The idea of loyalty is as old as time – whether that’s loyalty to a family, clan, tribe, village, town, nation, sports team or something else entirely, we all know what it feels like to be loyal and what it means.
But understanding why we’re loyal to one thing, idea, person or brand over another has proven remarkably challenging to pin down. It has proven even harder for marketers to activate. But that might be about to change.
“Loyal behaviour is not the result of any recent cultural evolution. It’s the result of hundreds of thousands of years of neurobiological evolution. A basic understanding of the fundamental drivers of behaviour and decision-making will outlast any cultural trend,” said Dr Cyrus McCandless, a neuroethologist studying goal-directed behaviour and decision-making.
Thanks to research from Intuit Mailchimp, the science of loyalty – every neurobiological tweak, change and update – can be laid out in front of marketers to get consumers’ synapses firing and turn their commitment to your brand into the basis for growth. But, to understand customers, we must first understand their brains.
In order to understand why some customers are loyal and others are fickle, the email marketing platform conducted a panel-sample online survey with Canvas8, the strategic insights partner, between 17–27 February 2024 with 4,000 respondents (1000 from each of the US, UK, Australia and Canada aged 18 to 65). The margin of error is +/- 5.5 per cent, as reported at a 95 per cent confidence level.
This research gives insights as to why customers respond differently to different types of messaging and why not every marketing channel has the same impact on customer loyalty.
The Reptilian Brain – Flight, Fight and Familiarity
While the reptilian brain is sometimes thought of as uncomplex and a relic from an older time, it is quite the opposite. It oversees our vital functions via the autonomic nervous system, after all. But that’s not to say that the reptilian brain is capricious or unpredictable.
Instead, it’s more used for making decisions quickly based on previous experiences – it’s the bit of the brain that triggers the fight or flight response. That might sound impenetrable for a marketer. But this section of the brain is key to our recognition and storing of past experiences. In many ways, it reminds us that decisions we’ve taken in the past are safe and we can and should make them again.
It’s not sexy but it’s the root of customer loyalty.
“There’s an awful lot of habitual behaviour. We make decisions in a quick, intuitive way. We don’t weigh them up. We make snap decisions,” explained Richard Shotton, author of The Illusion of Choice.
“Loyalty could sometimes be better described as a habit. We’re not deeply wedded to our soft drink or shampoo purchase. We buy it because that’s what we did last time,” he added.
In fact, according to Mailchimp’s research, a quarter of Australian consumers repeatedly buy from the same brand because “it’s part of their routine” and another 21 per cent say that they repeatedly buy from the same brand because they know it will be available. That familiarity makes the synapses in the reptilian brain spark into action. Plus, the reptilian brain manages some of the most important parts of what Mailchimp has coined “The Loyalty Wheel”.
For marketers, creating a sense of consistency and familiarity between consumers and your brand is essential for creating loyalty. People have a cognitive bias towards things that they know and are familiar with. Why do you order the same coffee from the same shop every day before work? Or why do you always get peppercorn sauce on your steak?
Variety is the spice of life but consistency and familiarity have kept humans alive for millennia – overcoming that force would be some task.
“People don’t change fundamentally. We’re driven by evolutionary instincts that take hundreds of thousands of years to change. To understand loyalty we have to get an accurate view of what has always driven behaviour,” added Shotton.
But while consumers don’t change fundamentally, they do change which brands they buy from based on other factors.
Should their familiar experience be inconsistent with previous interactions, consumers might start to feel hesitant about engaging with your brand again. It’s the kind of trigger essential to the reptilian brain’s function – remember when you learned not to touch the oven door as a child? Or when you learned that jumping from a height could hurt you? Those are the kinds of triggers we’re talking about.
“The mere exposure effect means that just being exposed to something enough times means that you feel a little bit more positively toward it (if no harm came from it). So you’ll choose the thing that you’ve seen before over the same sort of product that you haven’t seen before… Fundamentally, something about the fact that you’ve seen a brand/product before makes you more comfortable choosing it over a less-familiar option,” said Dr McCandless.
The Limbic Brain – The Dopamine Driver
Moving up the spinal cord, the limbic or emotional brain plays a central role in our memories and is sensitive to both internal and external stimuli. This is the part of the brain that marketers traditionally try to activate with flashy TVCs and brand-building exercises. It’s also the section of the brain that responds to reciprocity and recognition.
