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Brooks Run Club: A Consumer Loyalty Platform That Turns Every Run Into Rewards, Driving 23% Higher AOV
Customer Loyalty Program Results and ROI
BRC members who opted into the program vs not opted in
+23%
Increase in AOV
+77%
Increase in open rates
+333%
Increase in CTR
Executive Summary
Opportunity
Brooks Running partnered with DashLX to launch a first-of-its-kind customer loyalty program that redefined how a brand can connect with its community. This connected experience, available to all Brooks Run Club (BRC) members, offers a gamified and experiential loyalty program that connects the brand with individual runners between product purchases. It fosters an authentic running community and inspires year-round engagement by rewarding runners for their activity.
Solution
Powered by zero-party Lived Experience (LX) Data from wearable devices combined with environmental and weather data, the program enriches Brooks’ CRM and SMS platforms with real-world, real-time behavior data and detailed insights into how their products are used. This allows real-time customer engagement, personalized running challenges, and behavior-based segmentation at scale as well as the ability to send highly-personalized one-to-one brand messages triggered by real-world movements or participation in IRL running events.
Impact
The Brooks Run Club continues to be a success story, bringing runners together in a genuine community, strengthening brand loyalty, and driving measurable growth through higher AOV, CLV, and engagement. It’s clear that when loyalty programs are built on transparency, trust, and community (rather than just transactions and promos), they don’t just connect people to the brand, they also fuel lasting growth and stronger advocacy.
Today, Brooks Run Club brings together over 1 million runners in North America, and has expanded to Europe, opening new opportunities for cross-functional alignment, innovation, and global community growth.
Loyalty Program Software and Tech Stack
Integration
- Marketing Platform, SMS Platform
User Connections
- Garmin, Strava, Coros, Fitbit, Apple, Polar, Suunto
Use Case
- Loyalty Program
- Brooks Run Club North America
- Automated Marketing Engagement
“With DashLX, we’re able to pull running data from fitness trackers and watches in real-time, which not only lets us truly reward their run, but also feeds into our run research team, helping us understand how runners move to build even better products.”
Ryan Ngo,
VP of North America Marketing and eCommerce, Brooks Running
The Opportunity
Brooks set out to launch the Brooks Run Club (BRC) North America as a community-driven loyalty experience where runners could feel seen, celebrated, and connected to something bigger than themselves.
With most members already using wearable technology, Brooks recognized the opportunity to turn every run, walk, or race into a chance to connect.
Brooks Had Five Key Goals
1. Build a Community-Driven Experiential Loyalty Program
Brooks envisioned a loyalty program built on real-world movement, shared experiences, emotional connection, and year-round engagement.
2. Activate their CRM with Real-World Activity Data from Wearables
With most customers already using wearables, Brooks saw the opportunity to turn activity data into a full 360-degree view of the customer, going beyond digital profiles to capture real-world behaviors.
3. Create a Unified Digital Ecosystem for Wearable Data
With dozens of wearable devices in play, Brooks needed a seamless infrastructure to collect, normalize, and integrate wearable data, as well as environmental data such as weather, elevation, and topography into a human-readable source of truth that could be easily embedded within the existing tech stack.
4. Create True One-to-One Personalized Brand Messaging
Leverage new consumer insight data to create behavior-based segmentation and deploy behavior-triggered one-to-one messages.
5. Build a Transparent, Privacy-First, Data Strategy
Building a brand community around trust was important to Brooks. By embracing an opt-in, zero-party data strategy, Brooks would empower members to share their information with confidence, keeping runners in control of their own data and allowing them to share and withhold access to their data easily.
The Initiative: Brooks Run Club - A Customizable Rewards Platform
Shortly after launching the Brooks Run Club, Brooks partnered with DashLX to launch a new experiential loyalty program for BRC members; a gamified digital customer loyalty program, powered by real-time activity data that would focus on encouraging runners to keep running and achieve their goals.
At the heart of BRC is Brook’s foundational goal of helping runners run; a brand-differentiating strategy from most loyalty programs which are typically designed to increase purchase frequency by offering promotions based on browser data. Instead, the DashLX-connected BRC experience was built from zero-party Lived Experience (LX) Data: runners opting in to share their activity data from wearables to create a unique member experience, built on highly personalized interactions.
