Inside Phenom Phans: How Talent Leaders Turn a Loyalty Program into a Career Tool

Customer loyalty programs exist because retaining a customer is much more cost effective than gaining new ones. Bringing in a new customer costs significantly more than keeping one, and yet most organizations invest far more in the front end of that equation than the back. A well-designed loyalty program helps you spend less and grow within your existing customer base.  Loyalty programs give existing customers a reason to stay engaged, deepen their relationship with the product, and turn passive users into active advocates who bring other customers along with them.

At IAMPhenom 2026, Jerry Casale, Director of Customer Engagement, and Heather Klinger, Senior Manager of Customer Loyalty, walked through what the program is, what it produces, and why the practitioners getting the most out of it are treating it less like a reward system and more like a career asset.

What Makes a Loyalty Program Stick?

The pattern is familiar enough. A vendor launches a community program. Early adopters engage. Points accumulate. Eventually, participation collapses into something that only happens at annual conferences and nowhere else in between.

The reason this cycle repeats is that transactional programs create transactional behavior. If the only reason to show up is the reward, people show up for the reward and leave. As Casale put it: "Loyalty programs that work are not necessarily about points. They're about relationships, and you stay because the brand sees you."

That framing shaped how Phenom Phans was built. The goal was a program where practitioners stay and contribute because it gives them something genuinely useful for their careers: early information, peer connections, a way to influence the product they use daily, and recognition that extends beyond their own organization.

The Four Pillars That Make Phenom Phans Worth Using

Phenom Phans is accessible through the product login at login.phenom.com, through the same portal that talent and recruiting teams already use. The program is organized around four pillars, each addressing a different gap in how practitioners typically experience vendor relationships.

1. Learn: Members get early access to product updates, release information, and best-practice content ahead of general availability. For practitioners who are often the last to hear about platform changes affecting their workflows, that lead time has direct operational value. It also changes the dynamic in leadership conversations: knowing what is coming before it arrives makes it possible to bring ideas forward rather than react to them.

2. Connect: The Phenom community at login.phenom.com has almost 20,000 members, 17,297, along with product documentation, peer Q&A, release notes, and feedback tools available alongside active participation from Phenom product staff. 

3. Influence: Members get a structured channel into product decisions through direct feedback submissions that reach the product team, and through the Phenom Ascend mentorship program. As Klinger described it: "Both mentors and mentees, if you've ever been a part of a mentorship program before, you learn from one another. Both parties get something out of the relationship." 

4. Earn: Participation converts into tangible value through a reward store that includes branded merchandise, gift cards, and charity donations. Experience rewards extend further: a one-on-one Employee Experience Audit with the CXO at 2,000 points, and a Marketing Strategy conversation with the VP and GM of Global Marketing at the same threshold. 

The Scale of What Phenom Phans

One year after launch, Phenom Phans has 6,357 advocates across 493 companies worldwide, with a target of 10,000 advocates.

The participation behind those numbers tells a more specific story. Members have generated 264 references from 141 unique companies. 19 Phenom Phans appeared on stage at FY26 events. The program had one podcast speaker heading into IAMPhenom 2026, with five podcast recordings completed by the time the conference wrapped. Of the current membership, 122 have indicated they are ready to speak publicly, and 159 are ready to share their customer stories in some form.

Every post, comment, and connection in the community earns points. Monthly release roundups bring product managers in for live demos and Q&A, making them one of the most consistent ways members stay current on what has changed and how to use it.

How Consistent Participation Builds a Professional Reputation

The most direct argument for Phenom Phans is not the reward store. It is what sustained participation builds for a practitioner's career over time. One practitioner started as a standard Phenom user, became her organization's internal subject matter expert, engaged more consistently with the community and the loyalty program, landed a virtual roundtable speaking opportunity, served as a customer reference that contributed to closing a new business deal, and went on to speak at an external HR Collective. No title change. No formal promotion. A reputation built through visible participation in a professional community and a set of relationships that would not have existed without it. 

The leaderboard makes that participation visible. As Casale put it: "The leaderboard really isn't about competition. It's about visibility. Everything that you do as a fan counts." For practitioners who have spent years developing deep platform knowledge with nowhere to put it externally, that visibility changes what becomes possible. For practitioners who operate as the sole Phenom expert at their organization, the community addresses something more fundamental. 

Four Ways to Start Getting Real Value from the Program

Whether Phenom Phans is already familiar or entirely new, the path to getting real value out of it follows the same sequence.

• Log in and establish a baseline: Access is at login.phenom.com through the trophy icon in the product. Check the current points balance, review the leaderboard, and look at what opportunities are currently available. The reward store and opportunity feed update regularly. Basically, be sure to check back often. .

• Start with one activity that already fits the workflow: The program earns points for things most practitioners are already doing: attending webinars, submitting product feedback, and engaging with community posts. The fastest way to build a points balance is to connect existing habits to the program rather than layering on new ones.

• Identify one opportunity that sits slightly outside the comfort zone: Speaking opportunities, podcast appearances, customer references, and mentorship participation all carry higher point values than passive engagement, and all of them build something that does not expire when a role changes. As Klinger noted: "We created this for you to network and really get to know who's using Phenom."

• Connect with the local HR Collective: For practitioners in cities where a Collective is active, the regular touchpoint is the highest-density networking opportunity the program offers. The conversations that happen at Collectives are the kind that an annual conference can approximate but cannot replicate across twelve months of the year.

• Connect with the local HR Collective: For practitioners in cities where a Collective is active, the regular touchpoint is one of the highest-density networking opportunities the program offers. The conversations that happen at Collectives are the kind that an annual conference can approximate but cannot replicate throughout the year.

What a Working Loyalty Program Actually Looks Like 

A loyalty program that works is one where the practitioner gets something real out of participation: information, relationships, and recognition that build over time. The vendors who get this right understand that the return on a well-engaged customer base is not just retention. It is a network of practitioners who know the product deeply, can vouch for it credibly, and continue to grow alongside it.

Phenom Phans is built around that premise. The community is already active, and the opportunities are already available. 

Watch the full session at demand or log in at login.phenom.com and look for the trophy icon to see where things stand!