Focus area · Loyalty and offers

Offers and loyalty that pay for themselves.

The short answer

Offers usually fail at redemption, and loyalty programs usually reward purchases and visits that would have happened anyway. I fix both: redemption flows guests can actually finish, and programs aimed at the guests whose behavior they can change. At Popeyes, rebuilding one promotion's redemption flow on the existing offer system took checkout conversion from 3.36% to 9.82%.

By Walter Colindres Updated

What I work on

Results

3.36% → 9.82%Checkout conversion on a monthly T-Mobile promotion at Popeyes; redemptions per cycle went from 42K to 139K and support contacts fell 40%, with no new service built.Case study → 99%Sign-up success at Jack in the Box after replacing passwords with magic links.Case study →

Beyond restaurants, I led Growth & Retention at Vistaprint, keeping millions of small-business customers coming back, and the Metaverse Rewards System at Disney.

How we'd work together

A Digital Audit (2–3 weeks, starting at $8,500) shows where your offers and program leak value. A Fractional Head of Product retainer (starting at $6,000 a month) is for leading the redesign and the measurement that follows. To have the new flows designed and built as well, add Design & Build, scoped per project.

Questions people ask

Why do app and e-commerce offers fail?

Rarely because the deal is weak. They fail at redemption: the offer and the item live in different places, promo codes get their own separate flow, the offer sits behind a sign-in that fails, or the rules break at the register. Five places redemption breaks →

Is our loyalty program giving away margin?

Probably some. Most programs pay guests for visits they would have made anyway. The fix is matching points, rewards and offers to the right guests, and measuring incremental visits with a holdout group instead of counting redemptions.

How do you measure whether a loyalty offer worked?

Hold out a random slice of eligible guests who don’t get the offer, then compare visits, spend and margin between the two groups. The difference is what the offer actually bought.

How do we choose a loyalty platform?

Start from the program you want to run and the systems it has to work with (POS, ordering, app, data), then pick the platform, or build one. With agentic AI tools, a program built around your customers and budget is now realistic for far more brands. I wrote a guide to the criteria. Choosing a loyalty platform →

Related
Case study · Popeyes Popeyes promo codes Guide How to choose a restaurant loyalty platform Case study · Jack in the Box Killing the password
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