Mobile Gaming: Why Loyalty Programs Must Play around with This Revenue Stream

Loyalty has become the lifeblood of any successful business. Almost 70 percent of consumers worldwide believe that a website or app is important for building brand loyalty. This means mobile app businesses must learn how to maximize – and monetize – loyalty toward their brand most effectively.

Mobile loyalty programs and how they measure their success – whether it’s lifetime value, retention, engagement, or monthly active users – are nothing new. And maybe it’s for that exact reason that loyalty app publishers should be looking somewhere new for their next digital strategy.

Are Loyalty Programs Really Leveraging Loyalty?

In the US, the average consumer is part of 16.6 loyalty programs but actively only participates in less than half of these. If there’s something we can take from this data, it’s that loyalty apps must be woke to new strategies to combat poor engagement, low retention, and disappointing DAU metrics.

Fighting user churn means giving your users what they want – and how they want it. Consumers will only stay loyal to a brand if its app brings them the experience and value they’re looking for. With today’s consumers expecting more and more in return for their loyalty, Gartner has identified which rewards consumers want most from their loyalty programs:

• redeemable points,
• cash back,
• discounts,
• exclusive offers,
• personalized offers,
• recognition.

However, not many loyalty apps or programs have yet mastered how they deliver these rewards to their users. The end must justify the means – meaning the rewards-earning process must seamlessly slot into a user’s everyday schedule. 

What’s stopping loyalty point collectors from converting into more active users? Surveys have identified the main pain points leading to user churn in loyalty programs:

• Rewards take too long to earn or redeem
• Rewards are irrelevant or unattractive
• Users are bombarded with rewards and messages
• Rewards are inconsistent and not frequent enough

Each pain point exists where app businesses have failed to react and adapt to their users’ needs – and connect with them on a deeper level. To be successful, businesses must continuously rediscover their relevance – become “re-relevant” – for their users.

This is why more loyalty apps and programs are now leveraging the indisputable power of mobile games as a key component in their user engagement loop.

Why Mobile Games Are an Untapped Opportunity

It’s time for loyalty programs to tap into the reach and revenue potential of mobile games. Especially, if they’re trying to attract a younger user base and increase engagement with their app and brand. Why? 

Not only will the global mobile gamer penetration rate climb over the next four years to around 30 percent, the mobile gaming segment is forecast to generate at least 352 billion US dollars by 2027. That’s around 40 percent more than 2023’s forecast. With 60 percent of global mobile app revenue generated from mobile games, loyalty programs can leverage games not only as a compelling engine for user growth and high engagement but also for monetization.

Integrating mobile games into the rewards process for your loyalty program is not changing the way your users behave, it’s leveraging the user behavior that we’ve seen and will continue to see. We’re referring here to more than two billion mobile gamers and the 176 billion mobile games that will be installed around the world by 2027.

How Can Your Program Reach Next-Level Loyalty?

How do you integrate games into your mobile loyalty program? Rewarded ad units such as Playtime provide loyalty apps with a one-stop connection to the mobile gaming world and prioritize personalization, ease of use, and continuous rewards. As a result, the user flow is quite simple. 

1. OFFER TO EARN: Users are notified in your loyalty app that they can earn points with your brand by playing top mobile gaming titles.

1. PERSONALIZED OFFERS: Once opting in to earn rewards, users are presented with a list of the most relevant gaming offers from the top titles around the world.
2. PLAY FOR POINTS: Users select the game, start playing, and earn points based on their session time – all they have to do is play and accumulate game time. As soon as the user reaches a certain points value, these points land on their account in your loyalty app.
3. BRING IT BACK TO YOUR BRAND: The user receives a notification of their rewards with your logo, ensuring they stay connected and in touch with your brand – and return to your app.
4. “PAY” FOR GOODS. Users claim these points to “pay” for a service or receive a discount or cash back in your app. Perfect for programs seeing a downturn in points for purchases.

The benefits are clear on both the publisher and end consumer’s side. Integrating games into your mobile loyalty program removes users‘ common pain points and instead gives them the rewards they want by playing the best-ranking mobile games. And this works for any mobile loyalty program. Whether it’s for buying groceries, spending money on a favorite brand, or paying utility bills.

Looking at Loyalty in Germany

DeutschlandCard GmbH is a highly favored loyalty app in Germany with over six million downloads. The company has demonstrated how mobile games can be seamlessly integrated into its app’s shopping experience. Since incorporating adjoe’s Playtime into its app, users have been able to accumulate rewards instantly and continuously by playing highly engaging mobile games. The German publisher has since enjoyed greater user loyalty in a landscape where the expense of retaining existing users is significantly lower than acquiring new ones.

“From a strategic perspective, the decision to add mobile games to our loyalty app proved to be a powerful move. It strengthened our brand loyalty and gave us another way to better connect with our customers where they are, on their mobile phones. Our partnership with adjoe gave us an edge in delivering new and relevant incentives to our users in a competitive market.”

Julian Wicht
Vice President of Marketing and e-Commerce at DeutschlandCard Gmbh

Mobile Gaming and Loyalty Is the Synergy That Will Stick

Brands that survive are brands that react quickly to the needs of their ever-evolving consumers’. In the app economy, these are the brands that search for solutions to fight churn and retain their users. 

Some might call it “app gamification;” we call it tapping into the indisputable reach, revenue, and engagement potential that is unique to mobile gaming. The number of active mobile gamers worldwide will rise to over 2.3 billion by 2027. The time is now to tap into that opportunity.