Why airlines run loyalty programs — and what that has to do with your frame catalog

Delta gives Diamond Medallion members unlimited complimentary upgrades and free Sky Club access. These are customers already flying Delta. They've earned status by flying tens of thousands of miles a year. Why hand them more?

The same question applies to Walmart+. Members already drive to Walmart. They already fill the cart. Yet Walmart pays to give them faster checkout and free shipping. For shoppers, they've already won.

There is a clean answer to this question, and it has been the answer for forty years across every industry that runs a loyalty program. Engagement causes more spending. The best customers don't reward your business because they were going to spend anyway. They spend more because you engaged them.

The pattern shows up everywhere the data is published

When loyalty programs publish their numbers, the gap is consistent.

Walmart+ members spend 31 percent more in-store each year than the average Walmart shopper. They spend 206 percent more on Walmart.com.[¹] Adidas reports that adiClub members buy more than 50 percent more often than non-members and have a lifetime value more than twice as high.[²] Amazon Prime members spend 12 percent more annually than the average Amazon customer.[¹]

These are paid loyalty programs. Members opted in. They had already chosen the brand. The lift is on top of that choice.

The pattern is so consistent across categories that it has stopped being a question of whether engagement drives more spend. The only real question is how to engage.

Your best patients are already running this program. They just don't know it.

Independent practices have a version of this pattern hiding in plain sight. The best patients (returning, brand-loyal, comfortable in the office) are also the ones most likely to engage with the practice between exams. They are the ones who scroll the website. Browse the frame board. Save favorites for their next visit.

They are quietly doing what Delta's Diamond members do. Rewarding the brand they have already chosen by spending more.

Most practices haven't noticed because the engagement happens outside the schedule and out of the chair. None of that browsing shows up in any report you'd see in your office. But it determines what they spend when they walk in for their exam.

But they would have bought anyway.

My patients are loyal. They'll buy frames at our dispensary either way.

Run that through Delta's lens. Diamond Medallion members are flying Delta either way. They have status precisely because they fly so much. Delta still gives them lounge access and free upgrades. Because that engagement causes them to fly Delta more often and spend more on each trip.

The optical version: a patient who has chosen your practice for ten years is more likely to engage with your frame catalog before their next exam, not less. And when they do, they show up knowing what they want. They move through the dispensary faster, not slower — the deciding already happened online. They walk out with frames they're excited about, picked out before they ever sat down. They were always coming. Engagement is what determines how much they spend when they get there, and how quickly the appointment moves.

The fifteen-minute proof

The simplest tell that the engagement is doing real work: nobody spends fifteen minutes filtering frames online if they were "just going to buy anyway." That time investment is the patient making a decision. The website is where the decision happens. The dispensary is where it gets paid for.

The data lines up. Optify customers see that pre-shopping patients spend 15-20% more than non-pre-shopping patients on average.[³] Same practice, same dispensary, same staff. The only variable is whether the patient engaged with the practice's frames before the exam.

Research online, close in person

This is not unique to optical. Anyone who has bought a $60,000 car has done the same thing. Hours on the dealer's website, configuring trim packages and watching walkaround videos. Then a drive to the lot to talk to a person and close. The website captures intent. The salesperson closes the sale.

Eyewear works the same way. Patients who pre-shop are doing online what they would have done in your dispensary anyway. They just do more of it. They show up later in their decision-making and are more excited about what they're about to buy.

What this looks like in practice

Cargo Eye Care added 14 percent in overall revenue and roughly $25,000 in additional monthly optical sales after putting its inventory online.[⁴] St. Paul Eye Clinic added ten points of capture rate in their first thirty days, taking their monthly conversion rate to 30 percent. They sold 52 additional pairs of frames in that same window through pre-shop alone.[⁴]

Neither practice changed its patient base. They didn't market harder or hire more opticians. They engaged the patients they already had.

For most independent practices, a 10 to 13 point improvement in capture rate translates to roughly $40,000 to $80,000 in additional annual revenue per provider.[⁵] Not from new patients. From the patients already booked.

What "engagement" actually requires

The Delta Diamond program works because Delta automated it. Status tracks. Upgrades clear. The Sky Club door opens. The member doesn't have to ask. They just experience the engagement.

Pre-shop has to work the same way for it to land in a busy practice. The frame inventory has to live online and stay automatically up to date. The pre-shop message has to fire before the appointment, without a staff member having to remember to send it. The opticians have to see the patient's preselections before the patient sits down.

This is precisely the problem Optify was built to solve. Your inventory goes online and syncs automatically with your EHR. Patients receive a pre-shop message before their next exam. They browse the inventory and try frames on virtually. Your opticians see what they liked before they sit down. The same idea as a Delta upgrade. You are giving your already-loyal patients a better experience between visits. They reward you with more spend per visit and fewer walkouts.

The takeaway

Your best customers spend more because you engaged them—not in spite of your engagement. Pre-shop is what drives that engagement.

If you'd like to see what that math looks like in your practice, book a demo. We'll walk through the capture rate and average sale, using your numbers.

Footnotes

[¹] Numerator. "Numerator Expands Single-Sourced Verified Data to Amazon Prime and Walmart+ Membership Data." Press release, March 5, 2024. https://www.numerator.com/press/numerator-expands-single-sourced-verified-data-to-amazon-prime-and-walmart-membership-data/

[²] Consumer Goods Technology. "Adidas Leans Into Memberships and Beefs Up Digital Hires." March 14, 2022. https://consumergoods.com/adidas-leans-memberships-and-beefs-digital-hires

[³] Optify internal data: Vision Source Preview deck (slide 13) and Hero Messaging documentation. Pre-shopping patient AOV lift varies by practice.

[⁴] Optify customer success stories. https://optifyonline.com/success-stories

[⁵] Optify Customer Journey Map. Practice-level lift varies by exam volume and average sale.