Marketing Offers Made Easier

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 11:42 AM
Photo:  Shutterstock
  • Buddy Frank, CDC Gaming

In the ancient past of casino marketing, things seemed simpler. You organized parties, created print and magazine ads, and oversaw an agency that did your TV, Outdoor and Radio. One standard joke was that other than “Statistics 101,” marketing undergrads didn’t have to take any math in college. Those good ‘ole days are no more. Today, you still have to do some of those early tasks, but your skill set has changed to include being a computer tech, math major, and data scientist. It’s not easy, and it can be time-consuming.

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Josh Crowder at The Casino @ Dania Beach in Florida can relate. He’s their director of marketing and says, “We have a small database marketing team. The amount of time it was taking to create offers was tremendous. We use the IGT system, and there was one set of offers that we had trouble getting into the system. In a two-day period, just to get the first week of the offers done, it took me and our data analysts 12 hours each just to build one week’s worth of offers.”  That was before they signed up with Quick Custom Intelligence (QCI).

“Today, we input our files to the QCI ‘Loader.’ It reads, and it builds all of the offers. It saves us a tremendous amount of time. And that’s been my favorite part of QCI. I know most people will say the reporting and all that, but ‘Loader’ saves us so much time getting the offers built.”

“Offers,” or direct and email campaigns, are critical in Dania Beach’s overall marketing plan. They are in an extremely competitive area. One of the country’s largest casinos, Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, is just a few blocks away, and similar-sized operations that share their demographics, like Gulfstream Park, The Big Easy, and Harrah’s Pompano Beach, are less than a half hour away.

“Our market is unique, even more so than Southern California where I used to work,” says Crowder, “We have such a loyal high-frequency local clientele. It’s not like a trip-based market. So, we try to keep our customers engaged. We need to know when they redeem an offer. If they don’t have something coming up, we try to have something out there as a ‘come back and see us’ instead of going somewhere else.  The QCI Loader helps a lot with that.”

Saving time can be critical in reaching customers. As QCI says in their new book, Beginner’s Guide To Casino Resort Database Marketing, “In a fast-paced industry…it is important for businesses to be agile and able to respond quickly to changing customer preferences and market trends. If businesses are too rigid in their segmentation strategies, they may miss out on opportunities to engage with new customer segments or respond to changing market conditions.”

The Casino @ Dania Beach implemented the entire QCI suite, which includes Slots, Table, Marketing, and Host applications about two years ago. Hosts also play a major role at this property. “We set up surveys regularly with our customers and the hosts come up a lot: ‘I go there because of my hosts.’ They like that level of personal service. They like to feel special and like a VIP. We don’t deal with extremely high-end clientele like Hard Rock does. So, we treat everyone great here. Our players wouldn’t get the same treatment at a big casino like that. Here, they get a lot of attention.”

Crowder again credits some of the QCI features for helping both managing the hosts and the hosts themselves. “I’ve seen an increase in identifying customers that our hosts can reach out to that may not have been contacted in some time, and we try to get them back on property. I’m able to assign monthly lead lists to the hosts with a certain criteria customer and evenly distribute the list. I can put a start date and an end date to it, and I can review what percentage of their list that they’ve contacted and run an analysis of what kind of business that brought in.” Even better is that the hosts can also see that same data to know how they are progressing.

The other QCI applications, like “Slot Manager,” allow marketing users to understand customer preferences and develop offers or marketing campaigns targeted to specific products. A slot player is more likely to respond to Free Play offers, whereas other players may prefer meals or other comps.

The bottom line is that Crowder says the real key is effectiveness, “QCI makes us more efficient. It’s relatively easy to use and it saves us a lot of man-hours so we can focus on other areas. I mean, just the time that it saves us.”

The Casino @ Dania Beach features 750 slot machines, ETGs, and a 20-table poker room. They have a 750 to 900-seat entertainment venue, a 100-seat Jai Alia Fronton, a Simulcast Sports Lounge and three restaurants.