Player loyalty is the holy grail of online gambling/online poker. An operation which manages to keep its players hanging around for a significant amount of time is likely a successful operation. Player retention is indeed the hardest nut to crack in the entire online gaming business-model. The industry is highly competitive, and actually getting someone to sign up is much easier than having him/her make a re-deposit once the initial funds run out. It takes a cunning combination of superb customer experience (which covers every aspect from software quality to the quality of the support), of great action, good odds and attractive promotions to keep players loyal…in a word: the total package. Loyalty rewards are at the cutting edge of every online casino’s and online poker room’s player retention efforts.

Rakemeback – today the largest online poker loyalty deal provider – has been around since early 2004.

One of the most efficient player loyalty reward-types is poker rake rebate also known as rakeback. Rakeback represents a way to reward customers in a directly proportional way with the amount of action they generate at the tables. What that means is that the more one plays, the more loyalty money he/she earns, which is indeed about as fair as it could possibly get.

Players who apply for rakeback will have their pot contributions tracked (depending on the rake calculus method used by the online poker site – some of the poker rooms count all active hands players take part in towards that end) and they get credit for it. At the end of the day/week, players get a certain percentage of their rake contribution back. This sort of loyalty program doesn’t just reward players for remaining in the fold, it actually stimulates them to put in as much real money action as possible. There are rake races too, which reward those who rake the most over a given period of time, with additional rewards on top of the rake rebate they would normally receive.

In the case of online casinos, linking the loyalty rewards to the activity of the players is a bit more difficult, but it is well possible nonetheless. There are re-deposit bonuses, which reward players for making additional deposits after their first one, and there are some casinos out there which do in fact offer rakeback-like deals to their active players. In order to participate in such schemes though, players usually have to reach a certain VIP level.

The bottom line is that every bonus and every additional benefit offered by the casino is a sort of loyalty reward. After all, the sign-up bonus is the equivalent of rakeback at a closer look, with the difference that it is limited in time. Even live casinos pay attention to keeping their players loyal, and no, I’m not talking about the lack of widows and clocks in brick and mortar establishments, I’m talking about the comp deals and the bonuses players can accrue by using their special player loyalty cards at the slot machines for instance.

Getting a player hooked is one thing. Keeping him around is quite another, and it is an issue to the cracking of which the marketing departments of most online and live gambling operations devote quite a bit of time and resources.