OFFER OPT-IN

Card Linked Offers are designed to be a seamless way for collectors to earn Miles without any steps at the register. Collectors link an eligible Mastercard to their account which then unlocks new partners and earning opportunities when they pay with that linked card. In late 2025, we expanded this offering to even more collectors by automatically linking known BMO Debit Card holders. This initiative was designed to further strengthen the relationship between Air Miles and our parent company BMO and demonstrate the benefits collectors can have when they are customers of both.

While this expanded the program for more collectors, this caused our partners, who pay for every Mile issued, to want more assurance that collectors were intentionally choosing to earn with them rather than passively accumulating Miles on their newly linked cards. Our partners began explicitly requiring an Opt-In mechanic as a condition of their partnership. But a traditional Opt-In would require collectors to open each offer individually and opt-in one at a time, which is a significant ask on a page with a minimum of 25 offers at one time.

I was brought on to this project to design a solution that satisfied our partner needs without compromising the experience for our collectors.

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Before exploring design solutions, I conducted a competitive review to understand how other loyalty and rewards programs were handling offer opt-ins. Three models emerged: single offer opt-in, where collectors opt-in to each offer individually; multi-offer opt-in, where collectors opt-in to all offers in one action; and automatic opt-in, where offers are activated when a collector signs in.

I presented these options to our Strategic Partnership stakeholders and recommended automatic opt-in as the least disruptive path for collectors. It was shut down. Our partners felt it still didn't demonstrate enough conscious intent on behalf of the collector.

Back to the drawing board, I worked through different iterations of design solutions that either added even more complexity or didn't align with the spirit of the requirements from our partners. I turned to our own data for clarity on how our collectors engage with our offers. I reviewed approximately 30 collector session recordings on Fullstory to see exactly how they interacted with our offer cards. I began to find a pattern; whenever an offer card displayed an "Opt-In" mechanic pill, collectors were clicking directly on the pill instead of the rest of the card, even though it wasn't interactive. This behaviour was not seen on other offer types with different mechanics. Collectors were showing us their intent to opt-in, directly from the offer card.

To validate whether this behaviour extended to Card Linked Offers specifically, I set up a targeted filter to view sessions focused on our one existing Card Linked Opt-In offer with Sephora. The behaviour was consistent.

The answer wasn't a new design pattern. It was following how our collectors were naturally behaving.

The behavioural insight pointed to a simple and elegant solution, follow the collectors actions and allow them to opt-in by interacting with the mechanic pill on the card. No new components. No new design patterns. When a collector taps the pill, they are opted-in to the offer, the pill state updates from "Opt-In + Eligible Linked Card" to "Eligible Linked Card," and a toast notification confirms their action. This was the best solution for our partners and our collectors, but I knew that it needed the right context to land.

I had worked through several design iterations before arriving at this solution. Some added complexity that would have created more friction for collectors. Others satisfied the mechanic of an opt-in but didn't truly demonstrate the conscious intent our partners were looking for. I documented this journey carefully, because I knew that walking stakeholders through what didn't work would make what did work feel inevitable rather than underwhelming.

I met with our Strategic Partnership team first. I walked them through each iteration, explaining why each fell short, before revealing that the answer was already sitting in our collector behaviour data. When I presented my solution, Strategic Partnership was immediately onboard. The solution demonstrated clear, conscious intent from the collector without adding additional pain points.

The designs are fully specced and ready for development. For a future iteration, I am exploring adding a microinteraction to make the state change feel even more rewarding — but the MVP needs no design changes at all.

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By leveraging existing collector behaviour, we arrived at a solution that satisfied our partners' requirements without adding a single extra step for collectors. The opt-in mechanic required no new design components, no new patterns, and no additional friction in the experience.

The solution has been signed off by Strategic Partnership and is fully specced for development, with a launch planned for later this year. For a future iteration, I am exploring a microinteraction to make the state change feel even more rewarding for collectors.

Sometimes the best design solution isn't designing anything new at all.

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