Loyalty Rewards Programs
Date Added: January 21, 2009
Online gaming is a competitive business. Providing excellent gaming is therefore necessary but not sufficient. Online casinos need to provide that extra bit in order to create loyal customers. The benefits that accrue to customers should increase with continued wagering. Loyalty rewards programs provide these benefits.
Loyalty rewards programs offer free playing credits to players in proportion to the amounts wagered. The system works as follows. For every X dollars wagered the players get 1 comp point and then players can redeem Y comp points for $1 worth of playing credits. Hence the more the players wager the more comp points they get and the more points they can redeem for playing credits. Many online casinos keep the values of X and Y constant for all conditions. Some online casinos vary these values so as to influence wagering habits. For example online slots have higher house edges than blackjack. Therefore many serious players prefer blackjack to slots. Some online casinos allow players to accumulate comp points at a faster rate in slots games thereby compensating them somewhat for the higher house edge and drawing more traffic to these games.
Many online casinos allow players who wager more to redeem comp points at a faster rate than other players. This benefit is given in a transparent manner through multi-tier VIP clubs of the loyalty rewards programs. All players are classified into one of the loyalty levels or tiers of the VIP club. New players start at the lowest level and rise to higher levels as they wager larger amounts. Players higher up in the VIP level can redeem comp points at a faster rate. This gives them a double benefit. First they get more comp points because they have wagered more. And they can get more than proportional playing credits for being in the higher VIP level. For example if Level 1 gives $1.00 for 100 comp points, then level 2 may give $1.20 for 100 comp points. Players who are loyal to one online casino can easily reach high VIP levels in the loyalty rewards programs because all their wagering is done at one casino. Players who split their wagering over many casinos remain at the lower levels in each one of them. Loyalty rewards programs offer other monetary and non monetary benefits to players in the higher VIP levels. Monetary benefits include larger reload and cash back bonuses. Non monetary bonuses include faster payments processing and personal dedicated customer support.
It is usual for online casinos to have four or five tiers in their VIP clubs. However online casinos of the Golden Casino group and the Golden Palace Casino group offer VIP clubs with 9 tiers. Popular casinos of the Golden Casino group are Golden Casino and Online Vegas. With 9 tiers the players move up the VIP levels very quickly and thus continuously get increased benefits.
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