Relevance crisis? The answer lies in Behavioral Loyalty and Walled Gardens

While the primary goal for brands just a few years ago was establishing a physical and digital presence, today’s ultimate challenge is staying relevant in the minds of consumers. Research indicates that the average person is exposed to roughly 33.000 stimuli per day, yet cognitive capacity retains only 8. In this saturated landscape, where capturing user attention is increasingly difficult and social media Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) continue to climb, legacy marketing models are officially obsolete.

Interviewed during CXO 2026, the flagship Customer Experience event organized by IKN Italy, Fulvio Furbatto (CEO & Founder of Advice Group) mapped out a strategy to overcome this relevance crisis: stop chasing users on third-party platforms and start building a high-value, data-driven proprietary asset.

Beyond Social Media: from anonymous followers to known users

Social networks remain the natural starting point for brand awareness, but they carry a fundamental structural limitation: followers remain anonymous, and their data belongs to the platform.

The true strategic shift occurs when brands successfully guide their social communities into fully owned environments: Walled Gardens.

Why build a Walled Garden? The 3 pillars of the strategy

Establishing a proprietary environment marks a paradigm shift in how brands engage with their audience:

• Data Trust: in an era of heightened data privacy awareness, a Walled Garden serves as a secure, transparent ecosystem. Here, collecting Zero- and First-party data is experienced as a fair exchange: consumers willingly share insights because they receive a genuinely personalized experience in return.
• Behavioral loyalty: traditional loyalty models ($1 spent = 1 point) are inherently exclusionary because they reward spending power alone. Inside a Walled Garden, brands reward user behavior, valuing every customer through gamification, educational content, and multi-channel engagement.
  
• Beyond RFM Metrics: demographic and financial data reveal who the customer is and how much they spend, but fail to explain why they choose a brand. Walled Gardens capture behavioral patterns and genuine brand affinity, uncovering invisible signals that traditional RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) models miss, converting fragmented interactions into a clear picture of buying intent.

 

Fulvio Furbatto's perspective: “A proprietary customer base is an asset that requires continuous feeding and enrichment. Only through a deep understanding of the user can we transform data from a cost center into a revenue driver.”

From database to profitability: the data-driven strategy to slash CAC

One of the greatest challenges for any CMO is aligning Marketing with Finance. Where a CFO might view a database as a cost center, Advice Group’s approach repositions it as a valuable balance-sheet asset.

Enriching a proprietary database with behavioral insights shifts the balance toward long-term profitability by enabling advanced monetization strategies:

• Lookalike Audience Strategies: Target new prospects who mirror your most loyal customers, drastically cutting wasted ad spend and driving down Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Retail Media & Partnerships: Transform your brand into a media channel, offering non-competing partner brands access to a highly segmented audience, directly monetizing your data assets

From theory to practice: the Verabilia case study

On stage at CXO 2026, Fulvio Furbatto, alongside Claudia Chiappa (eCommerce & Digital Lead at Veralab), showcased Verabilia, Veralab’s new loyalty program.

The project stands as a prime example of how a brand with a massive social media following can successfully migrate that value into a proprietary Walled Garden, building a direct, highly measurable relationship with its user base.

Ready to turn your community into a high-value asset?

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