Customer Retention Examples: 12 Companies and the Mechanism Behind Each

Retention shows up first in a company's own numbers. BJ's reports what share of members hold its upper tier or its card. Duolingo reports how many daily users hold a streak of a year or more. Rakuten reports how many of its users touch two or more of its services. Each number traces back to one mechanism, and an enterprise loyalty team can copy each mechanism.

The twelve companies below are grouped by that mechanism. Every fact comes from the company's own filing, terms or help page, read on October 1, 2026. Points programs get their own treatment in our loyalty program examples, one program per industry. Our brand loyalty examples look at why customers stay with twelve other brands. Retention runs wider than points. Fees, habits, data, written guarantees and shared currencies all keep customers buying.

How do paid memberships keep customers?

BJ's Wholesale Club. BJ's charges $60 a year for its Club membership and $120 for Club+, which adds more value. Its annual report calls paid membership an essential part of the warehouse club model and says membership reinforces customer loyalty. In fiscal 2025, Club+ members and co-brand Mastercard holders made up 42% of members and 52% of merchandise spend. The card pays up to 5% cash back at BJ's.

Its second-quarter 2026 release reports a record 8.5 million members. Membership fee income rose 9.9% to $135.6 million. BJ's credits that mainly to new members, retention and more members in higher tiers. The mechanism is an upgrade path: a higher tier, plus a card that pays cash back on each trip. What to copy: report the upgrade tier's share of members next to its share of spend. At BJ's, the upgraded members are 42% of the base and 52% of the spend.

DoorDash DashPass. DoorDash runs three consumer memberships: DashPass, Wolt+ and Deliveroo Plus. Each one cuts the delivery and service fees on an order and adds other perks, per its annual report. It had over 35 million members across the three at the end of 2025. That December, its marketplaces served over 56 million monthly active users.

The mechanism removes the cost of the next order. A fee on every order makes each one a fresh decision. A membership turns that fee into money already spent, which the member wants to use. What to copy: find the fee or friction that sits between a member and the next purchase, and let a paid tier remove it.

How do tiers and status keep members spending?

Hilton Honors. Hilton's 2025 annual report counts 243 million Honors members. It says the program encourages members to spend more of their travel budget at Hilton hotels. The share Hilton wins rises as members move up the tiers. Members who book direct also get perks on the spot. One is a slider that lets them pay with nearly any mix of points and money.

The mechanism is status that grows with spend, with perks that pull bookings into direct channels. What to copy: report share of wallet by tier. Hilton's disclosure ties each step up the ladder to a larger share of travel spend, and that is the test a tier ladder should pass. Our tier strategy guide covers thresholds and benefits.

Caesars Rewards. Caesars Rewards has six tiers: Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Diamond Plus, Diamond Elite and Seven Stars, per Caesars' annual report. Members earn Reward Credits on gaming, including sports betting and online casino apps. They also earn on hotel, dining and retail spend at most Caesars destinations in the U.S. and Canada. They redeem the credits for those same experiences.

Caesars says the program wins it a larger share of customers' entertainment spend than a standalone property would get, as they travel between regions or bet online. Members reach more of the portfolio's benefits as they climb the tiers. What to copy: let status travel. A tier that counts and pays out in every property and channel gives the member a reason to keep spend inside the group.

How do subscriptions build a daily habit?

The New York Times. The Times sells a bundle. News, The Athletic, Audio, Cooking, Games and Wirecutter all come in one digital subscription. Its 2025 annual report says the bundle gives subscribers multiple reasons to engage with its products each day. It frames the goal as daily habits that grow into lifelong relationships worth paying for. It ended 2025 with about 12.78 million subscribers.

The mechanism is frequency. Games and Cooking give a subscriber a reason to open the app on a day without big news. What to copy: give members a reason to visit between purchases. A program that only speaks at checkout stays silent for most of the year.

Duolingo. Duolingo counts streaks: the number of days in a row a learner completes a lesson. At the end of 2025, about 43 million daily active users held a streak of 7 days or longer, per its annual report. About 15 million held one of 365 days or longer. Duolingo had more than 130 million monthly active users, and about 9% of them paid for a subscription.

The mechanism is a run the learner does not want to break. Each lesson extends the streak, so a skipped day has a visible cost. Duolingo says its short lessons and game features motivate learners to come back each day. What to copy: count consecutive weeks of activity and show the member the run. Then reward the milestones along the way.

How does personalization keep customers coming back?

Kroger. Kroger serves about 63 million households a year. Its annual report says that thanks to its rewards program, over 95% of customer purchases carry a Kroger loyalty card. Kroger has spent over 20 years on data science. It uses that data to tailor the experience and value each shopper gets. Personalization is one of its four top priorities.

The mechanism is to know the buyer first and fit the offer second. An offer can only be personal when the sale carries a member ID. What to copy: track the share of sales you can tie to a member, and raise it before you scale personal offers. Our guide to loyalty personalization covers the next step.

Netflix. Netflix publishes how its recommendation system works. It estimates how likely a member is to enjoy a title from their viewing history and ratings. It also uses members with similar tastes and details of the title itself. Time of day, device and viewing length feed in as well. The system leaves out demographic data such as age or gender. New profiles pick a few titles they like to jump-start it.

