For years, marketers have optimized for short-term sales lift. But sales lift only tells part of the story.

A campaign may drive purchases today, but did it create customers who come back tomorrow?

New research by Bain & Company, leveraging analytics conducted by its data science division, Pyxis, suggests that rewards can do exactly that.

Across industries, the analysis revealed:

• Fetch rewards increased first-time customer acquisition by +32%, compared to a control group
• Generated a median 8x net ROI from newly acquired customers within three months
• Among ongoing customers, Fetch rewards increased spend by an average of +18% over the following 12 months, versus a control group

These findings point to a broader shift in how brands should think about growth. The question is no longer whether a campaign worked; it’s whether it created lasting customer value.

Why Sales Lift Isn’t Enough

Traditional marketing measurement focuses on short-term outcomes. Did the promotion drive incremental sales? Did the campaign generate lift? Did it hit its target?

Those metrics matter, but sustainable growth depends on what happens after the first purchase. Do consumers come back? Do they spend more over time? Do they buy more frequently?

To answer these questions, Bain combined its Customer Value Framework – attract, retain, and grow – with Fetch’s omnichannel, transaction-level, consumer purchase data to understand how rewards influence customer acquisition, retention, and growth over time.

How Rewards Create Customer Value

All three stages of the framework contribute to long-term customer value. However, the relative importance of each stage varies by industry. For CPG brands, value is primarily driven by acquisition and retention. For retailers, value is created through retention and growth.

Attract

For many brands, growth starts with winning new customers, with new buyer acquisition as the key driver of success at this stage.

The research found that approximately 43% of CPG customers were new each quarter, highlighting why acquisition remains such an important growth lever for the category. Rewards helped strengthen that pipeline, increasing first-time customer acquisition by +22% for CPG brands compared with a control group. CPG rewards also generated a 7.2x net ROI from newly acquired customers within three months.

The results demonstrate that rewards do more than attract new buyers, they help brands grow their customer base efficiently and profitably.

Retain

Acquiring customers is only the beginning. Long-term value depends on whether those customers return and remain active over time. Therefore, a focus on repeat rate.

Compared with organic purchasers, consumers who earned a first-purchase reward, across industries, were +18% more likely to repurchase within the following two quarters and generated a +28% spend uplift. Beyond encouraging repeat purchases, rewards also helped brands retain and reactivate customers, increasing active customer bases and driving meaningful sales growth across both CPG and retail.

The findings suggest that rewards do more than drive initial purchases, they help brands keep customers engaged, reduce churn, and build more valuable customer relationships over time.

Grow

The most valuable customers don’t just come back; they become more valuable over time. Growth can come from larger baskets or more frequent purchases, but the research found that frequency was the primary driver of long-term value for retailers. 

Rewards increased retailer shopping frequency by +11%, compared to a control group, resulting in an +8% sales uplift over 12 months. Importantly, the growth came from more shopping occasions rather than larger basket sizes, demonstrating how rewards can reinforce purchasing habits over time. By increasing shopping frequency, brands can create more opportunities to engage customers and drive sustained growth.

The Shift from Campaign Optimization to Customer Optimization

The findings suggest that rewards do more than drive transactions. They influence the behaviors that create long-term customer value: acquisition, retention, and growth.

For marketers, this means shifting the focus from campaign optimization to customer optimization.

Three priorities matter most:

1. Connect campaign performance to customer value. Sales lift shows whether a campaign worked. Customer value reveals whether it acquired, retained, and grew customers over time.
2. Design rewards to shape behavior. The most effective rewards programs meet the customer where they are to drive new buyers, encourage repeat purchases, increase shopping frequency, and build long-term purchasing habits.
3. Invest in omnichannel visibility. Consumers do not shop in a single channel. Understanding customer value requires a complete view of purchasing behavior across retailers and over time.

The New Growth Imperative

The future of growth is not campaign optimization; it is customer optimization.

Brands that understand how rewards influence customer behavior over time will be better positioned to attract customers, strengthen retention, and create long-term customer value.

The goal is not simply to win the next transaction. It is to win the customer.

Read the complete Bain & Company study HERE.

About Pyxis by Bain & Company: Pyxis is Bain’s alternative data analytics practice. Pyxis helps brands and retailers derive insights from customer and transactional data, including market share shifts, basket behavior, shopper segmentation and customer lifetime value across channels over time. Pyxis can also help brands and retailers maximize the value of Fetch panel data through deeper customer, category, and competitive insights.