As economic pressure intensifies and scrutiny over budgets increases, loyalty leaders are facing a familiar challenge with renewed urgency: how to align marketing ambition with financial discipline.
For many organizations, tension between CMOs and CFOs is not rooted in disagreement over whether loyalty matters, but in how its value is defined, measured, and governed. Marketing leaders often focus on engagement, retention, and long-term customer growth, while finance leaders prioritize cost control, liability management, and short-term performance. When those perspectives remain disconnected, loyalty can be viewed less as a growth engine and more as a discretionary expense.
In this first installment of a two-part Supplier Perspectives series, contributors from across the loyalty ecosystem explore where that divide begins, how brands can position loyalty as a strategic business driver rather than a marketing expense, and which metrics are most effective in demonstrating financial impact. Together, these perspectives offer a foundation for reframing loyalty as an investment that earns executive confidence.
Contributors
Where Misalignment Between CMOs and CFOs Begins
For many brands, misalignment between CMOs and CFOs does not stem from disagreement over whether loyalty matters, but from differing priorities and ways of evaluating success. Marketing often focuses on engagement, retention, and long-term customer value, while finance prioritizes cost control, liability management, and measurable returns. When those perspectives are not aligned early, loyalty can be viewed as a point of tension rather than a shared growth strategy.
Several contributors noted that the divide often begins with how loyalty performance is interpreted. Without a shared framework connecting customer behavior to financial outcomes, the same results can tell very different stories depending on who is evaluating them.
“The biggest disconnect isn’t about belief in loyalty; it’s about proof,” said Jochen Lehner, Head of Marketing at Loyalty Partner Solutions. “CMOs often manage loyalty through engagement metrics, while CFOs are looking for incremental margin and financial control.”
Kelli Graf, Director of Strategic Consulting at Kobie, said this tension often surfaces when both teams review the same program outcomes through different lenses.
“If a CMO sees program engagement climbing, members are active, redemptions are up, acquisition is steady and NPS scores are great, they feel good about the program,” Graf said. “The CFO looks at those same signals and sees growing liability, rising redemption costs, and no clear line connecting loyalty spend to revenue. In this scenario, both are right, and that’s exactly the challenge.”
Contributors also noted that structural challenges can deepen the divide when loyalty lacks shared ownership and clear accountability.
“There is also a structural issue,” said Rachel Satow, Senior Marketing Strategist at Switchfly. “Loyalty touches marketing and sales, finance, customer service, and IT, but ownership is rarely shared in a meaningful way.”
Taken together, contributors suggest the issue is not a lack of belief in loyalty, but a lack of shared accountability, common metrics, and economic alignment. Until those foundations are in place, the CMO-CFO divide is likely to persist.
Positioning Loyalty as a Strategic Business Driver
Positioning loyalty as a strategic business driver starts with changing how it is discussed internally. Rather than framing loyalty as a marketing initiative, brands need to connect it to measurable business outcomes such as revenue growth, retention, margin improvement, and ROI.
One recurring theme was that better measurement and stronger internal alignment are critical to making that shift. Loyalty has an advantage over many traditional marketing investments in that it can often be tied more directly to transactions and customer behavior, creating a stronger foundation for proving impact.
“Traditional marketing tracks a lot of ‘conversions’ such as clicks or impressions; loyalty tracks transactions and behaviors,” said Max Kenkel, Customer Solutions Manager at ITA Group. “Make sure you get internal consensus on what metrics you want to drive. Test and learns are your friend.”
Another key point was that loyalty is more likely to be seen as a business driver when it is embedded into planning and governance, not revisited only during budget cycles.
“The brands that get this right treat loyalty like a real part of the business, one that has its own budget, its own goals that finance helped create, and a voice in business decisions year-round,” said Graf. “When loyalty only shows up in finance conversations once a year, it’ll always get treated like an expense.”
Several responses also stressed the importance of considering the cost of inaction, not just the cost of investment.
“Without the use of loyalty tactics and incentives, brands risk loss of customers and drops in earnings,” said Paul Flemr, Senior Vice President at Incentive Marketing Solutions Group.
Taken together, the message is that loyalty becomes strategic when it is managed with shared ownership, disciplined measurement, and a clear link to profitable growth.
The Metrics That Earn Executive Confidence
If loyalty is to be viewed as a strategic investment, measurement must translate customer behavior into financial outcomes. Several perspectives emphasized that the metrics most likely to resonate with CFOs are not engagement indicators alone, but those that connect loyalty performance directly to revenue, margin, cost efficiency, and risk management.
A recurring theme was the need for shared metrics that both finance and marketing can use to evaluate performance. That often means moving beyond traditional loyalty reporting and focusing on measures that demonstrate incrementality, profitability, and economic impact.
“If CMOs and CFOs are measuring different things, the fix is finding metrics that mean something to both sides, which means connecting member behavior to dollars,” said Graf. “If a metric can't be traced to revenue, margin, or cost reduction, it's going to land as a ‘marketing number’ in a CFO conversation.”
Graf noted that the metrics gaining the most traction with finance leaders tend to focus on attributable impact, including incremental revenue from members versus non-members, lifetime member value, and liability measures such as redemption and breakage.
Other perspectives reinforced the importance of proving not just correlation, but true incremental lift.
“The most effective metrics are those tied to profitability and incrementality—customer lifetime value, retention rate, purchase frequency, and margin per customer,” said Sydney Shapiro, Strategic Account Executive, CRM & Loyalty at Baesman. “Layering in control groups or holdout testing to show true incremental lift is critical.”
Bill Warshauer, Chief Revenue Officer at Tillo, pointed to the importance of connecting rewards economics to broader financial outcomes.
“The key is to move beyond engagement metrics and demonstrate a clear line between investment and outcome,” Warshauer said. “If you can show that, loyalty becomes far easier to justify.”
Taken together, the message is that executive confidence is built when loyalty metrics move beyond activity reporting and provide a clear view of financial impact, from revenue lift and retention economics to liability management and profitability. When those measures are in place, loyalty becomes easier to defend, optimize, and fund.
Looking Ahead: Building Alignment Through Shared Value
The perspectives in this first installment point to a common theme: the CMO-CFO divide is often less about disagreement over loyalty’s value and more about how that value is framed, measured, and governed. When loyalty is tied to shared metrics, supported by stronger economic discipline, and positioned as a driver of profitable growth, the conversation begins to shift from budget scrutiny to strategic investment.
These insights suggest alignment does not begin during budget season. It begins earlier, in how programs are designed, how success is defined, and how finance and marketing build a common language around customer value and business impact.
Yet measurement and positioning are only part of the challenge.
In Part 2 of this Supplier Perspectives series, we’ll explore how brands are balancing short-term performance pressure with long-term customer value, breaking down silos across functions, and prioritizing loyalty investments in an era of tighter budgets and higher expectations.