Caesars gives players a (small) incentive to play at the end of the year
We have several times discussed the law of diminishing returns with the Total Rewards program.
Simply put, once you reach Seven Stars, there isn't much incentive to play beyond that, because the value of the further rewards (signature experiences) is pathetically bad.
But it's not just Seven Stars. Even if you are a lower tier, there's still little incentive to play at the end of the year, as your tier points will be zeroed on January 1. So if you're a diamond with 42,000 points, and you don't plan to play enough to reach 80,000, there's no point to rack up further tier points, and you might as well wait until January.
To combat this, Caesars introduced a new bonus tier credit program that earns you points for NEXT year on top of the ones this year, for play after October 1.
That's not a bad idea, except like all decent Caesars ideas, they screwed it up in execution.
You get only a 20% bonus on your play, and it caps at 20,000.
So if you earn 10,000 tiers from Oct 1-Dec 31, you will get 2,000 bonus tiers for 2016.
Or if you earn 100,000 tiers in that time period, you will get 20,000 (the maximum you can get).
Big deal.
Honestly that's still not very much incentive, especially when one can just wait and earn 100% of the value on January 1 and beyond.
They should have made it something like a 50% bonus, and they shouldn't have cappd it.
The 20% DOES apply to bonus tiers earned (that is, you earn a bonus on the bonus), but who cares?
I see what they're trying to do here, but if it's only 20%, and if the maximum is 20k tiers, this isn't doing anyone much good.
Total Rewards Head Start Bonus for 2016
I was surprised by this email: Total Rewards is giving players a bonus on the points earned during the 4th Quarter as a head start towards 2016 tier credits.
If they have a valid email address the bonus is doubled.
Earn 500 tier points and you get a 50 point bonus in 2016. If they have your email address the bonus is doubled so you will start 2016 with 100 points.
The maximum bonus is 20,000 bonus points added to 2016.
I think it's an inexpensive way to keep the loyalty ball rolling for Caesars, and I think it's an inexpensive way for them to be sure they have valid email addresses.
This is for Tier points only and not Reward Credits so there is no "cash value" but you do get a head start on earning whatever tier level for next year.
I think it's also an indication that they are still pulling tricks out of their bag to hold on to as many players as possible who might think about defecting because of the bankruptcy and the cuts in offers and promotions.
