There are a lot of comments in this post and I will try to answer as many of the questions as I can in one sitting.
Firstly, we do not cross-promote/push active players across our brands or un tag them from affiliates. Our retention team focuses solely on keeping the player playing under their own active account and our customer service and promotions are tailored to the casino the player is interested and playing on. All offers are sent to the player with the account number of their most recently used casino account and are solely focused on keeping them playing.
CDs – lists are obtained through third party vendors and list rentals, mostly large scale media companies, and typically we don’t even see the lists – ixian – in your case your registrations was way too close to the delivery date of the CD for your claim of cross promoting. You have signed up on the 2nd of the month and then receive a CD on the 21st of the month. There is no way that we could have received your details and then delivered the CD to your door in the 3-4 week time frame (artwork/printing/mailing etc takes time – these campaigns take the marketing department months to plan). We wish we could turn around something like that but there is just no way for us to be that efficient. Thus your registration had nothing to do with the CD you recieved. Furthermore active players and affiliate based players are never sent cd’s just reactivation campaigns, like scratch cards or letters offering them a bonus on their specific last played account.
You did also have other accounts linked to some of our brands from over 12 months ago which were tagged to an older CD where there had been no activity on your account – inactive players from a different CD tag obtained through list rental services – not cross promoting our affiliates.
On our general tracking:
With our brands, multiple affiliates can send the same player to multiple casinos. Our tracking has always been that the player is tracked to the last source that sends them to the casino when they join. We have always felt this is the fairest way because otherwise your hard work might generate revenue for old non active affiliates. This system has been in place since the beginning (when we only had 3 brands) and has not changed. Having been in the industry for over 8 years we have a few players who are tagged to different affiliates across different brands. A few suggestions have been made – tag them to the first affiliate who brought them in, the last, the most current etc etc. In the case where say I have sent someone to BJB 4 years ago and the player only purchased $50, then a player came through a different tag last year to GT and has become a profitable good player it wouldn’t be fair that the player is tagged to the first affiliate on BJB seeing as the latest promotion and site has made the difference in making the income for the affiliate. The current model gives the affiliate the opportunity to push a returning player to their site through to another brand as well. Furthermore and this is an important one, we use cookies, session variables and query strings to make sure all of the tracking is not lost. Because we use cookies a player who visits and does not join right then will still be tagged to that affiliate until they are sent to the site again via another affiliate. So let us use the casino rewards pages for example.
Say affiliate ABC sends a player to blackjack ballroom, and the player does not join but instead has a look around and has to go to dinner or something. A week later he sees bjb on casino rewards and decides hey I remember that site lets have a look again and he clicks on the bjb image and goes to the site and joins. This player because of the cookie is still tagged to the affiliate ABC, the same is true for the uninstall pages.
So the player is still tracked to the affiliate who sent them to the site and we are not overwriting the cookie.
Whales – Engineer I’m addressing your post here specifically, but I know this is a concern for a few of you out there. There is no way we would offer/entice/encourage a whale to switch brands for the sake of saving money. These are the guys we need to keep happiest for as long as possible and the ones who make both the casino and the affiliates/advertisers the most money. We do everything in our power to keep the player happy and playing at the account they want to play at most and would do nothing to jeopardize that player’s satisfaction. Our retention and VIP level of service is one of our strongest points in this industry and most of you would have seen old players coming back after months of not playing. If we cross promoted or unmapped the players you would not see the player value you do. Plus using the example above they will be tracked based on the cookie in their system so more than likely either the same affiliate or a new affiliate would get the player anyway, either way we would have no idea what tag would be in their system.
Hopefully this post, which is starting to look like war and peace answers the questions you have. As a few of you pointed out we have been in the industry for over 8 years, we’ve been working with many of you. We are not out there to rip people off or shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to ‘steal’ from our advertisers and affiliates. We understand that this is not the way to ensure long profitable business models and we are certainly not in this game for the short term. We seek long term relationships with both players and affiliates alike.