Google Ads & SEO Update: Loyalty Programs for E-Commerce Growth

Google has introduced a powerful new update for retailers: loyalty program features are now visible across Google Ads and organic search results. Brands can highlight member-only pricing, cashback rewards, free shipping, and other perks exactly where shoppers are making buying decisions.

This update is more than a feature release — it’s a shift in how e-commerce competition will play out. Imagine a shopper searching for a product during the festive season. Instead of just seeing product listings and prices, they’ll now see which brand rewards loyalty, offers exclusive festive benefits, or provides repeat-purchase incentives. For Indian businesses heading into peak festival shopping, this could be the difference between a one-time buyer and a long-term customer.

So, what does this mean for online stores? Let’s break it down.

Why Loyalty is the New Growth Engine

Customer loyalty has emerged as a major revenue driver for e-commerce. With rising ad costs and intense online competition, retaining existing customers is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Loyal shoppers tend to spend more, return more often, and are more likely to recommend a brand to others.

Traditional, generic loyalty programmes often fall short of modern expectations, lacking the personalisation that today’s consumers anticipate. This is where Google’s new, data-driven tools provide a significant advantage, offering smarter ways to engage high-value customers.

Google Ads: Supercharging Loyalty with Precision Targeting

Google Ads now offers a suite of loyalty-focused features designed to help retailers maximise their customer relationships, available across both free and paid listings.

1. Member-Only Pricing and Benefits: Retailers can now provide exclusive pricing and shipping benefits directly to loyalty programme members. These perks are prominently displayed in Google Search and Shopping results, allowing signed-in users to easily identify special offers they qualify for. This fosters a sense of exclusivity, encouraging new sign-ups and reinforcing loyalty among existing members.
2. Retention Goal in Performance Max: A significant update in 2025 is the introduction of a “retention goal in loyalty mode” (previously known as “loyalty goal”) in Google Ads. This feature allows marketers to optimise campaigns specifically for high-value, loyal customers, including lapsed ones. By defining valuable customer groups, the system can automatically prioritise bids for users with a higher projected lifetime value, giving brands more direct control over their customer lifecycle strategies within Performance Max. A new Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) column has also been added to campaign reports, allowing advertisers to track spending on new customer acquisition across Performance Max campaigns.
3. Customer Match Integration: Loyalty programme members are often a brand’s most valuable audience. By uploading their data via Customer Match, retailers can create hyper-targeted campaigns, enabling existing members to “indicate their status as a member of your loyalty program to enjoy a personalized shopping experience on Google”.
4. Shopping Campaigns with Loyalty Benefits: For products in Google Shopping, loyalty benefits can be displayed alongside listings using the loyalty_program attribute, making ads more compelling without necessarily increasing ad spend.
5. Creative Automation and Negative Keywords: Performance Max campaigns are also seeing enhancements like landing page image controls for automatically pulling images to broaden creative options, and image enhancements like automatic cropping for diverse ad placements. Furthermore, the campaign-level negative keywords limit for Performance Max has been expanded to 10,000, significantly enhancing advertisers’ ability to refine targeting and prevent ads from showing for irrelevant searches, improving campaign efficiency. 

These advancements in Google Ads allow retailers to achieve higher ROI through smarter targeting, increase customer retention and repeat sales, and make better use of first-party data for personalisation.

SEO: Unlocking Organic Visibility for Loyalty Programmes

On 10 June 2025, Google rolled out a revolutionary update: loyalty programme benefits, such as member pricing and reward points, are displayed directly in organic search results. Google acknowledges that “member benefits, such as lower prices and earning loyalty points, are a major factor considered by shoppers when buying products online”.

This offers a major competitive advantage, as it is a free opportunity to differentiate listings and significantly improve engagement and conversion rates.

Google now recognises and displays four specific types of loyalty benefits in search: reward points, exclusive member pricing, special return conditions, and unique shipping options. Seeing these perks directly in search immediately differentiates a listing, answering the crucial question, “What’s in it for me?” before a user even clicks on a website.

The Exclusive Opportunity for Early Adopters

Historically, the biggest gains from new Google features come to early adopters. This loyalty programme update presents a powerful, albeit brief, window of opportunity in markets like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and France. Google also supports complex, multi-tiered loyalty programmes, allowing businesses to showcase sophisticated value propositions and prepare for the future of SEO.

Implementation for Organic Visibility

To ensure loyalty programme benefits appear in search, retailers need to implement LoyaltyProgram structured data within their website’s Organization markup. The most reliable format is JSON-LD, added to the <head> section of the HTML, detailing tiers, benefits, and joining requirements. It is crucial to validate this markup using Google’s Rich Results Test tool before and after deployment, as minor code errors can impact overall visibility.

Additionally, Google Merchant Center Next (GMC Next) plays a vital role. Its dedicated ‘Loyalty Programs’ section allows stores to submit details like free shipping, redeemable points, and loyalty pricing for specific product groups. The ‘Promotions’ feature enables the distribution of special offers, often using coupon codes, which apply to free listing surfaces. It is important to note that information provided within GMC Next typically takes precedence for Shopping features in search results over structured data.

