Blings joins NALA as a partner: building the North American loyalty community

We are excited to share that Blings is now an official partner of NALA, the North American Loyalty Association. NALA launched across the United States and Canada in April 2026 as a new membership organization for brands and retailers and their loyalty, CRM, and customer engagement teams. The association is operated by ELA Europe Ltd, the same group that built Europe’s Loyalty Association into a community of more than 1,000 members across 800 brands over the past four years.

Our partnership reflects a shared belief. The future of loyalty is not built on louder messaging or bigger discount budgets. It is built on data-grounded, customer-recognized experiences that earn long-term participation. NALA is creating the room where the practitioners doing that work can compare notes honestly, and Blings is contributing the infrastructure that turns those conversations into customer-facing campaigns.

What is NALA and why does it matter for loyalty teams?

NALA, short for North American Loyalty Association, is a membership organization built specifically for the people running loyalty, CRM, and customer engagement programs at brands and retailers across the United States and Canada. The association exists to give practitioners a practical, community-driven alternative to traditional industry bodies and event circuits.

The model is grounded in the success of Europe’s Loyalty Association, known as The ELA, which now spans 800 brands across retail, FMCG, hospitality, energy, telecommunications, airlines, financial services, and entertainment. NALA brings that framework to North America with the same emphasis on candid dialogue, peer connection, and real-world problem solving.

Hadie Perkas, CEO and Founder of The ELA and NALA, framed the launch in a Wise Marketer feature this way: too much of the loyalty industry still talks in circles, and practitioners need straight answers, honest conversations, and a network they can rely on. The full launch announcement is available at The Wise Marketer, and NALA’s own website is the-nala.com.

What events is NALA running in 2026?

NALA’s flagship event series is called The BIG Handshake Loyalty, or TBH Loyalty for short. The format is built around candid dialogue rather than scripted success stories. Two events are scheduled for 2026.

The inaugural TBH Loyalty Toronto took place on April 21, 2026 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto, bringing together 170 senior loyalty, CRM, and customer engagement leaders for a day focused on real-world challenges, open discussion, and practical takeaways. The second flagship, TBH Loyalty Chicago, is scheduled for November 10, 2026 at the Omni Hotel Chicago, with 200 attendees expected.

NALA’s five-year plan also includes expansion into additional cities including New York, the launch of regional NALA HUBs, and growth to more than 500 members by 2027. The shape of the association will continue to follow the practitioner-driven model that worked in Europe.

How can loyalty teams join NALA for free?

NALA membership is free for brands. If you are a practitioner working in loyalty, CRM, or customer engagement at a brand or retailer in the United States or Canada, you can join the community at no cost. The process takes a few minutes.

To join, visit the-nala.com and complete the membership form. Membership is open to loyalty managers, CRM leads, customer engagement directors, retention strategists, customer marketing leads, and any other practitioner with a meaningful role in how their brand earns and rewards customer relationships. Technology providers and consultancies participate as partners rather than as free members, which is the model that keeps the practitioner conversations honest and unbiased.

Once you are in, you get access to TBH Loyalty events at member pricing, virtual meet-ups, regional NALA HUBs as they roll out, peer roundtables, and the broader practitioner network. The community is purpose-built for the loyalty function, not for adjacent industries that happen to overlap.

What does the Blings and NALA partnership look like in practice?

As a NALA partner, Blings will be active at NALA events, contribute to community conversations and content, and host practitioner sessions that focus on the operational details behind personalized loyalty programs. Our goal is to be useful to the room rather than visible in it. That means more honest case study debriefs, more architecture-level conversations about why specific approaches scale, and more practitioner-led discussions about the operational realities of running a modern loyalty program.

If you are attending TBH Loyalty Chicago in November, you will see us there. If you are involved in a NALA HUB or virtual meet-up earlier than that, you will likely see us there as well. For a sense of what we contribute on the personalization architecture side, the piece on MP4 is dead: long live the MP5 is a good entry point. The piece on why Blings beats traditional video platforms for referral campaigns is a better fit if you are looking specifically at referral and advocacy mechanics.

Why does the loyalty industry need a community-driven association?

Loyalty, CRM, and customer engagement have always been operationally complex disciplines that get reduced to a few buzzwords at conferences. The practitioners running these programs face the same set of structural challenges across very different brands: data fragmentation, channel orchestration, reward economics, retention measurement, and the long-term ROI question that haunts every program review.

The classical industry response has been to convene panels of vendors and consultants who present polished case studies. The practitioner response has been to ignore most of it and learn through informal back channels. NALA’s model splits the difference. The practitioners run the room. Vendors and consultants contribute as partners. The conversations are designed to surface honest answers rather than scripted ones.

That structure is what makes the association useful for the people doing the work. According to Bain and Company research on loyalty economics, programs that produce durable retention lift share a small set of operational characteristics: tight customer recognition, fast data feedback loops, and reward structures that calibrate to advocate behavior rather than discount sensitivity. Those characteristics are easier to build when you have a community of practitioners stress-testing the same questions in parallel.

FAQ

Is NALA membership really free for brands? Yes. Membership is free for brands and retailers in the United States and Canada. Technology providers and consultancies participate as partners rather than free members.

Who should join NALA? Loyalty managers, CRM leads, customer engagement directors, retention strategists, customer marketing leads, and any practitioner with a meaningful role in how a brand earns and rewards customer relationships.

What does NALA do that traditional industry events do not? NALA focuses on candid dialogue, real-world problem solving, and peer connection. The TBH Loyalty event format is designed to move away from scripted panels and toward honest practitioner conversation.

What is Blings doing as a NALA partner? Contributing to community conversations and content, hosting practitioner-led sessions on personalization architecture and loyalty mechanics, and showing up at TBH Loyalty events to learn from the practitioners running these programs at scale.

How do I join NALA? Visit the-nala.com and complete the membership form. Membership for brand-side practitioners is free.

The takeaway

The loyalty industry is overdue for a community that prioritizes practitioner honesty over vendor messaging. NALA is the most credible attempt at that we have seen in North America, built on the four-year track record of Europe’s Loyalty Association and tuned for the specific reality of US and Canadian markets. Blings is proud to be a partner, and we are committed to showing up the way the model intends: useful, candid, and focused on what actually works for loyalty teams.

If you run a loyalty, CRM, or customer engagement program at a brand or retailer in North America, the membership is free and the network is worth joining. We will see you in Chicago on November 10, or earlier at a NALA HUB or virtual meet-up.