How Arcade Drives App Engagement for UK Loyalty Programmes    

Eight in ten UK adults belong to at least one loyalty programme. Millions hold memberships across retail, travel, fintech, hospitality, and other lifestyle apps. By any measure, adoption isn’t the problem.  

But ask those members when they last opened a loyalty app outside a checkout moment, and the adoption story falls apart.

Cost-of-living pressures in the UK have made loyalty rewards more valuable, yet the programmes haven’t meaningfully adapted to meet the challenge of regular engagement. 

The gap between the value loyalty could deliver and what members actually experience is where the engagement opportunity lies. Loyalty leaders filling this gap are playing a different game.  

Let’s examine UK loyalty and how adding an incremental app revenue stream fits into your members’ daily habits.  

Why Traditional UK Loyalty Fails at Engagement

Traditional loyalty models were designed for a different era – stamp cards, slow points accumulation, and in-store purchases. They were built around transactions rather than relationships.  

Today, that model feels out of step. Customers interact with brands continuously across omnichannel touchpoints and expect in-app interactions to feel personalised and rewarding.

Yet more than half of loyalty members describe the promotions they receive as generic or predictable, while 48% say the rewards offered are irrelevant. Almost one in three cannot recall a single memorable promotion.

Nearly 70% of UK brands admit their loyalty programme has no clear point of differentiation, and it turns out, sign-ups don’t equal retention. 

UK consumers consistently rank ease of redemption and clear monetary value as important features of a loyalty programme. To meet these rising expectations, decision-makers need to think outside the earn-and-burn box.

They must create reasons for users to engage between transactions, increase session frequency and earn opportunities.    

Meaningful Touchpoints, More Loyalty 

A dormant loyalty member is one competitor discount away from churning. Without a habit of engaging with your app, there’s no emotional connection to your brand. So a competitor’s offer in a saturated market feels just as compelling as yours. 

Every day a member isn’t engaging is a missed opportunity to learn about them. Without behavioural signals or first-party preference data, there’s limited ability to personalise rewards and shape relevant experiences.

Your richest source of customer insights becomes a list of names and point balances.

Building more moments – daily and weekly touchpoints that give members a reason to show up is what turns loyalty from something passive into a routine. That’s where gamified earnings come into play. 

Integrating Arcade: App Engagement Built for Every Day 

The habits are already there. Around 25 million people in the UK play mobile games regularly, with 39% playing for one to two hours a day; commuting, waiting, winding down after work or school. What’s missing is a loyalty programme that meets them there.  

Mobile gaming is no longer a niche behaviour; participation spans age groups and demographics, making it a scalable engagement channel for loyalty programmes. 

Arcade is adjoe’s white-label engagement solution that sits natively inside any mobile rewards app. Members earn your loyalty currency simply by playing popular mobile games. Whether your members earn miles, cashback, rewards, or wallet balances, Arcade turns playtime into rewards that fit your brand.

The mechanic is time-based and event-based: the longer they play or hit certain milestones, the more points accumulate. When they hit a threshold, the reward lands directly in their balance, ready to redeem through the programme as normal.

What sets Arcade apart from traditional earn-and-burn is the funding and engagement model. Points are paid for by game advertisers, not drawn from your margin — which means members start earning the moment they start playing, with no purchase required.  

For programme operators, that’s zero financial liability on the points side, a new ad revenue stream, and app engagement that adds to programme economics rather than pressuring them. 

How the Arcade Experience Works?

The engagement loop is simple and built to last; not a one-off reward, but a recurring reason to open the app. A member opens the loyalty app, finds Arcade, browses a personalised game catalogue, plays, and earns. 

Dedicated ML models curate game selections to each user’s taste from a vast catalogue, so the experience stays relevant as preferences evolve. Members see games they’ll actually want to play, which is what turns a one-time feature into a recurring behaviour. 

The results from partners already running Arcade speak for themselves. Fetch (USA’s #1 Rewards App) saw a 5% month-over-month increase in app open rates and a 10% lift in CLTV after integrating Arcade.  

At Beem (the leading cash advance and money app), Arcade users generated 2.3x as many app sessions as non-users. GasBuddy (North America’s leading fuel savings app) saw 70% of users continue playing and earning over time, driving a 60% revenue lift from repeat players.

Brand safety sits within that personalisation layer too. Premium and relevant games appear in the catalogue, keeping content aligned with brand values.

What Changes in Practice 

More app open rates mean richer first-party behavioural signals. Every session where a member plays, earns, and redeems generates preference data that strengthens personalisation across the rest of the programme. 

The inactive periods between promotions, which typically produce almost no usable insight, become a consistent source of signal.

A member who opens the app and discovers offers builds familiarity with the brand, and is far less susceptible to a competitor’s discount. That shift from checkout-only interaction to daily habit is what the engagement gap in UK loyalty ultimately comes down to.

With Arcade, members can earn rewards by:

• Playing popular mobile games for time-based rewards
• Completing in-game milestones and challenges
• Seasonal campaigns and limited-time loyalty events
• Brand-sponsored experiences
• Gamified engagement streaks

And because the mechanic doesn’t depend on category, Arcade works across grocery, banking, fashion, utilities, and retail. It depends on the activity of engaging with your app, and that’s universal.  

Rethinking UK Loyalty Programmes

Loyalty programmes pulling ahead in the UK are expanding how members earn, deepening engagement between purchases, and building habits that outlast any single promotion or discount cycle.  

The brands getting this right aren’t waiting for the next campaign to reconnect with their members. They’re building the infrastructure for engagement and measuring loyalty in app opens and sessions, not just transactions.  

Ready to turn your loyalty app into a daily habit? Talk to adjoe.