Key Organic Visibility Surfaces

Loyalty programme information and promotions can appear across several Google free listing surfaces:

• Merchant Knowledge Panels: This is arguably the most impactful surface, appearing prominently for branded search queries. Google is testing displaying loyalty tiers and benefits directly within these panels, linking to the relevant pages on your website. On mobile, loyalty benefits are shown vibrantly with a heart icon and coloured badges.

• Free Listing Product Details: Loyalty programme snippets and promotional coupon codes can appear for individual products in grid results. Coupon codes can even be copied directly from search results and applied at checkout.

• The ‘Brand Profile’ Tab (beta): For select GMC Next accounts, this tab offers direct control over business information in search results, including promotional details, images, videos, and social profiles.

• ‘Shop deals’ & Chrome Discounts: Products with promotional coupon codes qualify to appear within special “shop deals” search results during holiday periods and within Chrome’s desktop dashboard, which alerts users to active promotions from previously browsed stores.

GMC Next also provides dedicated reporting views to monitor the performance of promotions and loyalty programmes on organic surfaces, tracking clicks, impressions, and CTR for promotions, and appearances for loyalty programmes.

The Synergistic Advantage for E-commerce Businesses

The true power lies in integrating loyalty programmes across both paid and organic channels.

• Consistent Message: By ensuring loyalty benefits are highlighted in both Google Ads and organic search results, e-commerce businesses provide a consistent and compelling message to potential and existing customers across their entire shopping journey.

• Amplified Reach and Engagement: Increased organic visibility from loyalty programme features (e.g., knowledge panels) drives more qualified, intent-driven traffic to your site. This audience can then be efficiently retargeted with personalised ads via Google Ads, further nurturing their loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value.

• Optimised Ad Spend: When loyalty benefits make your organic listings more attractive, you might see an improvement in organic click-through rates, potentially reducing reliance on paid clicks for certain queries. Simultaneously, using retention goals in Performance Max ensures that your ad budget is intelligently allocated to your highest-value customers, maximising ROI.

• Data-Driven Personalisation: The data used to segment customers for Google Ads (e.g., Customer Match) can inform and complement the structured data used for organic loyalty displays, creating a cohesive, personalised experience that rewards loyal customers and encourages new sign-ups.

Foxmarketeer’s Perspective: What This Means for Business Owners

From our consulting experience, we see this update as a game-changer for Indian businesses preparing for the festive season. During Diwali, Navratri, and other peak shopping periods, customers are not only looking for the best deal but also for added value and trust. Highlighting loyalty perks directly in search results or ads can help businesses cut through the festive clutter and stand out.

We also believe this shift will benefit SMEs and challenger brands just as much as large e-commerce players. By adopting loyalty integrations early, smaller businesses can compete with bigger players without increasing ad spend significantly. The key lies in execution: ensuring structured data is implemented correctly, segmenting audiences smartly, and balancing retention with acquisition.

At Foxmarketeer, we often advise businesses to focus on long-term customer lifetime value rather than one-off festive discounts. Google’s loyalty-focused features align perfectly with this philosophy, helping brands build sustainable growth while optimising festive campaigns.

Best Practices for E-commerce Retailers

To fully capitalise on Google’s new loyalty tools, retailers should adopt these best practices:

1. Segment Your Audience: Use your CRM or loyalty platform to create detailed customer segments, distinguishing casual browsers from high-value buyers.

2. Utilise Personalised Annotations Wisely: Tailor ad messages for each loyalty tier, ensuring benefits are clear and compelling.

3. Promote Membership Benefits: Include strong calls-to-action in ads encouraging users to join your loyalty programme.

4. Implement Structured Data Correctly: For organic visibility, add LoyaltyProgram structured data to your website’s Organization markup and validate it using Google’s Rich Results Test tool.

5. Leverage Google Merchant Center Next: Ensure your loyalty programmes and promotions are fully submitted and managed within GMC Next, as this data often takes precedence for Shopping features.

6. Track Performance Metrics: Monitor click-through rates, conversions, and customer lifetime value across both paid and organic channels to assess campaign effectiveness

7. Test and Optimize: Continuously A/B test different ad creatives, loyalty offers, and segments to identify what resonates best with your audience.

Conclusion

As shopping behaviours continue to evolve, the e-commerce brands that succeed in 2025 will be those that build enduring relationships with their customers. Google’s integrated loyalty features across Google Ads and SEO provide powerful tools to achieve this, combining personalisation with performance marketing.

For Indian businesses, particularly during the festive season, these updates present a golden opportunity to turn seasonal shoppers into loyal customers who stay with the brand long after the celebrations end. By adopting early, optimising campaigns, and focusing on lifetime value, retailers can secure a stronger, more sustainable future.

🔗 Source & Stats Credit: Google Ads Help – Loyalty Program Features