By Eric Atienza, Assistant Director of Digital Marketing and Marketing Technology, American Med Spa Association (AmSpa)

The Allergan Allē Loyalty Program changes are now in effect, and over the last several weeks many med spas and aesthetic practices have been vocal about their concerns.

At issue is the program moving toward exchanging Allē reward points for free product with fewer opportunities for patients to exchange points for financial rebates from Allergan. Med spa owners and injectors across the country raised a number of financial, operational and clinical issues as the onus of making good on the point rewards moved from Allergan to the med spa practice, potentially taking some control over product choice out of the hands of the providers.

AmSpa received feedback in emails, social media posts and comments across the Internet. In the interest of helping practices navigate these program revisions, we worked to gather more information, both on what your pain points were as well as any additional information Allergan was able to provide on how med spas could move forward.

We called on Julie Bass Kaplan, FNP-BC, CANS, and Erika Barry, NP-C, MSN, to give voice to not only the worries that they had, but also to what they’d been hearing about in their networks. Both were troubled by what the new program would mean financially for smaller businesses in particular. Top areas of concern identified by these two luminaries, and pulled from the more than 100 questions we received from the 700+ webinar registrants were:

• Financial impact on small businesses.
• Strategy and structure of providing the free product.
  • Is the practice responsible for supplying the product and, if so, what is the reimbursement protocol?
  • What happens in the case a practice doesn’t supply that product?
  • Does the free product count toward a practice’s purchasing tier?
• Patient communication about the new program.
  • Providers were worried this would turn treatment conversations into financial conversations.
  • Providers were worried that charging an injector fee for a reward treatment being introduced to Allē members as "free" could create a negative patient experience for their business.
• Provider compensation for free treatments.
  • Practice owners were worried about how providers would be compensated if a patient came in for a free treatment.
• Customers having the opportunity to dictate product and/or treatment selection.
  • Providers were worried that patients would ask for treatments based on getting a free product reward, and not based on the provider’s medical opinion on what would provide the best outcome.

We brought these questions directly to Allergan and, following an advisory board meeting on this topic, Allergan sought to respond to them live. Jasson Gilmore, SVP of U.S. Marketing and Data Labs and Heidi Shurtz, VP of Loyalty Programs and Field Marketing, came on to speak about the changes to Allē, and to outline a few decisions the company had made upon seeing how widespread the concerns were. These included:

• The data that drove the decision to alter the structure of the Allē program.
• Allergan’s decision to stop referencing “free” on the Allē website and in the app, and to build in the expectation that there will be a provider fee for any reward-based service.
• Allergan’s pause on direct-to-consumer marketing for Allē for the remainder of 2024 to get a better handle on the temperature of the market and how the program is working.
• The update to allow filler rewards to now apply to the entire Juvéderm line instead of just a select few products.

We are committed to helping any and all practices work through these changes by continuing to engage in conversations with Allergan and our members, gathering and disseminating information, working with experts across the med spa space to produce solutions and developing resources as more becomes known about how to take advantage of the program.

These webinars are only the beginning. The medical spa industry is built by thousands of independent practices across the country, and we are committed to building resources to help each of those businesses grow.

Our support for you is unwavering and we will remain dedicated to helping you move forward successfully through this transition, and any future challenge you may face.