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July 31, 2025
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SubscribePutting together a well-crafted loyalty program is no easy feat – it involves a lot of moving pieces that must fit together in order to see success. From early ideas and customer research, to building the framework and providing continuous support, it is an endeavor that many companies embark on in the hopes of boosting engagement, increasing revenue, and fostering long-term loyalty.
But how do publishers even know where to begin? Dive into this comprehensive guide to customer reward programs, highlighting the different types of loyalty and program structure, the best mobile loyalty programs on the market, and the elements to building a successful program of your own.
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Customer loyalty refers to your customers’ positive attitude towards your brand and their willingness to choose it over competitors – often leading to repeat business and continuous engagement. With it being over 5x more expensive1 to acquire new users than it is to keep existing ones, fostering long-term loyalty is one of the most important aspects of growing your business.
There are many different forms of customer loyalty that differ in frequency and intensity. Judd Marcello, former EVP & CMO at Conexiom2, identifies three main types that can be observed across industries.
Example: A customer comes to your coffee shop every morning simply because it is on their way to work – not because they prefer it over all other options
Example: A consumer is with a particular credit card company thanks to their comprehensive point-based loyalty program.
Example: Customers may rush to buy the newest piece of tech from their favorite companies, even if they haven’t changed much since the last iteration.
🌟 Check out our guide to customer loyalty for a full breakdown of the different types of loyalty and how to foster them in the digital age.
Achieving a high level of customer loyalty isn’t easy – it takes time, hard work, and genuine care for your customers. With 72% of consumers3 stating they’d switch to a competitor if they had a negative experience with their preferred brand, cultivating an emotional business-customer relationship is crucial in fostering long-term loyalty.
A customer loyalty program is a type of marketing strategy in which users of a particular product or brand can receive exclusive benefits, perks, and rewards in exchange for their time and spend.
These programs incentivize repeat engagement by offering increasingly better benefits as users get deeper into the program, often incorporating gamified elements such as points, leveling, and challenges to add a sense of progression for users.
There are many types of loyalty programs, and the kind you choose for your business depends on a number of factors, including:
Across industries, three types in particular are go-to options for many companies looking to implement a customer loyalty program into their business.
When it comes to loyalty app space, three structures of program are frequently used – each with their own benefits depending on your industry and product offerings.
Point-based loyalty programs operate on a system in which customers can earn points through habitual engagement – be it through repeat purchases or time spent in your app. Users can then cash in their hard-earned points for a number of different rewards, the value of which increases proportionally with the point cost to redeem.
Takeaway: Point-based programs are best utilized by brands whose customers interact on a frequent basis. Customers don’t need to spend big every time – they can accumulate points even with small, but frequent purchases, always giving them something to work towards.
Tiered programs use a multi-layer structure to segment benefits into various tiers, each with its own perks and rewards. Members often earn their way to higher tiers through spend goals or engagement milestones, instilling a sense of exclusivity in them and incorporating some healthy competition as users strive to reach higher tiers.
Takeaway: These types of programs are often used by brands whose customers make large but infrequent purchases, such as airlines or luxury brands. With a clear progression path across multiple tiers, customers will be more likely to stay loyal, in the hopes of climbing the ranks.
Premium programs require a subscription cost to join, making the barrier to entry higher than with other kinds of loyalty programs. Members who subscribe can expect benefits such as discounts, exclusive members-only offers, and free items in exchange for their loyalty, offsetting the initial cost of joining.
Takeaway: Although it may deter new customers from joining, subscription-based premium programs are a great way to galvanize the loyalty from your already established customers, who will be more likely to subscribe in order to receive exclusive benefits.
💡Did you know? Members of premium loyalty programs are 60% more4 likely to spend on your brand, as opposed to members of free programs only spending 30% more4.
Many app-based loyalty programs have broken the mold to become frontrunners in the digital rewarded landscape, and now stand as shining examples of rewards done right. With unique offers, exclusive perks, and rewards galore, these programs strive to deliver competitive benefits that can’t be found elsewhere.
The Starbucks Rewards app is a mobile loyalty program in which users can earn points (called “Stars”) with every purchase made either in-store or online. These Stars can be used to redeem a number of perks, from free food and drink, to extra customization options and reusable mugs. Customers can even order directly from the rewards app, with their cards and offers being stored for easy checkout.
