What a luxury membership programme does that a loyalty scheme can’t
Points reward spending. Luxury membership has to reward belonging. Here is what building Maserati Tridente taught me about the difference.
Most loyalty schemes are built on a simple trade: spend more, get more back. That works for airlines and coffee shops. It doesn’t work for a brand whose customers buy one car every few years, and whose biggest fans may not own one yet.
Maserati launched Tridente in June 2023 as its first membership programme. I was the global lead for CRM and digital product on the project. These are the five things I’d tell any luxury brand thinking about building one.
1. Start with the customer record, not the app
The app is the part people see, but it wasn’t where we started. The first piece of work was a new data platform that gave Maserati a single view of each customer.
Without that, an owner in Modena, a prospect who configured a car online and a fan reading content in Shanghai look like three strangers. With it, every touchpoint can recognise the person in front of it. Membership is only as personal as the data underneath it.
2. Open the door, then tier the room
Tridente has three tiers. Blu is open to anyone who loves the brand. Platinum is for owners of the GranTurismo, MC20 and MC20 Cielo. Diamond is for owners of the Project24 and GT2.
The open entry tier matters. In luxury, today’s enthusiast is often tomorrow’s client, and a programme that only speaks to owners ignores the pipeline. The tiers rise with closeness to the brand, not with points.
3. Reward with access, not discounts
A discount tells a luxury customer the product was overpriced. Access tells them they belong.
So the rewards were things money can’t easily buy elsewhere: private tours of the Modena factory, early access to limited editions, and, at the top tier, a Fuoriserie consultation with the head of design, plus invitations to Formula E and Monterey Car Week. The programme was built around five pillars: editorial storytelling, Maserati exclusives, cultural encounters, curated drives and international events.
4. Meet each market where it already lives
Italy was the pilot market, and China launched alongside it, before North America later in 2023 and the rest of Europe and Asia in 2024.
In China, Tridente didn’t arrive as a standalone app. It ran through Maserati’s owner-centre mini programme inside WeChat, where Chinese customers already spend their day. It carried the same idea: brand content, owner stories, member events from test drives to art exhibitions, plus practical services such as booking a test drive, trade-in and after-sales in a tap.
The programme is the constant. The container is local.
5. Keep the physical part physical
An app can get someone to the door. It can’t give them the memory. The value of membership shows up in the room: events such as Tridente is Woman in Modena in June 2024, and the Trident Experience weekends that bring customers back to the factory.
The digital layer should make those moments easier to find, book and share, not try to replace them.
Recognition
The Tridente app won a 2024 Red Dot Design Award in Brands & Communication Design, for user interface and user experience design.
