After helping dozens of brands implement, strategise, and push points-based loyalty programs to their subscribers and new customers, I'm calling it: I'm done. Not just personally tired of them, professionally convinced they're a waste of time, money and mental energy for most scaling e-commerce brands.

Harsh but fair.

This isn't a hot take from someone who's never built a loyalty program. This is a conclusion drawn from years of real implementation data, conversion metrics and honest conversations with frustrated marketing teams who spent months building elaborate points systems that nobody actually uses.

The hard truth? Your customers don't care about collecting points. And you're probably burning resources that could be driving actual growth.

Maybe it’s me? Maybe I’m jinxing brands that I work with… maybe I’m missing the magic formula? I’m all ears on that one….

Let's start with the numbers that the loyalty program vendors don't want you to see. Across dozens of implementations I've worked on, the uptake is consistently minimal. We're talking single-digit participation rates among active customers and even lower engagement among those who do sign up.

The most telling metric? Customer lifetime value comparisons. When we run cohort analyses comparing loyalty program members vs. non-members, the difference is often statistically insignificant. Sometimes it's actually negative when you factor in the program costs.

But here's the real kicker: congratulating someone on earning 50 points means absolutely nothing to them. It's digital confetti. Empty gamification. A notification they'll swipe away without a second thought.

I've watched teams spend weeks crafting the perfect "You've earned 150 points!" email campaigns, obsessing over point values and redemption thresholds, while their core email marketing (the stuff that actually drives revenue) gets deprioritised.

The biggest issue with points-based loyalty programs isn't that they don't work (though they often don't). It's what you're not doing while you're focused on them.

Every hour spent optimising point earning structures is an hour not spent on:

For scaling brands, this opportunity cost is big. You're in a phase where every marketing pound (or dollar) and every team hour needs to drive measurable growth. Points programs are resource vampires that promise engagement but deliver complexity.

The typical points program implementation involves:

What's the return on this investment? In most cases I've seen, it's negligible. You'd get better ROI from literally any other marketing initiative.

I'm not completely anti-loyalty program. They work great for brands like Vans.com (I’m a sucker for Vans) and there's a specific profile of brand where they make sense:

Established lifestyle brands with strong emotional connections where the program reinforces existing brand affinity rather than trying to create it.

High-frequency purchase categories where customers are already buying monthly or more frequently, making point accumulation naturally rapid.

Large enterprise brands with dedicated teams and budgets to properly execute complex programs without sacrificing core marketing activities.

If that’s your brand. Great. Go get em. Points away! But here's what these successful programs have in common: they're not driving loyalty, they're rewarding loyalty that already exists. The cart/horse relationship matters.

If your customers aren't already emotionally invested in your brand, a points program won't create that investment. It'll just add friction to their experience while giving you a false sense of customer engagement.

Want to know what customers do respond to? Freebies. But not the kind earned through elaborate point accumulation, the kind that feels immediate and valuable.

Give people easy access to:

The key difference: these rewards feel immediate and valuable, not like digital maths homework.

I've seen brands get 10x better engagement from a simple "spend £50, get a free branded tote bag" offer than from elaborate 500-point redemption systems. The psychology is straightforward, people understand immediate value, but they glaze over when you start explaining point conversion rates.

Points-based loyalty programs aren't just ineffective, they're expensive in ways that aren't immediately obvious:

Customer Service Overhead: Points programs generate disproportionate support tickets. Customers get confused about point balances, redemption processes, and expiration dates. Your support team becomes a points accounting department.

Technical Complexity: Every loyalty platform integration introduces new potential failure points. Points not tracking properly, redemptions failing, data sync issues… all creating frustrated customers and internal fire-fighting.

Email List Pollution: Loyalty program emails often have lower engagement rates than your core marketing emails. This can hurt your overall deliverability and sender reputation.

Mental Bandwidth: Leadership and marketing teams spend an outsized amount of time discussing, optimising, and troubleshooting programs that contribute minimally to bottom-line growth.

For a scaling brand, these costs compound quickly and distract from initiatives that could actually move the needle.

If you're currently considering a points-based loyalty program, here's what I'd recommend instead:

Focus on Core Email Marketing: Perfect your welcome series, abandoned cart flows and post-purchase sequences. These will drive more incremental revenue than any points program.

Improve Your Product Experience: Customers are loyal to products they love, not point systems they tolerate. Invest in product development and customer experience improvements.

Build Better Segmentation: Use your first-party data to create meaningful customer segments and personalised experiences. This drives more loyalty than generic point-earning emails.

Create Exclusive Experiences: VIP access, early product launches, or exclusive content often drives more engagement than points redemption.

Optimise Your Core Funnel: Better ad creative, landing pages, and checkout experiences will impact your business more than loyalty program optimisation.

There is one loyalty program approach I still believe in: simple, immediate value programs that don't rely on point accumulation.

Think subscription discounts, VIP shipping, or "buy 9 get the 10th free" punch card models. These work because they're transparent, immediate, and don't require customers to become points accountants.

But even these should only be implemented after you've optimszed your core marketing operations and have clear evidence that customer retention (not acquisition) is your primary growth bottleneck.

Here's why I won't be writing about points-based loyalty programs on ecommerce martech anymore: they represent a fundamental misallocation of resources for most brands I work with.

The loyalty program industry has done an excellent job convincing marketers that customer retention requires complex point systems. But retention is driven by product quality, customer experience, and brand affinity, not gamified math problems.

Every article promoting the latest loyalty program platform or strategy is content that could be helping brands focus on initiatives that actually drive growth.

Points-based loyalty programs are costly in terms of budget and time and provide little to nothing in return for the brand or consumer. They're a distraction masquerading as a strategy.

For scaling ecommerce brands, your focus should be on the fundamentals: great products, compelling marketing, seamless experiences, and continuous optimisation of what's already working.

Save the points programs for when you're Vans.com and have the luxury of optimising for engagement rather than growth. Until then, there are about fifty other marketing initiatives that will drive better results with less complexity.

Your customers will thank you for not making them do math to get value from your brand. And your bottom line will thank you for focusing on what actually moves the needle.

Want to debate this? I'm all ears. But bring data, not loyalty program vendor case studies.

I’m just tired of working on client projects where there’s an over-enthusiasm for building loyalty that’s addressed by the ‘this is different to what anyone else has done… but it’s really not’ loyalty program launch. Nobody cares. I guess it was a rant. Apologies.