Introduction

Deraah Trading has evolved from a national pioneer into Saudi Arabia’s leading beauty and fragrance retailer. Over the past 50 years, the company has built a massive footprint with over 850 stores across 162 cities, catering to the specific tastes of the Gulf consumer with expansion plans to Oman and UAE

What truly differentiates Deraah is its vertical integration; unlike standard retailers, Deraah owns 20 registered brands across 37 countries. This allows them to manufacture their own French perfumes, Oriental oud, cosmetics, and skincare in partnership with global expertise houses, ensuring international standards while maintaining local relevance. This commitment to quality has earned them prestigious honors, including the King Abdulaziz Quality Award and ISO 9001:2015 certification.

In 2024, Deraah further modernized its legacy by partnering with Gameball to launch a unified loyalty ecosystem. This initiative bridges their physical dominance with a growing digital presence, creating a seamless omnichannel experience where customers earn and redeem rewards across the web, mobile app, and their extensive network of retail outlets

The Challenge

Before partnering with Gameball, Deraah spent three years searching for the right entity to build their loyalty program. The challenges were significant:

• No visibility into key metrics: They couldn't track order frequency, retention rate, or customer lifetime value
• Fragmented customer data: No unified view of customers across online and offline channels
• Complex tech stack: Different systems for retail (Microsoft Dynamics 365) and web (Salesforce Commerce Cloud)
• Multiple brands to unify: Flagship Deraah brand plus sub-brands (Q&A Cosmetics, La Beauté de L'amour) on different platforms
• Risk of competitive disadvantage: Needed to launch loyalty before competitors to avoid losing customers
• Regional expansion needs: Program had to scale across KSA, UAE, and Oman with localized configurations

The complexity was significant: Deraah needed a loyalty platform that could integrate with Microsoft Dynamics POS across 850 stores, Salesforce Commerce Cloud for the main website, and Zid/WooCommerce for sub-brand websites—all while delivering a unified "Mukafaati" (My Rewards) experience.

Solutions

Deraah partnered with Gameball to deploy "Mukafaati" (مكافآتي - My Rewards), a comprehensive omnichannel loyalty program. The implementation unified customer profiles across all touchpoints and introduced sophisticated earning, tiering, and redemption mechanics.

Unified Customer Profile Across Channels

For the first time, Deraah has a unified view of each customer's online and offline behavior—data, transactions, and events all in one profile. Whether a customer shops at a retail store, browses the website, or uses the mobile app, their activity is consolidated into a single customer record. This enables true personalization and accurate CLV tracking.

VIP Tier System

Mukafaati features a three-tier loyalty structure designed to drive continuous engagement and spending uplift:

• Basic: Default tier for all customers, standard earning rate
• Gold: Unlocked after spending 500 SAR, earn 2 Points for every 1 SAR spent (2x earning)
• Platinum: Unlocked after spending 2,000 SAR, earn 3 Points for every 1 SAR spent (3x earning)

Challenge Board & Gamification

The Mukafaati Challenge Board drives specific behaviors through targeted reward challenges:

• Complete your profile: 500 Points (driving more profile completion target)
• Place your first mobile app order: 1,000 Points (driving app adoption)
• Spin & Win, Match the Cards, Scratch & win campaigns for major promotional periods such as during November (different game every weekend) - to celebrate "White Friday" months

Seasonal & Cultural Campaigns

Deraah leverages Gameball for culturally relevant campaigns. This creates anticipation and drives return visits during key shopping periods. Similarly, National Day 93 promotions with special offers and bonus points drive seasonal engagement.

Loyalty Members Perks

The loyalty program integrates with promotional offers like "Buy 1 Get 2 Free" with a visual progress bar showing customers how close they are to earning free products. When customers qualify, they can select their free gift from a curated selection (e.g., Body Spray, Body Lotion, Shower Gel)—adding an element of choice and delight.

