It’s the goal we’re all after, from operators to affiliates: What are the most proven ways to increase gaming revenue on your online casino site?
With affiliates, that problem can be answered pretty easily: Increase your sign-ups, increase your revenue. The most proven method of driving revenue is, obviously, converting your traffic. So: what are the most effective marketing tactics you can employ to get tangible results from your users — actual conversions and sign-ups?
Winning conversions
What motivates a visitor to convert? Why do some affiliate programs enjoy higher conversion rates than the others? Is it because of the quality of those sites? Their banner ads? Their TV ads? Or is it your content? Or maybe even a random preference from a random visitor?
Those questions aren’t abstract, and they’re not as hard to answer as you might think. But they are subjective — what works for you won’t necessarily work for another casino affiliate The specific answers, then, come down to your content and your market.
Which means that the answers can be found, but they will vary from site to site. The exact same banner ad from the exact same casino affiliate program will perform differently on different sites, because those sites have different content, a different search engine presence, and different readers.
So, even though it can be frustrating to hear this as a beginner, finding out what programs convert for your site is mostly going to be a matter of experimentation and trial and error. But that’s part of the fun — you’re a gaming affiliate because you love gaming, so naturally, you’ll promote the sites you personally prefer.
But if those sites don’t win you the kinds of conversions you’re after, don’t be afraid to change things up. Switch to a different program — maybe a more popular one, or one with a greater presences in your market — and you could see higher conversions almost instantly.
Specific factors
With that warning out of the way, there are some specific factors you can look to as conversion drivers. For their part, the casino affiliate programs you partner with will try to help you with this.
What inspires someone to visit a casino? It’s believed that welcome bonuses, deposit bonuses and jackpot listings help influence visitors to click on an ad.
Bonuses
Almost every online casino you’ll deal with has a welcome bonus. The question is, how much, and how well is it marketed? And how well can you tie it into your website content to point visitors in that direction?
Actually, because welcome bonuses are so common, it can seem pointless to market them. That may be the wrong attitude, though, if you’re targeting non-experienced gamers. Generally, it can be assumed that the total novice doesn’t know about welcome bonuses at all, so choosing affiliate banner ads that advertise such bonuses on a page marketed towards first-time gamers makes a lot of sense.
Social media
Investigate a casino affiliate program’s social media presence, too. It’s common practice now for every business to have a Facebook page, and the size, activity, and general buzz around any given casino or poker room’s page should give you a great clue as to how that program is likely to perform on your site.
Email marketing
If you’ve engaged in a long-term email marketing campaign, there are specific things here, too, that you can do to better engage your prospects. For starters:
Start a welcome campaign. Welcome new visitors to the fold with a warm, helpful intro message that should also include an offer to engage them right away.
Clean up your email list. Removing old email addresses and make sure you’re getting whitelisted by your customers.
Questions? Comments?
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have any particular experience to share regarding what kind of marketing leads to better conversions, sound off in the comments and share your thoughts with the CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com community.