts and are thankful to have the chance to work alongside such an amazing team led by Bradley Breuer 🚀 Go check out the updates - your pet will thank you! 🐶