🗂️Type: Point-based
📊Key stats:
💡Takeaway:
Starbucks has seen great success with their rewards app thanks to how well it integrates into their customers’ daily routines, providing them with a convenient way to interact with the brand. By finding a natural way to integrate your loyalty program without disrupting the usual habits of your customers, you can help keep retention high with habitual engagement.
The Amex loyalty program app offers users 14 tiers of credit card, each with their own benefits and subscription cost – ranging from free-to-use, to $799/year. As customers spend with their credit card, they accumulate points, which can be used to redeem rewards, cover travel expenses, or even pay off monthly statements.
🗂️Type: Tier-based
📊Key stats:*
*All figures taken from American Express’ 2023 annual report8.
💡Takeaway:
The greatest strength of Amex’s loyalty program is its versatility, which offers numerous ways to earn rewards across its many tiers. With such flexible earning opportunities, users can always find a way to be rewarded for their time and spend.
Supercell ID Rewards is a cross-game loyalty program created by mobile game developer Supercell. Players can earn points by completing missions or objectives in a number of Supercell titles, such as Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars, Hay Day, and more. These points can then be redeemed to unlock a number of exclusive in-game items, cosmetics, and rewards which cycle regularly to keep things fresh.
🗂️Type: Point-based
📊Key stats:
💡Takeaway:
Supercell’s ID Rewards program does a great job in making its many offers accessible across all of the major games created by the studio. Thanks to this, players have the freedom to play the games they want to play, without having to worry about missing out on exclusive rewards.
🌟 Check out our guide to the best loyalty programs for a full breakdown of their structures, benefits, and the reasons why they have achieved such success.
Creating and running a rewards program for your brand can be a fruitful venture, and many seek to harness the power of loyalty to increase customer LTV. But with so many moving parts, it’s important to be aware of all the crucial elements needed for building a successful loyalty program.
You can’t begin to provide offers to your customers without first understanding who they are. Collecting data through surveys, user behavior, and market research will help you gain valuable insights which can then be used to create user personas – fictionalized representations of your various user cohorts.
As you collect more data on your users, you can adapt these personas alongside your customers’ evolving needs – ensuring that they are consistently offered new benefits to keep them engaged. Different cohorts can even be offered unique rewards, adding a layer of personalization that many users seek in a rewarded program.
⭐ Best practices:
Keeping users engaged long term is a challenge that needs to be considered before you launch your loyalty program. Having a solid plan for post-launch content and support is a foundational step to fostering loyalty with your users.
Lifecycle marketing strategies have a big part to play in keeping users engaged post launch, with weekly, monthly, and seasonal LiveOps campaigns being great ways to boost user retention. In 2025, around 84%13 of mobile gaming IAP revenue went to games with LiveOps, showcasing how powerful it is at driving spend and boosting LTV.
Adding gamified features to your loyalty program also helps in keeping players engaged long term. Features such as tournaments, leaderboards, and levelling add a sense of progression that will keep users coming back for more as they strive to discover everything your program has to offer.
This added element of fun, achievement, and healthy competition works wonders for mobile app publishers of any industry. In fact, around 70%14 of the world’s 2,000 largest companies already use gamification in their mobile apps, with some seeing increases in retention of up to 22%14.
⭐ Best practices:
🌟 Check out our guide to building a loyalty program for a full breakdown of the different types of rewarded program, the key ingredients needed to craft your own, and the benefits and challenges of implementing a loyalty program into your products.
Tracking your loyalty program’s success post-launch is an important step in making sure things are functioning as planned. By seeing what is working and what isn’t through analysis of key metrics, you can make improvements to ensure your customers are always satisfied.
Consider the following customer loyalty metrics which must be carefully monitored when analyzing the success of your loyalty marketing program.
1. Lifetime Value (LTV): The total monetary value that a customer will bring to your business throughout their total time using your app.
Formula: LTV = average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) x user lifetime in months
Why it matters: LTV is one of the most important metrics to measure, as it helps you determine the value of your customers, their spending habits, and the amount of time they will stick around with your product. Knowing this can help with determining budgets, forecasting revenue, and refining loyalty marketing strategies.
2. Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total marketing and sales cost of acquiring a new customer
Formula: CAC = total sales and marketing expenses / total new customers acquired
Why it matters: Keeping an eye on CAC helps you determine the efficiency of your marketing strategies. If the ROI is not great enough, you can implement strategies to reduce customer acquisition costs, such as investing more into organic marketing and low CAC channels.
3. DX retention: The retention rate of users at a certain time period in their lifecycle, often calculated for D1, D7, D30, and D90 – with D0 being the day they installed and first used the app.
