One of the perks of what I do is getting the opportunity to sit down with the brightest minds in marketing to discuss trends and tactics. At the recent SAP Emarsys Loyalty Masterclass, I hosted a panel with:
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Ajay Sharma |
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Brad Santanna |
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Can Sanay |
We discussed the challenges in today’s consumer engagement strategies, as well as solutions.
The rest of this article lays out some of the top insights and strategies from each of the brands. I’d encourage you to look at each tactic with a critical eye, so you can think about how to use their creative solutions to foster consumer loyalty within your own community.
Disrupt or Be Disrupted: My Top 3 Takeaways
Really quick, here are three of my own top takeaways from the panel:
➡️ Adopt a challenger mindset
These leading brands enable themselves to continually disrupt markets by adopting a challenger mindset and breaking away from legacy practices and systems.
➡️ Implement the right processes, partners, and tech
The speed and personalization of your engagement are mission-critical! To deliver personalization rapidly and at scale, you need the right processes, partners, and tech.
➡️ Put consumers first
Creating a fit-for-purpose omnichannel portfolio requires you to center your value proposition around your consumers—hone in on what they want and what’s convenient for them.
“We're not looking at loyalty in isolation, but it's part of a connected broader sort of plan that allows us to connect and follow up [with] consumers.”
This quote captures the central theme of the panel session. Each of the panelists had a different way of approaching this challenge.
Bayer’s strategy to discard legacy habits and embrace change was to go fully agile, as we heard from Ajay:
Taking on a complete “enterprise view” is enabling Bayer to get clear insight into organizational priorities, so they can identify:
- How to win with the consumer
- How to prioritize (budgets, head count, resources, etc.) in the right ways to enable those wins
When implementing an agile approach, businesses need system-wide tools and processes in place that support the strategy. Here are key tactics Ajay and Bayer use to enable customer engagement and drive loyalty in their agile model:
➡️ Unify fragmented data for a single source of truth
Prior to their agile transformation, Bayer had data siloes across sales, marketing, media, and supply teams. Bayer consolidated their data with a focus on building insights that would guide their new agile model and execution.
➡️ Modernize the tech stack
Bayer scrutinized their tech stack to determine whether they had the right tools in place. They rebuilt the infrastructure from the ground up to enable consumer engagement across markets.
➡️ Enable personalization compliance at scale
As a highly regulated industry, Bayer runs their personalization through a compliance layer. Ajay explained, “Digital brand managers can personalize by using a library of copy, imagery, and clinical references. This preserves the speed and the compliance and allows for much faster response times.”
“Digital brand managers can personalize by using a library of copy imagery and clinical references. This preserves the speed and the compliance and allows for much faster response times.”
Creating that foundational infrastructure is a key motion across CPG brands right now, and research from Bain & Company found that 88% of consumer products brands are in the process of transitioning to SAP S/4HANA, and 50% are deploying advanced digital marketing tools at scale.
Having that baseline of unified data, plus the power to put data into action, enables brands to engage consumers in more timely, relevant, and meaningful ways. I spoke with Ajay about the importance of having that data, dialogue, and speed—it’s not good enough to just have the data. That data has to inform the dialogue, and it has to be at the speed of the consumer. Then that dialogue of course also feeds back into the data.
Reimagining the Path to Purchase with The Hershey Company
“I think often we lose sight of how the consumer evolves or even on the flip side. If we look at how sometimes as companies, we overactive trends versus looking at real sticky behavior.”
Being topical and timely for trends is important for any brand, and the recent release of the 2025 Customer Loyalty Index highlights that with insights around a newly identified type of loyalty, Trend Loyalty.
However, brands can’t lose sight of developing a deeper understanding and connection with consumers, which leads to longer-lasting, mutually beneficial relationship, i.e. True Loyalty.
In this clip, Brad Santanna talks about the importance of finding the right partners and identifying the consumer journey:
The path to purchase is plagued with distractions and competitors, but here are insights into how Hershey is defining the consumer journey:
➡️ Identify the right KPIs
The candy brand can no longer think just in terms of measuring store-based impulse purchases. “We’re looking at things in terms of not just total retail, but digital versus brick and mortar,” Brad explained. He cited the importance of:
- Having clearly aligned organization goals around sales, share, and profitability
- Identifying the consumer signals you need to leverage
- Optimizing the journey as you go
➡️ Meet the consumer at their moment of need
Regardless of where the consumer begins their journey, brands need to engage in the moment to personalize the buyer experience.
➡️ Ask the right questions at every step
Brad emphasized that as brand ambassadors, we need to be asking the “why” questions. Even when delivering experiences at speed, marketers must ensure messages are on brand and sticky.
➡️ Templatize content using the right tools
Templatizing content can help marketers create campaigns efficiently and effectively. As Brad said, “This requires our creative teams, our content teams, to be thinking about AI resources to produce content in new and different ways.”
Brad’s sentiments really rang true for me. Marketers are under pressure to move swiftly and drive profit, but they also bear a hefty responsibility in terms of consumer trust and brand integrity. Having powerful tools in place for omnichannel engagement, like SAP Emarsys, enables marketers to deliver on-brand messaging in real time across channels.
Storytelling with SodaStream to Build Brand Loyalty
“SodaStream is one of the brands where you don't know that you need it until you start using it. So that because of that, like somebody needs to tell you that story."
SodaStream lets at-home soda enjoyers make their own sparkling beverages while also reducing plastic waste, a win-win value prop and a true market disruptor if I’ve ever heard one.
The nature of being a disruptor, though, is getting your story out there and helping consumers understand that you’re going to make their lives more enjoyable and convenient.
To be a disruptor is to be a challenger. You have to tell your story better than the product that’s already in the market. Here’s a bit of how SodaStream is accomplishing that:
➡️ Deliver DTC convenience and subscription services
SodaStream is growing its DTC success, with the power of PepsiCo’s backing in terms of data, capabilities, and agencies. Their subscription model has proven successful and supports long-lasting loyalty and creates predictable revenue streams.
➡️ Offer frictionless ease of use
SodaStream makes it easy for US consumers to quickly exchange C02 cylinders at tens of thousands of stores, including common destinations like Target and Kohl’s. “When you make your process that easy and that powerful,” Can says, “then this is a fundamental driver of keeping the consumers loyal to your brand.”
➡️ Empower and reward brand advocates
SodaStream encourages consumers to share the value of SodaStream through their referral program. Brand advocates can send the referral offer to friends and family and then get a discount on their own next order.
"When you make your process that easy and that powerful, then this is a fundamental driver of keeping the consumers loyal to your brand.”
More Insights from the Loyalty Masterclass
The advice and strategies captured here are just a few of the top insights we covered in the complete session. You can catch the complete panel, as well as the rest of the Loyalty Masterclass, including strategies from Wella Company and Bioré, available now on-demand.
About the author
Don Brett is the President of Pattern Advisory, where he leads global e–commerce acceleration for brands across 60 countries. Founder of The Retail eCommerce Club and host of The CPG View podcast, Don brings deep expertise in digital transformation from leadership roles at NBG Home, Newell Brands, and beyond. His entrepreneurial spirit and industry insights make him a trusted voice in navigating today’s complex digital marketplace.
