When it comes to player retention, the key is to always leave them wanting more. This is a technique that not many have mastered, but once it is learned and implemented effectively it will leave the most indifferent player hooked on your site forever (or at least for a significantly long time). The best way to leave players wanting more is of course by providing high quality online gaming services, and in this article we will talk more specifically about promotions and what you can do to come up with innovative ways to attract players through them.
The Science of Promoting
Whether you are promoting an online casino, a Valentine’s Day slot tournament, or a new slot game, the idea behind promoting something is to sell it to an audience, in your case we are referring to online gamblers. It is crucial that as an affiliate you know the tastes and preferences of your players so that you can have a basic idea of the types of promotions you should offer. If you are clueless about this, you can start by posting threads at your forums asking your players what promotions they would like to see on your site. You can also look at the stats for promotions you’ve ran in the past and see which ones have been more successful and which ones didn’t seem to stick a lot.
Fixed Promotions
As a casino affiliate you probably find yourself stuck with promotions that the casinos you promote run on a regular basis. This is a great thing if your players are responsive to them and if this reflects on your check at the end of the month. However, if fixed promotions are counterproductive for your site or if the aren’t having any effect on your players, it is time that you take control and turn the situation to your side.
The way to go about this is by talking to your affiliate manager about how certain promotions are not having the desired effect and aren’t benefiting any of the parties involved. This could go two ways: they will agree with you and after talking to their bosses they’ll agree on designing new promotions that are more appealing to your audience, or they will say those promotions are standard as they might be having the desired effect at other websites. If you are faced with the second option, you should still try to reach an agreement and create new promotions that will appeal more to your audience, even if you still have to run the old ones as procedure or you can go ahead and create your own promotions inside your site.
Recommended: Affiliate Manager Communication = Increase in Profits
New Promotions
Now this is one of the scariest areas of the job for casino affiliates: getting creative. However, it is not so hard to do and after all we all have a crazy side of our brain that thinks of funky things once in a while. If you don’t have it, keep reading to find some ideas on how to tackle this issue, but first please watch this video on what it means to be innovative and the benefits that it brings to any business.
The concept of having in-site promotions is very popular among affiliate sites as they are easier to plan and carry out than those that require coordination with your affiliate manager, and they contribute to building an online community on your site. A good approach is to go by monthly and think about the relevant events every mont of the year. For example, in February you could run a promotion for the best Valentine’s Day love photo and encourage your players to post photos with their beloved ones (even if they are a pet, a plant or a rock) and you would certainly get some good laughs. You can think of creative prizes, such as promoting their member status or guranteed participation at a free-roller, it’s up to you and what you consider appropriate.
Bryan Bailey is a casino marketing guru and he gave CAP members tips on how he spends $0 on advertising and comes up with promotions and marketing campaigns on his own. You can learn a lot by watching this interview and it might help you overcome your fear of being creative.
So… why didn’t the chicken cross the street? Because he was a chicken. (Get it?) So don’t be a chicken and start fabricating promotions in your brain now.
If you are out of ideas remember that you can ask me, or any other CAP member for ideas at our forums and/or the comments section below. The CAP team is always more than happy to assist you.