DashLX managed the data journey, collecting and normalizing data from seven types of wearable devices as well as terrain, weather and mapping data sources and normalizing all these disparate types of data into a single, human-understandable output. Data was then integrated with Brooks’ CRM, and their SMS service, to create real-time behavior-triggered one-to-one messages and enhance customer profiles far beyond typical digital-only interactions (like email clicks and purchases).
This infrastructure now powers personalization and real-time engagement that responds to how, when, and where runners move in the real-world.
BRC members earn rewards for hitting running milestones, participating in seasonal challenges, and achieving big aspirational goals like completing the Global Marathon. It allowed the brand team at Brooks to unify digital marketing with real-world activations and build relationships in the months between purchase cycles by connecting with runners after their runs.
Every interaction is designed to motivate, celebrate, and connect, transforming single purchases into lasting relationships and keeping the community moving together 365-days a year. Instead of focusing on promos and shopping carts, Brooks focuses on building a relationship in the months between purchases. And their customers have rewarded them with the kind of brand loyalty that few brands experience.
The Highlights
Brooks partnered with DashLX to launch a gamified, experiential loyalty program powered by real-time customer activity data from wearable devices.
DashLX enabled full data flow integration with Brooks' CRM and SMS systems, enhancing customer profiles beyond digital interactions.
The program uses zero-party LX Data to deliver personalized, automated engagement based on how, when, and where runners actually move.
The program rewards meaningful milestones, drives 365-day customer engagement, and now serves as a platform for cross-functional innovation and global scale.
CX Beyond Marketing:
The program also serves as a platform for cross-functional innovation, across Digital Marketing, Product Innovation, and eCommerce. Its success in North America created a proof-of-concept for global expansion with Brooks EMEA building on a scalable framework.
The Impact: How a Consumer Loyalty Platform Boosted Retention, Engagement, and Customer Lifetime Value
1. Built a Connected, Inclusive Runner Community
From the first mile to the hundredth, Brooks Run Club has become a community for more than 1 million runners in North America, from elite athletes to casual runners.
By celebrating every run and rewarding real-world milestones, Brooks has deepened emotional connections, inspired year-round participation, and nurtured a running community where every stride is shared.
2. Experiential, Gamified Loyalty Program
Like a well-marked trail that keeps you eager for the next bend, Brooks Run Club offers tiered milestones, seasonal challenges, and that inspire runners to keep moving.
Each achievement, whether big or small, comes with its own reward, from personalized experiences and exclusive perks to surprise gifts that build trust and strengthen loyalty. Most importantly these rewards aren’t for shopping or buying; they’re rewards for running, building Brooks’ relationship with customers in the months between their purchases.
This approach has delivered a 23% increase in AOV, proving that a customer loyalty program built on shared experiences and authentic community can be as engaging and rewarding as the run itself.
3. Hyper-Personalized, Real-Time, Automated Engagement
Every run tells a story: the time of day, the terrain underfoot, the distance covered.
By tapping into real-time LX Data, Brooks joins each runner’s journey with relevant, timely messages of encouragement, product recommendations, and rewards at exactly the right time.
Behavior-triggered campaigns powered by smart segmentation reach members in the moments that matter most, leading to a 77% lift in open rates and a 333% increase in CTR.
This automation keeps engagement high without adding extra workload for the team.
4. Enterprise Wide Consumer Insights
Behind each run is a pattern waiting to be discovered. LX data unlocks deeper consumer insights that inspire product innovations that meet runners’ needs.
5. Zero-Party Data Collection
DashLX designed an opt-in flow that empowers Brooks Run Club members to confidently share their data, enabling personalized experiences while protecting privacy. This trust-first approach strengthens relationships, drives participation, and accelerates program adoption. Among members who opted in, the program proves that privacy-first, transparent data collection can unlock powerful enterprise value.
Buy vs Build
When Brooks set out to design a new kind of loyalty program built on brand experience rather than transactional incentives, it quickly became clear that the insights they needed were already being captured in data. The leadership team recognized that unlocking, standardizing, and leveraging this data would require significant time and resources to build an entirely new data platform.