Complex Tech Stack Integration

Gameball serves as the unified loyalty layer across Deraah's diverse tech stack:

• Deraah Retail (850 branches): Microsoft Dynamics 365 POS integration
• Deraah Website (450K+ monthly visitors): Salesforce Commerce Cloud
• Sub-brand Retail: Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Sub-brand Websites (25K+ monthly visitors): Zid + WooCommerce
• Native Mobile App: iOS and Android with embedded Mukafaati experience

Group Loyalty Architecture

The implementation supports group loyalty across Deraah's brand portfolio. Starting with the flagship Deraah brand, the architecture is designed to extend to sub-brands like Q&A Cosmetics and La Beauté de L'amour—enabling customers to earn and redeem across the entire group while maintaining brand-specific campaigns.

The Result

After three years of searching for the right partner, Deraah's implementation with Gameball has delivered transformative results:

Unified Customer Data for the First Time

For the first time in company history, Deraah has a unified online and offline customer profile with complete data, transactions, and events. This enables accurate tracking of order frequency, retention rate, and customer lifetime value—metrics that were previously impossible to measure.

Driving Profile Completion

Through the Challenge Board incentive (500 points for profile completion), Deraah is driving toward their goal of more customer profile completion. Complete profiles enable better personalization, more effective marketing, and deeper customer understanding.

In a single campaign of Spin the Wheel, Deraah acquired 369% more customers profiles leading to richer data

Mobile App Adoption

The combination of Spin & Win campaigns and the 1,000-point bonus for first mobile app orders has driven significant app downloads. Push notifications promoting bonus points ("1000 نقطة هدية") create urgency and drive first-time app purchases.

Continuous AOV and Frequency Uplift

The VIP tier structure incentivizes customers to spend more to reach Gold (500 SAR) and Platinum (1,000 SAR) tiers, where they earn 2x points. This creates a virtuous cycle of increasing average order value and purchase frequency as customers progress through tiers.

Seamless Omnichannel Experience

Customers now experience a consistent "Mukafaati" journey whether shopping in any of the 850+ stores, on the website (450K+ monthly visitors), or via the mobile app. Points earned anywhere can be redeemed anywhere—with "Use your points" toggle at checkout and real-time balance visibility.

Why it worked

The program's success hinged on its ability to handle enterprise-level complexity and deliver a seamless experience:

Enterprise-Grade Scale

With 850+ retail stores, Deraah needed a loyalty platform that could handle massive transaction volumes while maintaining real-time responsiveness. Gameball's infrastructure processes point earning and redemption at scale without impacting checkout speed.

Speed to Market

After three years of searching, Gameball enabled Deraah to build and launch a full loyalty program for their 2 million customers in just four months.

True Omnichannel Architecture

Rather than bolting on separate loyalty systems for different channels, Gameball provides a unified platform where customer balances, tiers, and rewards sync in real-time across web, mobile, and POS. This eliminates the customer frustration of channel-specific restrictions.

Flexibility for Complex Retail Scenarios

Retail loyalty is messy: customers return items, pay with mixed methods, and shop during promotional periods. Gameball's flexible refund API and line-item tracking handle these scenarios correctly, maintaining customer trust and program integrity.

Gamification That Drives Action

The Spin & Win campaign proved that gamification mechanics can drive real business outcomes. By making loyalty fun and engaging, Deraah transformed a routine app download into an exciting customer experience that generated social buzz and massive adoption.

The Takeaway

Deraah's partnership with Gameball demonstrates that even the largest traditional retailers can successfully implement modern, omnichannel loyalty programs. By unifying the customer experience across 850+ stores and digital channels, Deraah has created a competitive moat that strengthens customer relationships and drives long-term value.

The key to success was treating loyalty not as a standalone initiative, but as an integral part of the customer journey across all touchpoints. With regional expansion to UAE and Oman on the horizon, Deraah is positioned to bring this world-class loyalty experience to customers across the GCC.