Hey julia_gaj, absolutely love this question. I think you're (pardon the pun) on the money with incentives often being treated as an afterthought.
For us, it really starts with what behaviour we’re trying to drive. In my eyes, incentives shouldn’t be the default lever; they should be intentional. In some cases it's lifecycle-driven (onboarding or reactivation for example), in others it's more performance or margin-led depending on the objective for that quarter or half.
One thing we're exploring is better understanding the type of value different customers respond to, whether that's content, product recommendations, or bonuses. The goal for us is to move away from the assumption of customers want more incentives” and instead learn what kind of value actually resonates with different segments.
That’s a big shift from the status quo of pushing the same offer broadly, toward using data to shape both the incentive and the messaging around it so that we're targeting the right customer with the right message at the right time.
Ideally incentives become just one tool in the lifecycle toolkit, rather than the primary way we drive engagement.
