Why is Starbucks' Customer Loyalty Program so Successful?

In this clip from our eLearning series, our CEO explores why Starbucks' mobile app is such a strong example of a successful customer loyalty program. Starbucks makes excellent use of gamification, special offers, good UX design, mobile-pay, personalized rewards, and more in their app as a way to delight their customers and increase customer loyalty. Watch the full clip to learn why meeting and beating customer expectations is key to cultivating customer loyalty and how Starbucks does such a great job of doing so.

Starbucks Rewards loyalty program & mobile app

Customer loyalty is often driven by things that exceed customer expectations. This could include tactics that facilitate trust between brands and customers, a good customer experience, or things that surprise and delight customers. The Starbucks app is an excellent example of a loyalty program that meets customer expectations with a user-friendly design and exceeds expectations with gamification, personalization, events, rewards, and more.

the starbucks app

Images of Starbucks' loyalty program

How has the app impacted customer loyalty?

All of these features have created an intense loyalty for Starbucks customers to the app and reward program, which kicks back nicely for the brand. Members of their rewards program are feeding in valuable data that Starbucks can then mine to personalize marketing efforts to individuals and create a uniquely direct relationship with their customers. In addition, it stands to reason that a deeper relationship with customers would have a positive impact on loyalty. The Starbucks loyalty program has also proven to increase the frequency and spend of their customers. According to their former CFO, Patrick Grismer, “We know from our experience that when customers join our rewards program, their total spend with Starbucks increases meaningfully”. Therefore, it's clear that the mobile app is doing exactly what it was designed to do - foster loyalty.All of this is to say that Starbucks is an excellent example of a good customer loyalty program that brands can look at when developing or improving their own loyalty programs.