Formula: DX % = amount of users returning to the game on Day X / amount of users who installed and opened the app on the first day x 100
Why it matters: DX retention is a crucial loyalty program KPI for calculating mobile app retention, as it allows you to see where users churn on a standardized timeline. It can be calculated on a broad scale (all users) or on specific user cohorts, and gives you the chance to refocus retention strategies if users are churning at a particular benchmark.
4. Redemption rate: Redemption rate refers to the rate at which rewards are redeemed by users, compared to the amount of points/reward opportunities given out.
Formula: Redemption rate = number of rewards redeemed / total earned points x 100
Why it matters: Calculating redemption rate can give you a good indicator of whether or not users are satisfied with the offers given to them. If redemption rates are low, customers may not see the value in the rewards offered to them, and might benefit from new options.
5. Total active users: The number of active users on your app, typically measured by day (DAU), week (WAU), and month (MAU)
Why it matters: Tracking active users is a quick and easy way to gauge engagement on your app, and can be used in conjunction with other metrics to determine more specific performance. By tracking the number of active users over time, you can get a high-level picture of user base growth, monetization opportunities, and benchmarking against competition.
These metrics, along with many others such as cost per install (CPI), average revenue per user (ARPU), and user churn rates, come together to give publishers a better picture of how their loyalty program is performing and what improvements need to be made.
👀 Related reading: 8 crucial user retention metrics to track for your mobile app
Considering the many positive effects they can have, it’s no surprise that around 90% of companies15 offer some form of loyalty initiative. From boosting retention and brand awareness to driving revenue growth for your major products, having a solid loyalty program can be a recipe for success.
Loyalty programs succeed in boosting retention by creating a relationship between brand and consumer, in which users will be compelled to choose your product over others thanks to the unique benefits they get. Maintaining this relationship with your customers is crucial, as 78% of consumers16 report retracting their loyalty from brands faster than in recent years.
Thanks to regular touchpoints through channels such as in-app messaging, push notifications, and email, users are always kept up to date with the newest offers available, and will keep checking in to make sure they don’t miss out on anything exciting. Spreading your messaging across multiple channels will keep communication strong and ensure that your customers are always in the know when it comes to your loyalty program offers.
Having loyal customers helps with brand advocacy, as they will spread the word of your program (and by extension, your products) thanks to positive interactions with your brand. In fact, according to our 2023 Mobile Gaming Loyalty Report, word of mouth recommendations are one of the top acquisition sources, with around 35% of survey respondents claiming to discover new games thanks to referrals from friends and family.
The power of word of mouth advertising can even extend to driving spend, with 80% of consumers17 being more likely to recommend brands with good loyalty programs and nearly 75%17 of them modifying their spending behavior to maximize benefits when interacting with loyalty programs.
⭐ Best practice: Making your program compatible across all of your major services can help direct customers to new products that they may not have otherwise interacted with.
Due to high customer acquisition costs across mobile industries, keeping loyal users is often far more beneficial than acquiring new ones. In fact, an average of 60% of revenue18 for businesses across industries comes from repeat customers, making them a worthwhile investment.
Many companies have seen huge revenue growth thanks to their loyalty marketing programs, with Bath & Body Works’ rewards program accounting for 80% of their US sales19 in 2024. Other industries such as travel have seen similar success in driving revenue growth with their loyalty programs, with Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue generating around 811M EUR ($932M USD)20 in 2024 alone.
The future of loyalty programs is looking bright, with the vast majority of companies across industries implementing rewarded incentives into their products. As loyalty strategies evolve, one thing is clear: the gamification of programs is crucial for increasing customer retention, engagement, and spend – regardless of your industry.
By adding features such as tournaments, in-app missions, and leaderboards, some brands have seen up to a 60% boost in app engagement, and a 6x increase in spend by those who take part in the gamified elements.21
Are you a mobile game publisher looking to build long-term loyalty in your games? By partnering with a leading UA and engagement solution like Mistplay’s loyalty platform, you can unlock the full potential of a successful loyalty formula on both Android and iOS to better reward your users for their time and spend.
For app publishers seeking a way to integrate a loyalty-driven monetization solution into your product, look no further than LoyaltyPlay – our new gaming reward hub that puts the power of play-and-earn into your hands.
Check out how publishers like Treeplla have boosted their D30 retention by 70% with the help of Mistplay and contact us today to unlock the true power of loyalty.
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