The secret’s out. Loyalty programs are hotter than ever, as it’s never been more important to both retain and increase the lifetime value of customers.

Earlier this week, Delta and Starbucks (brands with two of the biggest loyalty programs in the world) announced a major loyalty partnership to connect their rewards programs. The new combined program will offer more value and added benefits to those who link their accounts.

The play here is that by adding more rewards (through two completely different businesses), they can:

1. Bring in new members to both programs

2. Increase the value of each member

Before partnering, the customer bases of SkyMiles and Starbucks Rewards programs looked something like this:

But in an ideal world, where customers will receive 500 miles and 150 stars just for linking their accounts, it looks like this, where the combined circle is larger than each individual one:

Simply by opening up their loyalty programs and partnering with another brand, Starbucks and Delta increased the sizes of their customer bases almost instantaneously.

And this is just the number of customers in each program. Chances are, as a member of both programs, where you will be rewarded for purchasing from both brands, you’re more likely to spend more. Same purchase, but double the rewards potential.

So, we’ve established that this is a great move by both parties. It almost seems like a no-brainer. In fact, Starbucks even announced that it’s planning to replicate the same thing with more major loyalty programs. So why aren’t more brands doing these types of partnerships?

Put simply, it’s complicated, time-intensive, and expensive. There are two sides to this — the brand side and the user side, so let’s chat about both.

Brand Side

Resources Required — In the case of Delta and Starbucks, this partnership probably took years to build out, and tons of capital invested, engineering resources needed for integration, and planning for everything that could possibly go wrong.

With web3 loyalty, brands can stand up a program in a matter of minutes for a fraction of the effort and cost to do it themselves. And, since web3 loyalty programs are built on an open system (the blockchain), separate brands don’t need to link separate datasets of login info to match user IDs across each brand — the data is all publicly visible on-chain, providing ease of identity verification across different brand touchpoints.

Ease of Building and Improving — As this partnership progresses, the brands will want to test different types of rewards to see what’s working and what’s not working. For Delta and Starbucks, this analysis requires shared databases, chains of approval, and time to implement.

With Hang’s platform, brands can “plug and play” new types of rewards and easily track the analytics that matter to them, all in a simple dashboard.

Multiplayer Mode — As we mentioned above, Starbucks is planning to partner with more major loyalty programs in the future, creating a massive ecosystem of interconnected Starbucks Rewards partners.

Starbucks, a multi-billion dollar juggernaut with a rewards program that is over 13 years old, is expanding its loyalty program with other brands; but with Hang, multiplayer commerce is easily attainable for any brand.

User Side

So we’ve explained the value of web3 loyalty programs for brands, but what about the end consumers?

Simplified UX — for Delta and Starbucks, consumers have a separate email, password, SkyMiles number, and other information for each program they sign up for.

With web3 loyalty, each individual has his or her own account (“wallet”) that they carry across all brands. This is the power of an open system.

Maintaining Status — Delta is making it harder to maintain your Medallion Status in 2024, meaning you have to spend even more money in 2023, otherwise you’ll lose that status.

With web3 loyalty programs, consumers now own their status. Delta can’t take it away from you. And because you now own your membership, you are able to sell or rent it out on an open marketplace.

Whereas before, Starbucks stars were only good for buying coffee from one coffee chain, web3 makes the loyalty points you earn more liquid, and therefore worth more to you.

Alignment of Incentives — maybe you earned Diamond Medallion Status last year, but you just had a baby, and now you’re not planning to travel at all. Tough luck — your status expires at the end of the year, and you’ve essentially wasted all of those perks.

However, with a web3 program, you could sell your Diamond Medallion Status to someone else. All of your hard work earning that status is no longer for nothing; and in this case, you’re more likely to try ranking up, even if the rewards are not applicable to you specifically (because your status is an asset that you own).

To summarize, loyalty programs are going multiplayer, and two of the biggest names in brand loyalty just announced a major partnership that is only the beginning. Setting up this linked loyalty program was expensive, time-intensive, and difficult.

Fortunately, we built a tool that enables any brand to easily build their own loyalty program and seamlessly stand up partnerships with other brands — no coding required.

Brands can start a program that requires fewer resources, is easier to build and maintain, and can be seamlessly scaled with multiple partners. Consumers also win out, as the user experience is more simplified, they now own their status, and their incentives are now aligned with the brand.

Powerful loyalty programs are no longer just for the behemoths. The future of commerce is multiplayer, and Hang is here to fortify the revolution.

Get started today.