Behind-the-Scenes: Players’ Engagement

As an affiliate, you are used to sending traffic to operators, which works out to be a pretty good business for you—I mean, hey, in some cases they even pay! But the question is, what do they pay for? What is it that they do with your players that sparks so much generosity in their wallets, as well as a willingness to share unconditional love with you?

Well, as surprising as it may sound, it’s money that they care about the most, and here are the steps they take in order to get the most out of the click stream that started on your website:

1. Automated conversion cycles: There are not too many operators who still don’t employ at least some kind of series of communication messages that are sent at fixed intervals to newly registered accounts that have dared to pick the forbidden course and chose not to deposit yet.

2. Dealing with deposit declines: This is what separates the men from the boys—the ability to quickly identify and resolve any issues with failed depositing attempts. After all, when players are already in a position in which they would like to pay, any half-smart operator should do their best in order to see that this transaction goes through.  

3. Improve continuity: One of the main causes of headaches within the operators’ teams is the drop between the 1st and 2nd deposit, and retention following this point (3rd deposit, 2nd month, etc.). There are no simple solutions to this problem—operators try hard all the time to come up with new ways to make their offering more and more attractive in order to improve those (usually dreadful) statistics. This is in contrast to the main reason for headaches within the affiliate community, which, as we all know, are mostly caused by tequila.

4. Segmented promotions: The average profile of an online gambler simply doesn’t exist. As such, the fine people of iGaming CRM everywhere are busy dissecting their databases in a constant hunt for the next best offer that could bring back these players again and again.

5. Loyalty clubs: As part of segmenting players, operators have realized that high-profile players deserve by far more than their relative part of the population. In order to match rewards with activity, iGaming companies began to copy the trend from the credit card and air travel industries, introducing their version of “frequent miles” programs.

6. VIP hosts: With VIP tiers comes VIP account management, and for a reason still unknown to the sensible observer, in most cases, accounts are mostly being managed by lovely females. Is there a hidden connection between the propensity to overspend within a predominantly male population if the counterpart of the discussion is an attractive lady? Now, how on earth could you, as affiliates, tell?  

7. Predictive analytics: As demonstrated so far, operators don’t really give chance much of a place in their line of work (the common saying is that “Gambling is not for Gamblers”). Therefore, the latest buzz is to try and foresee what players are about to do before they even know they want to do it. Whether it is early VIP monitoring or defection detection, when combining huge customer values with massive statistical abilities, you have got yourself a fairly Big Brother.  

8. Social: How can we discuss engagement without mentioning social? It’s very simple, actually—us non-affiliates are so boring that just thinking about social interactions makes us want to get into bed with a nice KPI report. But as said, operators will not leave a stone unturned, and as such, an active presence on all networks is an important part of the operators’ daily routine. The tools vary according to the need (bingo is Facebook, poker is forums, etc.), but the main goal is the same: Maximize Player Lifetime Value.