Consistently for me – the players that sign from freebie offers are low value players. For a while I was able to pretty much avoid freebies because there were alternative exciting promos. Now US players are stuck with Rival and RTG and it’s mostly freebie and match bonuses. It’s not making me or my players happy.
I do tons better with Vegas tech, and the tournies there. There is not even a comparison in player value.
That is likely not the same for everyone, different sites have different traffic types. But for me – I wish there were more innovative promos that present a challenge of some sort to the player. People who drop a few thousand a month don’t care about 5 or 25 bucks. It’s one bet out of many they want to make. It’s not worth the trouble.
Lower depositors see the challenge in beating the bonus, it becomes a hobby. Beating the bonus becomes all they want to do.
Large depositors respond a lot better to things like tournies. The challenge is still there, but they can buy in for ten bucks and make $100 bets because they get $1000 to play with. If they run down, they pay in another 10 bucks. When they make it to the top ten, (and they will if they rebuy until they hit a big payout) they leave the tournie, but they keep an eye on it to see if they get pushed down. So they stay in the casino and play for real while they watch.
This sort of thing adds to player enjoyment for bigger depositors.
Staggered bonuses also work better than freebies for me. But nothing works as well as a challenge.
So the freebie does work to attract novice players into the casino, no argument there. But then the freebie is viewed as a challenge by many players, and these then become tagged as “bonus abusers”. All they are doing is having fun trying to beat the challenge presented to them. Wouldn’t it be a lot better to provide a challenge that doesn’t create bonus abusers?