One of the most effective ways to drive retention isn’t through better promotions, it’s through creating a clear and consistent value exchange with your customers.
Early in my career, I led the launch of William Hill Rewards, a multi-channel loyalty programme designed to reward customers for their ongoing engagement, not just individual wins.
At the time, the betting market was highly competitive, with operators largely competing on promotions, odds, and short-term incentives. The opportunity was to shift from purely transactional interactions to something more sustained and meaningful.
The ambition was simple but bold for the category: create a loyalty proposition that increased retention, grew customer lifetime value, and differentiated William Hill in a crowded market.
The Problem
The betting market is inherently transactional. Customers frequently move between operators based on promotions, pricing, or short-term incentives.
This created two core challenges:
- Low emotional loyalty and high churn
- Limited reasons for customers to return outside of active betting moments
As a result, retention was fragile and heavily reliant on continuous promotional spend.
We needed a way to reward sustained engagement, reduce leakage to competitors, and give customers a compelling reason to stay beyond individual bets.
Key product decision
The core product decision was how to introduce loyalty into a category that was not naturally designed for it.
Rather than relying on increasingly aggressive promotions, we chose to build a points-based loyalty programme that rewarded ongoing behaviour and created a sense of accumulating value over time.
A critical part of this decision was partnering with Velocity Frequent Flyer, allowing customers to convert betting activity into a widely recognised and desirable currency.
This shifted the value proposition from short-term incentives to longer-term, compounding rewards, while also increasing perceived value beyond the core product.
From a product perspective, the challenge was to design a system that was simple, transparent, and scalable across all channels.
Partnering with Velocity Frequent Flyer added immediate credibility and appeal, allowing customers to redeem points for something valuable even when they were not actively betting.
How we executed
William Hill Rewards was designed around a simple, transparent value exchange:
- Customers earn points based on their betting activity
- Points can be redeemed for bonus bets or Velocity Frequent Flyer (VFF) points
- All eligible customers are automatically enrolled, with the option to opt out
The programme was launched across desktop, mobile web, iOS, and Android, ensuring a consistent experience regardless of how customers engaged.
We deliberately kept the MVP focused, prioritising:
- Core earn and burn mechanics
- Clear in-product messaging and education
- Minimal operational overhead for customer support teams
Speed to market was critical, particularly to establish the Velocity partnership as a differentiator. We launched in early March, working within regulatory constraints that limited availability in certain regions, while maintaining clear communication with customers.
Importantly, we treated this as a scalable platform capability, with a roadmap that included tiers, real-time redemption, and expanded reward options.
What happened
The launch of William Hill Rewards delivered immediate strategic value, with strong early adoption and engagement across the active customer base.
- Achieved double-digit adoption within the first phase of launch, with a significant proportion of active bettors earning points in the opening weeks
- Gave customers a compelling reason to stay with William Hill
- Created a foundation for long-term customer value, beyond one-off promotions
- Opened up new acquisition and referral opportunities by incentivising customers to share the programme with friends, for example, earning points when referred contacts signed up and placed their first bet, turning loyal users into active growth channels.
While the initial release focused on fundamentals, the programme quickly built momentum, with a growing backlog of propositional and experiential improvements informed by customer behaviour.
What I learned
This project shaped my thinking on loyalty and retention, lessons I still apply today:
- Loyalty is about recognition and value, not just incentives
- Simplicity in the value exchange drives adoption
- Partnerships can dramatically accelerate perceived value
- A strong MVP with a clear roadmap beats over-engineering upfront
Why it matters
William Hill Rewards represented more than a feature launch, it marked a shift towards longer-term customer thinking in a traditionally short-term industry.
More importantly, it laid the foundations for the loyalty work I focus on today.
The principles established here, clear value exchange, scalable earn-and-burn mechanics, and commercially aligned retention strategy, directly inform the larger loyalty ecosystems and data-led propositions I’ve gone on to build.
From betting rewards to retail loyalty platforms, the thread through my career has remained consistent: designing programmes that strengthen retention, compound customer value over time, and create sustainable competitive advantage.
Skills demonstrated
- Loyalty strategy design – Crafting clear earn-and-burn mechanics aligned to retention and LTV growth.
- Commercial hypothesis-led product thinking – Defining measurable outcomes tied to ARPU, churn, and cross-sell.
- Partner integration & ecosystem thinking – Leveraging external brands (e.g. Velocity) to accelerate perceived value.
- MVP scoping with a scalable roadmap – Shipping fast while designing for future tiers, real-time redemption, and expansion.
If you’re interested in loyalty design, retention strategy, or building scalable reward platforms, I’m always happy to chat.