These days, the most successful businesses are not only capable of acquiring new customers but also retaining their existing customers so they don’t spend their money elsewhere.
Business owners and operators use a range of effective digital marketing and customer retention strategies, such as promotional offers, deals, loyalty rewards, bonuses, omnichannel marketing, and gamification, to name a few.
With that said, let’s now dive straight in and take a closer look at several of these proven digital marketing techniques that actually work in 2025. They help encourage repeat business, which boosts revenue and helps them stay one step ahead of their rivals.
Which key omnichannel marketing customer retention strategies actually work to retain existing customers?
One way businesses retain existing customers is to build a community or at least foster a sense of community to strengthen the relationship between the customer and the brand and improve relationships.
A powerful strategy for encouraging repeat business is to create rewards for loyal customers and pay them back for their loyalty and for completing onsite challenges and leaderboards either on the main website or via their social media channels.
Some customer retention strategies will be far more effective than others, depending on the type of business, and the ones that have proven a more powerful customer retention tool than others are the following:
- Loyalty rewards programs
- Personalised experiences and tailored offers
- Building a customer community
- Leverage social media platforms
- Offer a range of unique/exclusive products and services
- Provide top-notch, 24-hour support, and have friendly and professionally trained agents who always demonstrate excellent customer service standards
- Communicate with customers, provide feedback mechanisms for them, gather their feedback and use it to improve your services
- Send personalised emails and release/publish frequent newsletters with the latest promotional offers
- Run frequent promotions and prize-packed offers
- Diversify your product/service offerings
- Devise a well-thought-out customer retention plan
- Consider partnering with relevant social media influencers
- Maximise SEO (search engine optimisation) strategies
- Have fair policies and easy-to-read/understand terms and conditions – never trick your customers with misleading Ts and Cs
What can business owners learn from the iGaming sector?
Customer retention strategies can also be learned from the iGaming sector, which is part of the digital entertainment industry.
Today’s most trusted iGaming operators, for example, typically offer a range of lucrative promotional offers, which keep players coming back for more and stops them from playing elsewhere. For example, the no deposit bonus is one of the most prized offers that players love.
Operators also tend to award frequent cashback bonuses, matching deposit bonuses, free sports bets, free spins for selected online slot machines, and many other loyalty rewards.
Examples include 2X, 3X, 4X, and 5X points days (where you can get extra loyalty points just for playing your favourite games), paid online slot machine tournaments, leaderboard challenges, other network-wide promotions, such as Pragmatic Play’s iconic Drops & Wins promo, and various other gamification strategies.
What is gamification, and why is it important in customer retention?
Gamification is a marketing strategy used by operators in many industries as a way of encouraging their customers to engage with their products and services more. Operators use a range of fun, free, engaging, and immersive ‘gaming’ activities to reward loyal registered members and boost revenue.
Gamification makes their websites far more enjoyable to visit, and it includes a range of prizes and offers designed to reward people for their active participation and loyalty. The aim is to retain as many customers as possible and stop them from going elsewhere to spend money on the same products and services.
To enhance the customer/user/player experience, operators also use various other gamification tools and strategies such as daily, weekly, and monthly prize draw raffles (either onsite or via their social media channels), and they encourage players to complete challenges to receive a range of free rewards – no strings attached.
The more challenges they complete, the more they will be rewarded. Additionally, many business owners operating in the same industry mentioned above also run what is referred to as the daily log-in bonus.
All people have to do is log in to their account and take part in a fun game to potentially win a guaranteed prize, which could be free spins for their favourite titles, free scratchies (online scratchcards), prize draw tick entries, or even a small cash drop (worth anywhere from $/€/£0.10 to $/€/£20.00).
The size of the cash prize and the amount of free spins or free scratchies a player can receive often depends on how much money they typically spend on the website and how often they log in to play. The more loyal a player is, the more loyalty rewards they will receive.
Final thoughts
One of the other fun and immersive customer retention marketing strategies these same trusted operators use today is live-streamed events, such as live quizzes. When people play their favourite titles during a specific time of the day, they can win a range of prizes and interact with the TV hosts and other active players in real time using the live chat messaging feature.
Companies these days have also been known to place ads within today’s most famous titles, provide free demos and early access to upcoming releases, and essentially try to offer far more immersive and tailored experiences than their competitors.
Other key digital marketing strategies include interstitial ads, user-generated content (UGC), block banners, referrals, user acquisition campaigns, and playable advert videos, to name a few, all in the name of customer acquisition and retention.
People would rather revisit a website that always rewards them with freebies than one that doesn’t offer anything for their loyalty, which is why you see so many customer retention strategies being used by operators today.
Read more:
From Deals to Omnichannel Marketing: Customer Retention Strategies that Actually Work in 2025