The mechanism is relevance drawn from behavior and refreshed with every session. What to copy: ask new members for a few preferences at sign-up, then let behavior take over. Netflix ranks titles without demographics, which is a fair test for any segment plan built on age bands.

What does service recovery look like when it is written down?

JetBlue. JetBlue's Customer Service Plan pays 5,000 TrueBlue points for a controllable delay of more than three hours. It pays the same when JetBlue cancels a flight for a reason in its control less than four hours before departure. Points go only to customers with a TrueBlue account in their name on the booking. Notice arrives within 24 hours of the scheduled departure, and the process runs without a call. Starting in early 2026, this compensation moved from travel credit to TrueBlue points.

The mechanism ties service recovery to the loyalty program. A delayed traveler gets paid in the program's own points, and joining becomes the price of getting paid. What to copy: pay recovery straight into the member account, set off by the delay data you already hold.

Southwest Airlines. Southwest's Customer Service Plan, effective June 4, 2026, sets a fully transferable LUV Voucher of at least $75. It applies when Southwest cancels or delays a flight within seven days of its scheduled departure and the customer arrives three or more hours late. The customer requests it through an online form within one year of the flight.

Side by side, the two plans show a design choice. JetBlue pays enrolled members automatically. Southwest covers every customer and waits for a request. What to copy: publish the threshold and the amount before anything goes wrong. Then decide whether payment waits for a claim.

How do ecosystems make staying the easy choice?

Rakuten. Rakuten links more than 70 businesses through one membership and one points program. Over 100 million people in Japan can reach them with a single Rakuten ID, per its company profile. Points earned while shopping, streaming or banking pay for other Rakuten services. Rakuten says the setup keeps the cost of winning customers down and raises the lifetime value of each member.

Its second-quarter 2026 results report that 77.0% of users used two or more services in the past 12 months, counting services that earn Rakuten Points. Rakuten builds that ratio into its own formula for membership value. The formula multiplies active users by cross-use, then by lifetime value minus acquisition cost. What to copy: measure cross-use and report it next to member count.

Mercado Libre. Its 2025 annual report describes Meli+, a loyalty program with tiers. It runs in five Latin American countries. Better shipping options, cashback and more installments on marketplace buys come with the Essential tier, and they apply across the whole ecosystem. The Total tier adds free Disney+ and money off HBO Max and Paramount+.

The mechanism joins shopping and payments in one membership, with partner media at the top tier. What to copy: let one paid tier span every business line, and use partner perks to mark the step up. Our ecosystem loyalty guide covers the partner economics.

What do these customer retention examples have in common?

Each company measures its mechanism and reports the number. A paid tier reports its share of members and spend. A habit product reports streaks. An ecosystem reports cross-use, and a tier ladder reports share of spend by tier. The metric matches the mechanism, and that match is the first thing to copy.

Identification comes before everything else. Kroger ties over 95% of transactions to a card, and that figure measures coverage. It says nothing on its own about what the program caused. Customers who already buy often have the most reason to join, so a high member share describes reach. A holdout test measures cause, and our breakdown of loyalty program KPIs runs one step by step.

The mechanisms also stack. BJ's pairs a paid tier with a co-brand card. Caesars pairs tiers with a network of destinations and apps. JetBlue pays recovery in its loyalty currency. A program that already runs points and tiers can ask which of the other mechanisms fits its business next. The customer retention guide covers the rate formula behind all of them.

How GRAVTY handles retention mechanics

In GRAVTY, tiers, statuses and currencies are settings, so a change needs no code. Its patented Visual Rules engine lets loyalty teams write earn, burn, tier and bonus rules. They can simulate each rule and put it live without an IT ticket. Member 360 puts each member's behavior and sales in one view, household included. GRAVTY powers GHA DISCOVERY across 40+ hotel brands. Deutsche Telekom runs one program across 9 countries on it. GRAVTY runs 500M+ members in production, with 100+ prebuilt integrations.

Frequently asked questions

What are some examples of customer retention strategies?

BJ's paid Club+ tier, the Caesars Rewards status tiers and Duolingo's streaks are three strong examples. Each company publishes a number that shows the strategy at work. Club+ and co-brand card members make up 42% of BJ's members and 52% of its merchandise spend.

What is a customer retention program?

A customer retention program is any set of rules that gives current customers a reason to keep buying from one company. A points program is one kind. Paid memberships, auto-reorders, bundles and written service promises count too, with or without points.

What is the difference between customer retention and customer loyalty?

Retention measures whether customers keep buying, and loyalty adds how much of their category spend you win and why. A retained customer can still split purchases with two rivals. Share of wallet and survey rank show that split.

Which retention metric should a loyalty team report?

Report the metric that matches how you keep customers. A paid tier reports its share of members and spend, as BJ's does. A habit product reports streaks, as Duolingo does. An ecosystem reports cross-use, as Rakuten does.

How do you prove a retention program works?

Run a holdout test. Keep a random group of eligible customers out of the offer, then compare their spend and margin per customer with everyone else. A gap between members and non-members alone mixes the program's effect with the kind of customer who joins.

Can a loyalty program pay service recovery compensation?

Yes. JetBlue now pays 5,000 TrueBlue points for a controllable delay of more than three hours, issued automatically. The value stays inside the program, and enrollment becomes the condition for payment. Weigh that against a plan that covers every customer.