Information that matters (and doesn’t)
by Dennis Conrad
May 1, 2009
How much of all the information that crosses a senior casino marketing exec’s desk is really relevant?
I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on my new book,
“Conrad on Casino Marketing”. Most of it has been positive, and that has been
gratifying. But one comment still gnaws at me a little — it was from a good
friend, but it came to me accidentally, so I know he was being candid: “Light
reading,” he said, “but good at reminding you of the simple things that you’ve
forgotten.”
Light reading? Simple
things? Certainly the book hadn’t intended to be a mathematical financial
marketing model. But “light reading?” This “senior strategist’s” pride was
stung. Light reading?
But the comment got
me to thinking about “hard” marketing (ratios, reinvestment rates, ROIs,
cluster analysis, CRM applications, etc.) versus “soft” marketing (leadership,
relationship building, customer service, creating “fun,” etc.). And then I got
to thinking of all that information that crosses the senior casino marketing
exec’s desk (or doesn’t) and how much of it is really relevant. Which leads me
to some “light” comments on the marketing information that really matters — and
that which doesn’t.
As an operator or
marketer you should always have the following information at your
fingertips:
• Total tracked play
and carded head count over the last day, week, month and year — so that you can
tell if the frequent players who like you enough to give you this juicy
tracking and contact information continue to like you.
• Active players
report — depending on your type of gaming market this is the report that tells
you over the last six, 12, 18 or 24 months (set your own time frame) how many
players have visited at least once. Be sure to continually add new players and
drop off inactive players and this will tell you if your player base is growing
or shrinking.
• Host production
reports — these are reports that will tell you if your hosts are finding
players of worth, whether they are growing (or maintaining) business from their
hosted players, and whether essentially they are business builders or just
highly paid glad-handers.
• Marketing event and
program financial pro formas, prior- and post-analysis — this will tell you if
all that money you spent on those direct-mail offers, VIP events, cash
giveaways, big name entertainment, etc., was worth it.
Any empirical data
(cost per response, number of new players club signups, etc.) that can help
shed light on possible return on investment on your advertising. Your
advertising will never have 100 percent measurability (although it should), but
having some meaningful measurement will tell you if your advertising is really
driving revenue or just making your ad agency happy.
• Individual player
reports — the types of these reports vary, but they should identify the
spending patterns of your customers, which cash registers they give you the
money at, and whether their spending is “inclining” (up), “declining” (down) or
“maintaining” (holding steady). To do this really well takes a big investment
in technology and software.
• Budget reports for
marketing — yes, I believe these are important, but don’t make them your gospel
if you can find ways to make money by spending money (and exceed that
budget).
• Customer service
scores in all departments — but only if done with the right customers (your top
10 percent), done scientifically and consistently and used as an important
basis for reward, identification of training and improvement opportunities and
organizational change.
• Customer and
employee suggestions — this is an area of important information to which most
casinos pay lip service with perfunctory “suggestion boxes”. These suggestions
need to be aggressively sought, rewarded, communicated and implemented to be
meaningful.
There are probably a
few good marketing information sources that I am neglecting to mention, but let
me switch to the information that I find mostly
meaningless:
• Head count (bodies
in the building) reports — usually done by security at the front door or by
taking hourly “counting strolls”.
• Reports on
competitors — these are worthless unless you want to base your marketing
strategy and tactics on what your competitors are doing. Now, if you want to
have your senior executives go visit the competition as real customers (most of
them will hate it), then that’s a different story. You should get all kinds of
great ideas from the customer perspective.
• Point Liability
Reports (reports on how many points players club members have earned and not
redeemed yet). — let the bean counters have this one and needlessly agonize
over it.
• Weather impact, year over year — this is
usually used to justify revenue shortfalls caused ostensibly by weather. A
worthless CYA report. So there, you have my thoughts on useful marketing
information. Don’t take them lightly.
Dennis Conrad
Dennis Conrad is the president and chief Relationship Officer of Raving Consulting Company, a full service marketing company specializing in assisting gaming organizations. He can be reached at (775) 329-7864. Visit Raving’s Web site at www.ravingconsulting.com.
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