Amanda Cromhout

Amanda Cromhout Loyalty specialist

21/08/2026

I used to think youth loyalty was a marketing problem. It’s actually a growth problem. Only 65% of under 25s use a retail loyalty programme, against 85% of the overall market, and a quarter of them told us straight up, I’m just not interested. That’s not disengagement, that’s twenty years of customer value walking out the door before it even starts.

If your programme takes three screens to explain the value, you’ve already lost her.

Comment WHITEPAPER and I’ll send you the full breakdown.

20/08/2026

Excited to be at CEM Africa in Cape Town today. I’m on a panel unpacking what actually distinguishes great customer experience, and for me it always comes back to one thing: the shift from transactional loyalty to emotional loyalty.

Data can tell you what customers do. It cannot tell you why they stay. That comes down to trust, mindset, and true customer centricity, not just points and discounts.

Grateful to be sharing the stage with such a strong lineup of speakers.

19/08/2026

Only half of mass market consumers under 25 use a loyalty programme. That number concerns me more than almost anything else in this year’s research.

This is the generation that will be a brand’s core customer for the next thirty years. And right now, they are not opting in. The brands winning them are specific: digital-first, fashion-led, immediate. Shoprite Xtra Savings, TFG Rewards, Cotton On Perks, Capitec Live Better. These programmes earn young consumers because they are built around how that age group actually spends.

The cost of not solving this now is not just a short-term engagement gap. It is a compounding relationship deficit over decades.

Comment WHITEPAPER and I will send you the full breakdown.

17/08/2026

Women in South Africa manage 11.4 loyalty programmes on average. Men manage 9.5. I think about this data point a lot.

It is not just a usage gap. It changes what personalisation actually has to do. If your female customer is already juggling eleven relationships, a generic offer is not competing against your competitors. It is competing against ten other brands she already has a relationship with.

The whitepaper also shows that loyalty influences women more in grocery, health and clothing, and men more in banking and fuel. One programme, two completely different reasons for being in it.

If your strategy treats your member base as one audience, this data is worth sitting with.

Comment WHITEPAPER and I will send you the full breakdown.

14/08/2026

When I ask CMOs how many loyalty programmes they think they are competing against, they usually say two or three. The real answer is nine.

The average South African actively uses 10.4 loyalty programmes today. In 2015, that number was 4.6. That 228% increase is one of the most important trend lines in our annual research, and I do not think enough brands have absorbed what it actually means for how they show up.

You are not the primary relationship in your customer’s loyalty wallet. You are one of ten. Which means the question is not whether your programme exists. It is whether it is memorable enough to survive being tenth on that list.

One sharp reason to stay beats ten features every time.

Comment WHITEPAPER and I will send you the full breakdown.

11/08/2026

This isn’t a room for marketing generalists. The International Leaders in Loyalty Summit is built specifically for the CMOs, CEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners responsible for sales, client retention and growth, not just attending another marketing event. If that’s you, September 8-9 in Cape Town just became two important days on your calendar.

Cape Town | 8-9 September 2026
R5999 ex VAT | Link in bio to book

10/08/2026

When I started in loyalty, success meant members. Sign-ups, swipe rates, active user counts. If people were using the programme, we assumed they valued it. This year’s whitepaper research stopped me in my tracks: 85% of South Africans use a loyalty programme. But the most-used programme in the country is not the most loved. Not even close.

Discovery Vitality has held the top spot for four consecutive years when we ask people which single programme they cannot live without. Checkers Xtra Savings leads on usage. Two different brands. Two completely different relationships.

If you are only counting swipes, you are counting the wrong thing. The real metric is whether your customer would notice if you disappeared.

Comment WHITEPAPER and I will send you the full breakdown.

05/08/2026

Checkers said my name four times in one video. And I still watched the whole thing.

That’s the difference between personalisation and customisation. Most brands stop at a first name in an email and call it personalisation. Checkers went further. They know I buy chicken. They know I shop with them regularly. So when Jamie Oliver introduces Simple Truth, a new health focused range, right at the start of the year, it’s not random. It’s built on what they already know about me.

Name. Relevance. Timing. All three, working together, in one 30 second video.

This is what personalisation should look like. Most brands are not there yet.

Is your brand personalising, or just customising? Follow for more on loyalty and customer retention.

James Clear’s four laws of habit formation apply to every loyalty program ever built. Most programs only use one of them...
04/08/2026

James Clear’s four laws of habit formation apply to every loyalty program ever built.

Most programs only use one of them. Discounts buy transactions. Habits buy customers.

Comment PLAYBOOK for the full framework.

James Clear

03/08/2026

Transactional loyalty is earned. Emotional loyalty is felt. Most programs are only building one of them. And the one they are building is the fragile one.

Any competitor can copy your points. No competitor can copy how you make a customer feel.

Comment PLAYBOOK to see how to build emotional loyalty into your program.

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