What: Retailers should manage customer data, loyalty programmes and gift cards as one strategy across the customer lifecycle instead of as separate tools.

Why it is important: Retailers already have the tools and the data, and the article locates the gap in deciding which lever to use for a given customer, for example a gift card rather than a discount to win back a lapsed one.

Bérénice Baudoin of Kiss The Bride by Upcoop writes that data, once used to segment databases, now lets retailers read behaviour, spot life events, measure engagement and anticipate churn. She reports that at Kiss The Bride a carded customer spends nearly €10 more per transaction than a non-carded one, and that Monceau Fleurs measured over 9% more traffic and +32 activation points among programme members through personalised CRM.

On gift cards, she cites King Jouet rewarding survey replies, Okaïdi encouraging loyalty card downloads to mobile wallets, and Mondial Tissus recruiting members at store openings. Retailers know gift card buyers well but often not recipients, and she sees converting recipients into loyalty members as a source of qualified data.

She also expects loyalty to reward actions such as answering a survey, completing a profile or referring a friend. Under matching loyalty, a Premium customer gifting €100 would see the retailer add €20. She says this one mechanism produces engagement, acquisition and referral.

IADS Notes: Retailers are turning checkout into a loyalty and engagement tool, yet many still manage payment, marketing and loyalty separately, while consumers expect gift cards and loyalty benefits to work consistently across channels (Journal du Net, July 2026). Points and tiers are now standard, and non-transactional features such as Dick's Sporting Goods' GameChanger app generate data on attitudes and behaviour that transactional programmes cannot capture (Customer Experience Dive, September 2026). The Mall Group's loyalty programme, with more than seven million members, runs on CRM and AI, with gamified rewards and personalised recommendations (Retail News Asia, May 2026).

Data, loyalty and gift cards as one customer strategy