The impact of loyalty system on players during promotional campaigns

As part of the services we offer to the operators we partner with, we develop highly customised campaigns which engage with the players playing our games. The type of campaign mechanics used are determined by our past experience and the performance data provided by our analytics team. We run campaigns that focus on increasing DAU (Daily Active Users), Spin/Bet Tournaments such as the following:

• Daily attendance: A strategy that encourages players to login to claim cash rewards and as a requirement play the chosen games on a daily basis during the campaign period. This is a form of increasing the DAU for the selected games.
• Tournaments: One big prize for players who compete to be at the top of a leaderboard within a certain time period.
• Rebates: Players who wager up to a predefined amount gets to claim a selection of prizes offered. Normally this type of campaign has a progressive journey that encourages players to wager more in return for a chance to win big prizes.

Building player campaigns’ consists of defining a budget, setting objectives, designing campaign web pages, banners and selecting the games most suited for the campaign. While we run campaigns, we monitor players’ habits and devise better strategies to improve the level of engagement during gameplay.

We found two distinctive behaviours among our players while running these promotional campaigns. Below is a broad summary of some of the most common player habits;

1.  In the more regular campaigns, such as Spin or Bet Tournaments, most of our players engage with only 1 game across the games we selected for the campaign, which is usually around 5-8 games from our portfolio. During these campaigns, we have compared the Genesis online classic slot games against the Radi8 games (online slots with loyalty system). We noticed that the players who participated rarely switched to other games within the game selection. If their gaming experience did not go well, the players would “drop off” instead of selecting another game. However, there was a higher level of engagement with the Radi8 games, players were engaged with at least 3 of the games during the promotional campaign.
2.  Promotional campaigns often attract the “Prize hunter” type of player who normally have a low level of loyalty to the brand, these players usually look for opportunities to maximize their profits. We regard these players as the hardest to retain. We did however see an increase in brand loyalty through these promotional campaigns with our Rad+ loyalty system. From data collected in 2019, Rad+ played a big part in retention. The players who played Radi8 games in promotional campaigns are more willing to engage with the brand (which include new games launched and other games found in the same lobby) after the promotion and become regular brand players (who played Radi8 games more than 25 times after the campaign) compared to non-Radi8 players.

We concluded that promotional campaigns are very effective in building brand loyalty especially when combined with a loyalty feature. With many great slot providers in the market, it is a difficult task to maintain a high level of loyalty from players. Our Rad+ loyalty system is developed to bridge the gap between players and our brands. The exposure of slot brands depends mainly on the operators and their platform layout as a supplier you need to do what you can to gain the extra exposure needed.

It is a constant challenge for the smaller game developer to compete against the bigger brands for the player’s attention. Game developers race to produce new engaging game mechanics and marketing gimmicks to improve brand loyalty and retention rates. As the industry develops and matures, we can see that more sophisticated promotional campaigns will be necessary to “win” players over to your product.