You've got an idea for a loyalty or engagement program. Or worse, your CEO does. Now what?

You know a bit about loyalty already, right?

You're probably a member of an airline frequent flyer program. Maybe you've redeemed a flight, or turned up just in time with enough points for a birthday gift.

So the thinking goes:

"It's points and toasters. Or points and tiers? Hold on, how do I even pay for the toasters? Where do I store them? Can I just run this in Excel? How many rows can Excel even hold? Maybe the agency can handle it, they've got people and ideas."

Sound familiar?

It's a common starting point, and there's nothing wrong with it. But it's a starting point, not a strategy.

When we ask "why are you doing this?" or "what do you actually want to achieve?", the answers tend to fall into a few buckets. Some say it's to keep their market position or leapfrog a competitor, which raises the question of whether they're matching a competitor in their own market or somewhere else entirely.

Others point to a directive from the C-suite, which is a good sign of buy-in but raises the question of whether the rest of the business is on board and how it'll actually get delivered. Some admit that IT simply had budget left over, since loyalty was coming eventually and IT didn't want to lose control of it. And plenty say it's to create more loyal customers and increase revenue, which is fair, but that's the outcome, not the plan.

None of these are wrong answers. There's no simple formula here. But the "why" matters more than most people expect, because it shapes how your brand, your team, your partners and your customers all understand what the program is actually for.

Skip that step, and you end up building a program nobody inside the business can explain, let alone one members will actually value.