As the online gaming industry matures and more people begin to select from a larger variety of gaming sites, affiliates need to be more promotional savvy on how to reach out, attract, convince and convert prospects to real money players.
Player retention is critical to an affiliate as well as the operator since it’s getting more and more difficult and expensive to find new players. Brand switching is a major issue in our industry since players will go to where they can typically find the biggest and best bonuses of that day or week.
There isn’t a lot of loyalty these days amongst players, but with fresh new promotions, bonuses, loyalty clubs and good old customer service with excellent attention to that customer, it can be done.
It’s critical that affiliates stay in close contact with their affiliate managers and stay up to date on current promotions for that brand. Another good project is to get the affiliate program to create “Exclusive Bonuses” banners for your brand. If you have a few of these going, players will come to your site so they get those exclusive bonuses and most likely convert.
The “No Deposit” required bonuses are good too, so you might want to have an assortment of those. Overall, it’s good to have a solid variety of popular sites, bonuses and promotions. Get players to sign up for your site as well so you can keep them. Then have them sign up for your newsletters so you can update them just before the weekends, informing them on all the new bonuses and promotions that are going on.
If they know your up to date on all this with fresh content, reviews and casino brand updates, then not only will you be ranking high on search engines but you’ll get lots of player traffic and they come back to find out more. Some of the most popular promotions are the affiliate programs monthly bonus schedules and sign up bonuses, free spins, free casino games, no deposit required, and tournaments.
Do your research and find some good brands that you can cross promote product offerings, like Sports, Casino, Poker and Games. Sometimes players will come to play some poker and end up in the casino or win at sports over the weekend and play some blackjack or poker.
An important thing is to make sure you’re working with reputable brands in the marketplace. Some of the big reliable brands are well known and players trust them such as Bet365, Brightshare, SIA Affiliates and others.
Also, look at other successful affiliate sites that drive lots of traffic like LatestCasinoBonuses. Other similar formatted sites include Online Casino Reports, CasinoBonusPages and CasinoReviewPages; and like the many operator brands out there with big brand names, affiliates must also establish themselves as major brands.
Just like them make sure you take care of your customers and identify where your players come from and what promotions they are responding too. Don’t forget to follow the trends as well for casino players, make sure you have sites that appeal to women as that is one of the fastest growing audiences in online gaming and for obvious reasons.
Finally, as countries start legalizing online gaming make sure you regionalize your marketing efforts with the correct promotions and languages that fit that market.
Remember to get on the CAP forums and talk to other affiliates and share your experiences. This is a great community and everyone wants to help each other and that’s good for everyone when it comes to learning what works for affiliate player retention.