A new Forrester Opportunity Snapshot commissioned by Zeta reveals that most loyalty marketers are sitting on a data goldmine; they lack the tools, strategy, or confidence to fully use it.
Customer loyalty programs have always generated rich, consent-based data about the customers who matter most to a brand. But a new study from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by marketing technology company Zeta and published in May 2026, reveals a stubborn and costly paradox: the organizations running these programs overwhelmingly recognize the strategic value of loyalty data, yet the vast majority struggle to activate it in meaningful ways.
The study, titled The Underutilized Superpower Hidden in Loyalty Data, surveyed 310 customer loyalty and marketing decision-makers and high-level practitioners across U.S.-based B2C companies. The findings paint a picture of an industry at an inflection point — loyalty programs are maturing rapidly, but the infrastructure and capabilities needed to extract their full value have not kept pace.
The Data Is There. The Activation Is Not.
Loyalty programs have clearly earned their seat at the strategy table. Among respondents, 53% describe loyalty programs as the primary driver of customer engagement within their marketing mix, with another 35% assigning them a secondary or supportive role.
Within those programs, 73% of respondents primarily collect first-party data and 62% collect zero-party data — the kind of explicit, consent-driven preference data that most marketers can only dream about gathering.
And yet the gap between collection and activation is striking. The study finds that 68% of respondents have, at best, only partially integrated loyalty data with other internal data sources, despite 80% calling loyalty data critical to their long-term customer relationship objectives.
Only 32% report being fully integrated. Without that connectivity, the data sits dormant, unable to power the personalized experiences and cross-channel journeys that loyalty members increasingly expect.
Barriers Are Universal — And Structural
Perhaps the most striking number in the report is this: 100% of respondents report encountering barriers that limit their effective use of loyalty data. Not some. All of them.
The most common obstacle is data quality and completeness issues, cited by 61% of respondents. Poor integration follows at 57%, with organizational silos close behind at 48%. Limited internal expertise or resources (45%) and lack of technology capabilities (37%) round out the top five. These are not niche operational frustrations — they are systemic challenges that prevent loyalty data from reaching its strategic potential.
The downstream effect on program confidence is telling. Only 26% of respondents rate their loyalty programs as “very effective” at delivering value. Just 17% say they feel “very confident” in their ability to extract actionable insights from the data they collect, and 39% feel at most “somewhat confident” in their ability to act on those insights once identified.
As Forrester notes, 91% of respondents report that data-related barriers are actively holding back progress toward customer relationship goals.
The Metrics Miss the Full Picture
The study also identifies a meaningful blind spot in how loyalty success is measured. Respondents gravitate toward outcome metrics — retention and loyalty (64%) and customer lifetime value or CLV (55%) top the list — but pay less attention to the behavioral metrics that actually drive those outcomes.
Purchase frequency, engagement rates, average order value, and level of personalization all rank lower, suggesting that many programs measure where they want to go without tracking the behaviors that get them there.
Forrester’s recommendation is practical: anchor measurement to a clear strategic goal, then work backward to identify which member behaviors the loyalty program should motivate. The shift is less a pivot in strategy than a rounding out of the metrics framework to include leading indicators alongside lagging ones.
The Path Forward: Integration, AI, and Cleaner Data
Despite the challenges, the study points to genuine momentum. A striking 92% of respondents say they expect to invest in new technology or processes within the next 12 months to better leverage loyalty data. The capabilities they most want: customer data centralization (65%), advanced analytics tools (57%), AI-driven personalization (51%), and omnichannel activation (49%).
Forrester’s three-part prescription for loyalty practitioners maps closely to these investment priorities.
- Unlock first- and zero-party data by building strategies that take full advantage of the consent native to loyalty programs.
- Break down organizational silos and invest in the integration infrastructure — including identity resolution — that enables personalization across touchpoints.
- Prioritize data hygiene as AI-powered personalization scales since the quality of the outputs will only ever match the quality of the inputs.
A Strategic Asset in Search of Its Moment
For those of us who have watched the loyalty data conversation evolve over the years, this report validates what many in the industry have long suspected: loyalty programs are already sitting on the foundational fuel that powers next-generation customer marketing — including, increasingly, Retail Media Networks.
The challenge is no longer about whether to treat loyalty data as a strategic asset. It is about building the organizational and technical capabilities to use it like one.
Resources:
- The full Forrester Opportunity Snapshot is available through Zeta Global and in the Loyalty Academy VAULT as a benefit for Certified Loyalty Marketing Professionals™.
- The State of Retail Media Networks: What We’ve Learned, The Wise Marketer
- The Relationship Between Retail Media Networks & Loyalty Marketing, The Wise Marketer