THE BACK PAGE: Marketing the future at G2E
by Charles Anderer
November 17, 2012
One thing that was clear at last
month's Global Gaming Expo is that marketers are moving from the theoretical to
the practical on numerous technological fronts. Take the area of mobile and
online marketing, which was spotlighted at one of the event's many first-rate
sessions.
Customers are using mobile devices to learn about your properties whether
you have a mobile site or not, said Craig Border, vice president of database
marketing, Marketing Results. The firm has studied client websites, finding 13
percent of people will still access websites using a mobile device even if it’s
not a mobile site. When you add mobile functionality those numbers go up to 30
percent. For all mobile and online sites, when you start looking at things like
account log-ins and you’ve got a CRM page that ties back to offers, about 48
percent will take advantage.
“When you take that one step further, looking at offers that are aimed
specifically at driving visits; say an offer that you put on the website even
before they’ve received a piece of mail or an e-mail, we’re north of 50 percent
of web traffic going to those areas of the site, coming in just for that
purpose,” said Border.
Important strides are being made in the area of customization and
personalization, said Aron Ezra, vice president of mobile, Bally Technologies.
“We look at everything a casino is doing in its day-to-day business and see how
we can augment it,” said Ezra. “We also look at how we can create customized
experiences for people who are looking at a particular screen at that time in
that place. For instance, we find that between 30 and 40 percent of people
using a mobile device will use it off-property to do things like book a room
and make reservations. The vast majority of people are using that device
on-site to augment their experience as they’re walking around; to locate the
restrooms, their friend, or they parked their car; or find out how to play a
particular game. In the traditional online world, it’s much more about drawing
that person to the property in the first place.”
Ezra encouraged operators to think about the online strategy for all
communication that occurs via screens, including digital signage. What is the
content that you are going to show people at 10 p.m. vs. 3 p.m.? Is a top-tier
player going to see different content on all of those different screens at those
different times in those different places?
“More and more, we’re seeing customization become paramount,” said
Ezra. “We’re talking about customizing for groups and individuals. If I see my
name up there and the games that I like to play, I might not use Facebook, but
I might use Twitter and Foursquare, so that’s the experience that I see when I
walk in.”
There are real-world success stories. “Your website can reach so many
more people than print or direct marketing,” said Border. He described a
property in Michigan that put together promotions around a progressive jackpot
that had to hit by a certain dollar value, (in this case $100,000). Everyone
knew that the game typically hit around $85,000, so they put the real-time
amount on their website, be it mobile or desktop, letting everyone see the
jackpot scrolling up over time.
“The jackpot tended to hit about once per month, so they leveraged that
by saying if you were willing to enroll online and receive digital
communication, we’ll send you notification when that jackpot hits $75,000,”
said Border. “As a result, they had an immense number of people who were
interested in knowing when lightning was going to strike. It translated into a
lot of interest online and a huge database of people who they could communicate
with regularly and good conversion rates. The club was literally mobbed with
people wanting to sign up because people wanted to be a part of it and the only
way was if you had a card.”
Ezra cited Pinnacle’s properties for generating massive numbers of
downloads and usage. Luxor as well, for doing really sophisticated work with
geo-targeting. Golden Nugget does a lot on the social side through their
goldennuggetpoker.com site; and Red Hawk casino in California, which draws a
huge portion of their players from Chinatown in San Francisco, “has created
some really interesting geo-fences that attracted a lot of business.”
Bottom line: The group of players that has either used the mobile
website or logged in online, are more engaged with the property, said Border.
“We’re seeing values for this group nearly double what we see from an unengaged
customer in the general population of the database,” he said. “We’re also
seeing much higher loyalty factors. In the general database, we’re seeing
defection rates of 35-37 percent. When we look at people who are highly engaged
with online services, the defection rate is down at 11 percent. Engagement from
a value perspective and number of trips per visit adds up to jump into this
arena.”
Charles Anderer
is executive editor of BNP Media Gaming Group and also oversees content development, sales and marketing for the company’s trade shows and conferences, which include Bingo World, Southern Gaming Summit, Gaming Technology Summit, New York Gaming Summit and Casino Marketing. He can be contacted at andererc@bnpmedia.com.
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