The Samsung loyalty program is built on a simple but challenging premise: “Create love, not lock-in.” Samsung chose not to build loyalty through financial dis-incentives like points or walled garden ecosystems like our competitors. Instead, Samsung would build loyal behavior, at scale, through high-quality engagement around personalized owner passions. Like tens of millions of owners at a time scale.

Our strategy delivers a personalized 1:1 always-on experience unique to each owners’ passion and in three focus areas.

One, how to max phone enjoyment and eliminate friction. Make support access easy. Tips on how to take better pics or make the battery last.

Second, deliver content people really want. Free album drops before they go on sale. Movie previews. Samsung offers no one else gets.

And third, cultural experiences based on your interests and in your city. A secret concert. A food truck. VIP upgrades at the big music festival.

Over the course of the last year, the Samsung owner loyalty program has grown exponentially (150%). The owner ecosystem is centered on digital platforms like Samsung.com and the Samsung+ app that offer account-based support and personalized content. Communications such as email, on-device push notifications and app-based messages drive 1:1 offers, invites and CTAs.

The program timing executes around multiple moments of truth. First is whatever point the owner is in terms of their owner journey with their phone. New? We drive tips, tricks and content designed to drive increased device familiarity. Second are yearly events and content offered to owners based on interests and geography. Like Rihanna’s ANTIdiaRY album drop. Or the Austin City Limits music festival. Finally are Samsung’s new product launches with special owner offers. The result is that each owner has a unique dialog with the brand over the course of time and device ownership lifecycle.

The proof behind our data-driven insights, accurate content shaping and “right time, right place” delivery is the rate of engagement we tracked. On average, brands in our category only experience engagement (whether opted-in owners respond or interact with any communications or content) at around the 16% level. This program generates direct engagement levels over 40%, more than double the industry rate.

Our ability to manage better always-on engagement meant that more owners were there to buy in again for their next phone. We experienced a 65% increase in new purchases, or 1.27 million new shiny smartphones at a whopping 40x ROI rate.

These results are also at a tremendous scale: a database of opted-in owners in the multiple tens of millions with hundreds of millions of emails sent and millions of always-on interactions.

Just goes to show, the data doesn’t lie. The data knows the way to our owner’s hearts.