Marketing Exec Pitches AI-Powered Loyalty Program Design as CFO Budget Workaround

Marketing Exec Pitches AI-Powered Loyalty Program Design as CFO Budget Workaround

A fractional marketing leader is promoting artificial intelligence tools as a way for companies to design customer loyalty programs without hiring expensive consultants, positioning the approach as a bridge between marketing ambitions and finance department skepticism.

Ed Poppe, founder of a fractional marketing consultancy, published a framework Thursday on MarTech outlining how marketers can use ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to structure loyalty initiatives that might satisfy both customer expectations and CFO budget constraints. The pitch arrives as finance chiefs increasingly scrutinize marketing ROI amid pressure to demonstrate measurable returns on every dollar spent.

The methodology centers on using AI chatbots not as replacement strategists but as "framework generators" that help marketing teams move from paralysis to testing faster. "Marketers have a thousand ideas and no time to test them," Poppe writes. "AI won't give you perfect answers, but it will help you move from stuck to getting started faster."

His approach sidesteps what he characterizes as the traditional choice between expensive agency engagements and internal guesswork. Instead, he proposes feeding AI tools with basic business parameters—brand positioning, target customers, competitors, and differentiators—to generate positioning statements and program structures that teams can then pressure-test internally and refine with actual customer feedback.

Poppe uses a coffee roaster as his test case, arguing that if the framework works for a product category where preferences are "deeply personal," it should translate to other consumer businesses. He claims to have run the process through multiple AI platforms with varying outputs but consistent underlying utility.

The framework emphasizes clarity before creativity. "Before you can design a program that's valuable to your customers, you need clarity on what your brand offers and what your customers want," Poppe writes, positioning the AI exercise as forcing the kind of strategic discipline that finance departments typically demand before approving new spending.

What's notable is the framing: this isn't marketed as "AI will revolutionize loyalty programs" but rather "AI will help you build something your CFO won't immediately kill." The implicit acknowledgment is that most loyalty program proposals die in budget meetings, not because they're bad ideas but because they can't demonstrate clear value relative to cost.

The approach raises familiar questions about AI's role in strategic work. Poppe concedes the tools won't deliver "perfect answers" and explicitly positions them as starting points rather than finished strategies. The value proposition is speed and structure, not brilliance—getting marketing teams to a testable hypothesis faster than traditional brainstorming or agency RFPs.

For CFOs evaluating marketing requests, the framework represents a shift in how proposals might arrive. Instead of fully-baked agency decks with six-figure price tags, expect more iterative, AI-assisted pitches that start smaller and claim faster validation cycles. Whether that actually produces better ROI or just faster bad ideas remains the open question.

The broader signal: marketers are actively seeking tools that help them speak CFO language—measurable, testable, budget-conscious—even if the underlying creative work still requires human judgment. AI becomes the translator, not the strategist.