5 Tips for loyalty programme success

Loyalty programmes are marketing strategies that operators apply to make the betting experience more attractive for players. Through these systems, companies offer benefits to customers that reward participation in their games or in other affiliated services.

All types of loyalty programmes are extensively used in the gaming industry. Since operators find it difficult to differentiate themselves from competitors with their game portfolios, they seek to implement a great number of promotions and rewards systems.

In the year 2012 a census estimated that, after a 94% growth in only 6 years, there were over 150 million casino-based loyalty programme members in the US.

However, marketing researchers have found that, even when loyalty programmes are beneficial for brands, not all the types of promotions have the same level of impact.

In order to design and implement a successful loyalty strategy, it is crucial to identify the best practices. Below, you can find five major tips that have consistently proven to boost loyalty programme results.

1. Focus on your online channel

Studies show that loyalty programmes tend to be more successful online than in offline markets.

At first glance, this makes perfect sense, since the costs for customers to come back to buy, accumulate points, and claim their rewards is lower online than in physical shops.

Other positive traits are the lower costs of implementing these promotional systems online (avoiding printing materials or traditional advertising) and the amount of aggregated data available from operators’ websites, which can definitely help them make the promotions more effective.

2. Gamify the experience

Remember than betting is not just about winning. Players want to have fun too! And they should be able to enjoy every aspect of their customer experience.

Gamified loyalty programmes have proven to be more successful than conventional ones in increasing customer loyalty and participation.

Global reports have found that when these programmes use gamification, they deliver about 70% more enjoyment than regular ones. Also, when this game dynamics is applied, 81% of loyalty programme members take advantage of it.

3. Display users’ success

Players need to be reminded about how far they have come in the process of accumulating points and how important it is to redeem their efforts.

The company always has to be transparent about what their customers are promised, to ensure that loyalty with the brand is achieved.

In addition, a clear tracking process has proven to enhance members’ enthusiasm for the programme. It is well known that when users get closer to achieving a reward or reaching a new level, they also tend to be more invested and spend more.

4. Offer gradual rewards

Consecutive prizes, member categories, and well defined levels in the programme are key features to boost players’ engagement.

Loyalty systems aim to achieve a certain amount of recurrency in the user’s behaviour, and marketing research shows that the farther the reward is, the lower the incentives are to stay invested. Conversely, the closer the prize, the higher the incentives.

Moreover, success contributes to increasing the amount of effort put in consecutive attempts to reach a goal. In other words: if members are rewarded in the process, they will be more empowered each time to reach the next levels.

5. Stay ahead

In the case of loyalty programmes, there is still a lot of research to be done and so much to discover...

Innovation is crucial to achieve much better results than the competition. The data collection and measurement tools provided by online services allow providers and operators to create, evaluate, and improve loyalty systems faster than ever.

In addition, there are many new trends and ideas already in the market that deserve to be explored. For example, experts assure that loyalty programmes can be very effective systems to apply responsible gaming tools.

We also know that players don’t easily switch between verticals in their gaming habits. That is why GoldenRace has created the first loyalty programme exclusively designed for Virtual Sports, with all the elements of gamification, gradual rewards, tracking, and incremental levels, which operators can easily configure by setting simple options in their backoffice.

In sum, in an online gaming industry that grows faster every year, the possibilities are endless. Exploring and testing while working in collaboration with trusted partners and experts are crucial elements to stay on top and ahead of the curve.