The growth in popularity of igaming is prompting casino operators to explore online marketing as a way of enhancing their business.
A session titled “The Omnichannel Patron Journey: Leveraging Igaming Technology for Brick-and-Mortar Casinos” took place Tuesday at the Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow & Convention.
Navigating the intricate online landscape poses challenges, yet it offers valuable lessons in promotional strategies to elevate payment volumes and revenue. Land-based and tribal operators are prepping for online ventures; thus, learning the dynamics of online promotion is crucial, according to the panelists.
The group, moderated by casino consultant Josh Swissman, included Jerry Epstein, CEO and co-founder of Engaged Nation digital marketing; Steve Richie, chief revenue officer for Pavilion Payments; and Jake Francis, senior vice president of operations for ClutchBet.
“The world has become technologically sophisticated and that’s created some problems,” Epstein said. “Google has labeled this as “the age of digital clutter.” We spend more time online than we do sleeping. People are looking for entertainment options, but they’re being overwhelmed by the number of messages they get. Innovation takes many forms and what we look at is creating memorable moments on the emotional marketing side. People make decisions much more based on emotions than information.”
Francis said gamblers today are unlike those of even five to 10 years ago, so it’s incumbent on operators to think more creatively when it comes to acquiring and retaining players.
“Even smaller operators without a lot of saturation in this space need to be surgical with each marketing dollar and how engage with players,” Francis said. “Largely gone are the days of topline marketing, where you’re getting your brand out there. It’s less brand awareness and more about learning about your customer and identifying a 360-degree holistic view of not only what the customers are doing when they’re in your casino properties, but perhaps just as important, what they’re doing when they’re not.”
Swissman said the best marketing campaigns feel integrated and organic.
Francis said in the online digital space, there’s a preconceived notion that you can’t have physical touchpoints with your players but that shouldn’t be the case.
“My operation focused on hyper-localized campaigns and strategies, where you may not see our brand on the ticker tape on ESPN or the billboards at the arenas, but you will see us have more player touchpoints at a local soccer game, hockey arena, and bowling leagues. That kind of engagement puts a more personalized brand on it.”
Francis said their players are getting touchpoints from other operators. Every time someone downloads ClutchBet, everyone knows there are two competing online sportsbooks.
“It goes a long way toward identifying what these players are doing when they’re not engaging with their interface. That’s where we need to hammer on these folks to give them that more personalized experience,” Francis said.
ClutchBet’s online sportsbook is live in three states, including Iowa, where the women’s basketball team with Player of the Year Caitlin Clark led her team to the NCAA championship game; they they lost to South Carolina on Sunday.
“You won’t see us anywhere in the stadium or spending millions getting our branding on their jerseys, but you will see us socially engaged,” Francis said. “We engage with a Facebook group that has about 170,000 called Hawkeye Heaven almost daily and identified in the online space that installs (of the app) are important and first-time deposits. These are driven each time we engage with that Facebook page.”
Francis said the big takeaway is the importance of communal engagement and identifying that they’re part of the community. When they touch on the Facebook page, Francis said they also have a blog in which they don’t talk about any of their promotions.
“I just have my team share articles about what Caitlin Clark is doing for the sport,” Francis said. “My players take over from there. They’re not talking about whether they should get a parlay on ClutchBet, but engaging with each other about their love for the team and basketball.”
Epstein said coming up with alternatives to keep people engaged is one of the key metrics. Many properties and online operators look at checking the boxes, without taking into account that they all work together.
For one casino client, they did a traditional mailer and email campaign directing people to get drawing entries. It helped increase app downloads by 30%, with more active engagement on the casino app than the three previous years combined.
“Instead of presenting things in silos, we’re taking a look at how they can synergistically achieve the goals that we’re looking to achieve,” Epstein said.
Swissman said it’s not necessary to be on the “bleeding edge of technology” to achieve an out-of-the-box marketing campaign. Sometimes, it’s about combining two things that you normally won’t put together, like direct mail and downloading an app.
According to Epstein, a lot people want to be a leader, but they don’t want to go first. They’re encouraging their clients to take some risks, knowing that not everything will work.
To Richie, it’s important to keep experiments inexpensive, such as the one they did around the Super Bowl with no budget. They set up their team to be available 24/7 leading up the game to give players updated limits and fund their accounts and booked their three largest bets for the entire Super Bowl through that campaign.
“It was nothing other than aligning the resources we already had with an underwriting team and call center, and with marketing by explaining the offer to VIP hosts and trying some good old-fashioned channel marketing,” Richie said. “That’s what I mean by experimentation. You don’t have to do something radically different, other than using the resources in your own department and trying something out and measuring what happened and decide whether you want to go back to the boss and ask for money to deploy it.”
Now that the NCAA Finals are over, Francis said they’re in a “sports winter” and it’s important to take customers to where their hearts are by identifying what people are betting on.
“Oftentimes, before we were using predictive analytics, we found we were losing 2% to 5% of our customers every month to Fanduel, Barstool, or Fanatics,” Francis said. “Once we started using predictive analytics and AI to identify the kind of bets our customers enjoy, we found that it really drove engagement, increased brand loyalty, and kept players sticky with our brand.”