As such, the limbic brain controls our behaviours and motivations and dispenses that sweet dopamine that can turn you on or off a brand. Regardless, brands that can play in this section of a consumer’s brain are in for big rewards.
“An emotional bond between a customer and a brand is not just focused on transactional elements. It’s a type of loyalty that goes above and beyond. People’s emotional loyalty may not stem from convenience, but rather from a genuine appreciation of your brand, so they’ll deliberately choose you over and over again,” said behavioural scientist and customer experience expert Line-Ariel Bretous, founder at 1 LAB Consulting.
The novelty of rewarding is also a fantastic way for marketers to tap into the limbic brain.
“I think what really is missing is the surprise and delight element of loyalty from intermittent rewards. Perhaps it’s the unexpected voucher that just pops into your inbox that you haven’t had to earn. Those are the sorts of things that customers remember,” said Bri Williams, behavioural expert and founder of People Patterns.
Those assertions are born out in the data, too. Half of Australian consumers expect brands to reward them with deals and discounts and 54 per cent prefer brands that make them feel treated and pampered. What’s more, for 18-34-year-olds, those numbers increase to 67 per cent – something to keep in mind when planning for the long-term of your brand health.
The Neocortex – Bringing Order to Chaos
The neocortex is the newest part of the brain (hence the ‘neo’) and its job is to take the signals from the primordial reptilian brain and the liminal limbic brain, as well as external stimuli and rationalise them.
The neocortex is also the part of the brain responsible for language. The feelings might be formed in the lower parts of the brain but it’s up top that these chemical signals get verbalised. Plus, the neocortex parses the language and forms we see around us.
When it comes to purchasing intent, our neocortex might make us think that we have received a great deal or that we’re doing the right thing buying from one brand over another, when in reality it was the deeper and more ancient feelings of familiarity and recognition that drove the loyal behaviour – we’re just putting a modern, rational facade over the top.
“With loyalty, there’s an element of allegiance. You are behaving in a way that goes beyond self-interest,” said Shotton.
For instance, Shotton explained that consumers become more loyal once they start spending money with a brand.
“The idea of wasting that investment is uncomfortable. Sometimes, we’ll throw away more money in order to feel like our initial investment wasn’t wasted,” he added.
The neocortex also makes us like the look of one brand over another, creating customer loyalty by appealing to their perceptions of themselves. That could be driven by graphic style, the tone of your copy and more.
“Language is important. If you use a noun, it can be a more meaningful description than a verb. Saying ‘I drink coffee’ is very different to saying ‘I’m a coffee drinker.’ We use verbs to say what we do, but we use nouns to say who we are,” said Shotton.
“Social currency and identity are really important aspects of customer loyalty. People ask themselves, ‘What does it say about me if I proclaim myself loyal to this business?’ Often the brand ends up being a conduit for how I see myself and how I want the world to see me as well,” added Williams.
More than a third of consumers globally said that it’s important for brands to make them feel good about themselves and their decisions, further reinforcing that we’re looking for positive feelings to help rationalise our buying decisions. What’s more, being able to appeal on an intellectual level to consumers is important for brands looking to target younger buyers. While 18 per cent of all consumers think that it is important for a brand to reflect their personal values, that number jumps to 23 per cent when dealing with 18-24-year-olds.
For instance, Dove’s widely lauded “Real Beauty” campaign is rooted in this emotional and intellectual appeal and Patagonia’s longstanding environmental activism has seen it become a favourite for many consumers.
Operating in the Grey Matter
For brands then, it’s essential to tap into all three sections of the brain in order to maximise results and create longstanding powerful customer loyalty as a basis for growth.
“Loyalty can fluctuate and dissipate. But if you concentrate on building habits, people might not be conscious and deliberate advocates for you but it doesn’t matter because they’re in your ecosystem and they can’t break out of it,” said Williams.
“The business focus on retention versus acquisition is like the difference between carpet and floorboards. One might be more fashionable than the other for a time. The economics might say that it makes more sense to retain, but the psychology of business is very much about growth and getting new customers.”
And that is the essence of customer loyalty. It seems to stand apart from businesses’ obsession with growth – when in fact it is the basis for everything.
