US Loyalty Program Memberships, 2000-2012 [CHART]

Chart - US Loyalty Program Memberships

Loyalty program memberships are showing strong growth rates again, according to results from the 2013 COLLOQUY Loyalty Census. The study indicates that there were 2.647 billion loyalty program memberships last year in the US, representing 26.7% growth from 2.089 billion in 2010. Membership growth rates appear to be on the upswing again after stumbling from a 34.5% increase between 2006 and 2008 to a 16.3% climb between 2008 and 2010. But the news isn’t all good for loyalty practitioners.

That’s because despite healthy growth in memberships (at a compound annual rate of 8.7% since 2000), the proportion of memberships that are active appears to be sliding.

In 2012, 44% of memberships could be classified as active, meaning that members had engaged at least once in the previous 12 months. That’s down from 46% in 2010, and reverses what had been a trend towards increased activity. That is, while the percentage of active memberships grew by 10.9% between 2006 and 2008, that growth rate slowed to 5% between 2008 and 2010 before turning negative (-4.3%) between 2010 and 2012. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.