Focus on Pavilion Payments: Partnership with Engaged Nation has led to many happy casinos and customers

Friday, April 5, 2024 8:00 AM
Photo:  Global Payments' booth at IGA 2023/CDC Gaming
  • Buck Wargo, CDC Gaming

Pavilion Payments has teamed up with Engaged Nation for an incentive program in which casino customers receive rewards for being part of Pavilion’s VIP Preferred program.

The growth of the Pavilion Payments’ Partner Assist Program has paid dividends for casinos with additional spending and incremental trips by their customers.

Pavilion is the leading omnichannel payments provider exclusively serving the gaming industry while Engaged Nation is an interactive digital engagement company that has established itself as a marketing component for the casino industry.

The focus starts with rewarding members who sign up for Pavilion Payments’ VIP Preferred program, which is a fast and easy way to secure access to cash at more than 400 gaming establishments. Once enrolled, simply present your ID to a casino cashier and obtain your cash. VIP Preferred also offers the convenience of cashing checks electronically, also known as e-checks, without having to bring a checkbook.

The incentive program that kicked off in 2021 with just four properties is now in more than 140 casinos in North America. Pavilion executives have called it a great collaboration with Engaged Nation.

“Our relationship with Engaged Nation has been a great opportunity to deliver additional value for our clients,” said Justin Sprague, Chief Marketing Officer at Pavilion Payments. “By using their digital marketing technology to promote our payments solutions, we drive both VIP Preferred adoption and revenue for gaming institutions. This partnership with Engaged Nation is one of the many ways that we act on our commitment to client success.”

Engaged Nation CEO Jerry Epstein said it’s been great to work with Pavilion because the company is an innovative leader in the casino industry. He called Pavilion a true marketing partner for their clients, differentiating them from other companies in the industry.

“We’ve taken a predominantly B2B brand and made it much more B2C friendly, accessible, easier to understand the benefits provided and help sign up people using the product on the floor or online,” Epstein said. “Our whole goal is to give Pavilion a competitive advantage and we’ve done that by helping casinos market to their players and generate more revenue.”

Engaged Nation provides a comprehensive digital campaign to meet a property’s goals that includes creating more awareness for Pavilion products and services, increasing adoption and boosting new account sign ups. The ultimate goal is to drive incremental transactions for casinos.

“The Partner Assist Program is exactly as the title indicates,” Epstein explained. “At no cost to the operator, we will implement a very effective digital engagement program that ultimately helps to generate greater income for the land-based or online casino or sportsbook. To our knowledge, Pavilion is the only casino vendor that is providing this direct type of assistance to help properties generate more revenue.”

Epstein said they’ve implemented more than 400 campaigns for more than 140 properties. Engaged Nation has built a loyalty website in conjunction with Pavilion called the Member Rewards Center. The website personalizes each of the pages for every operator in the program.

Epstein said that in a typical program working with properties, Engaged Nation will engage every VIP Preferred customer with relevant email content about the loyalty rewards program. Embedded in the email is a code that people click on that takes them to the Member Rewards website where they continue to digitally nurture them.

The website includes non-casino games that are fun, rewarding and engaging, Epstein said. People earn drawing entries through their play and each month winners are chosen from a pool that can be as high as $20,000, provided by Pavilion. There are also incentives to get people to come to the properties such as free play.

“It’s an effective awareness and advertising builder because you’re connected to the brand and playing enjoyable and sometimes challenging games. If the player is a sports bettor, we can educate them with our sports betting terms component, which is a well-used section on the site.” Epstein noted that, “We also provide expert sports betting tips and hints to give players more knowledge about an upcoming game and possibly an edge. We truly are a valued added resource.”

In 2023, Engaged Nation helped drive an average monthly transaction volume lift at properties by more than 15%, Epstein said. It also provided the advertising equivalent of more than $2 million to those properties, he added.

Engaged Nation can do outreach not only to existing VIP Preferred members but can also reach out to a property’s entire player database to sign up more VIP Preferred members. In 2023, that led to more than 100,000 new account sign ups resulting in newfound revenue.

There’s even a new incentive program to drive potential customers to register at the casino cage. The attendant gets $20 for everyone entered in the system with an email. This has been extremely popular at participating properties.

Bob Dimmick, CEO of Kiowa Casinos called it a great program that leads “to a lot of incremental revenue that we would have not normally seen. At the same time, it offers our customers a great service. It’s always fun to make money, but it’s fun when your customers like participating. They like getting the incentive and like coming to your casino to take advantage of their incentive. I get an extra trip when they come to redeem, and the lift at our properties has been really great on our cash access. It provides a benefit to our customers because it makes them aware of cash access that they don’t normally know that they have.”

Dimmick said they’ve seen lift at their largest property at Kiowa Casino Red River on a monthly transactional basis of more than 15%. At its smaller properties, it’s seen a lift of more than 30% based on the VIP Preferred program. It’s added up to more than $1 million over the course of the program that started at Red River in 2021 at no cost to the tribe.

Kiowa Casinos is looking to roll out an instant reward program later this year that will generate even more customer trips, Dimmick said.

“We’re extremely happy and want to extend it and do more of it, and it’s been a popular program at both the business and consumer side,” he shared. “We run the program quarterly and customers look forward to hearing from us, and we like to get them signed up for (VIP Preferred). They get an incentive and that’s helping us generate incremental trips. What customers don’t like free play?”