Companies are facing a fundamental shift in how purchase decisions are made. It is no longer just the customer who’s researching, comparing, and choosing products. Increasingly, AI agents are taking on that role, acting as intermediaries between brands and buyers. One could say that brands are now, in fact, entering into a completely new loyalty arena: algorithmic loyalty.
Marketing to People, Optimizing for AI
Marketing campaigns, storytelling, and emotional branding remain powerful tools. They influence how people feel about your brand, which in turn affects their purchasing decisions. But as AI agents become part of the customer journey, another layer of influence emerges. One that’s grounded in data signals rather than emotion.
AI doesn’t care about what’s top of mind in your customers’ heads, meaning that all brand capital that doesn’t have a digital trace isn’t weighed in the AI algorithm.
When AI agents evaluate which products or brands to recommend, they most often turn to sources such as:
- Product reviews
- Forum discussions
- Social media mentions
- Customer satisfaction scores
AI doesn’t ignore brand value; it just doesn’t perceive it the way humans do. Instead of responding to a brand film or tagline, it responds to structured inputs as those mentioned above.
This means that brands need to optimize for both audiences at once. The emotional connection still matters, but it must be backed by data that reinforces trust signals in a machine-readable format. A compelling campaign might attract a consumer to your product, but other things play a role in earning you a recommendation from an AI agent.
However, traditional brand awareness and securing top of mind to get direct mentions in the customers’ evaluation process still have great value. If customers already have a preference for your brand, they’re more likely to mention it and stick with it once they start prompting.
Developing a Feedback Ecosystem
Encouraging customers to leave reviews or create user-generated content isn’t a new idea, but it’s no longer just about social proof for other consumers. Every review, every rating, and every user-submitted video is also a signal for AI systems.
To influence these systems, brands should look beyond superficial incentives and instead develop feedback ecosystems. For example:
- Reward depth, not just volume. A detailed, high-effort review adds far more value than a five-word sentence.
- Follow up with existing customers to update reviews after three, six, or twelve months. AI systems favor recency and relevance.
- Categorize and structure review prompts around product attributes that AI might evaluate, like durability, fit, and usability, rather than just asking, “Was this a good purchase?”
Loyalty Is No Longer Just Human
Loyalty programs have traditionally focused on nurturing long-term customer relationships through perks, points, and personalization. In an AI-assisted landscape, this model expands, and brands must now build loyalty with algorithms as well.
This includes ensuring consistency across digital channels. A product with hundreds of high ratings on one platform but none on another can raise a red flag, not just to users but to AI systems evaluating data comprehensively.
It also means maintaining transparency and integrity in how data is presented. Inflated ratings, unmoderated reviews, or inconsistent product specifications will not go unnoticed. AI is designed to spot outliers and discount biased input, and clean, accurate data will always be a winner.
Remember the Basic Principles
AI doesn’t change the rules but simply enforces them more consistently. Every customer interaction, review, and touchpoint now contributes to how both people and machines perceive your brand.
If anything, the AI transformation of digital commerce highlights the importance of some of the most basic principles:
- Sell quality products. Product excellence isn’t just a business goal but a data source. Return rates and customer feedback become part of your public record.
- Make customers happy. Satisfaction leads to advocacy, and advocacy becomes data. The happier your customers, the more signals you generate.
- Encourage sharing. Not for the social proof alone, but because that content now trains and informs the systems that recommend your brand.
What Comes Next?
Companies need to stop thinking in separate tracks: emotional loyalty for people, technical SEO for search, review management for PR, etc. These are no longer separate strategies but strategies that are part of the same system of influence.
Brands that want to stay relevant must:
- Actively manage their review of ecosystems, encouraging satisfied customers to share their experiences.
- Understand how AI agents are reshaping discovery and recommendation mechanisms.
- Focus on clean data and structured content for visibility.
- Build trust simultaneously with customers and algorithms.
At Avensia, we see this shift to focus on AI in the field of brand loyalty as a natural evolution of modern commerce. We help our customers stay at the forefront of this AI transformation, not only through implementing technology that meets current needs but also through adapting their strategy to meet emerging patterns of behavior, humans and machines alike.
Want to learn more about our AI offering? Contact us to set up a meeting, and one of our experts will get in touch to continue the conversation.
