The casino industry has plenty to learn when it comes to interacting with patrons and using data to personalize their experiences as a way to drive customer loyalty. Offering free play on slots, however, doesn’t appear to be one of them.
Experts from industry-leaders Salesforce and Google offered insights to casino executives Tuesday at the TribalNet Tradeshow & Conference in Reno.
The lesson is that the casino industry can learn a great deal from innovative companies outside of the hospitality industry.
“One of the things that always comes up is what other industries are doing,” said Patrick Tinklenberg, vice president of IT at Sycuan Casino in San Diego, who moderated the discussion. “What are forward-thinking companies outside of gaming and hospitality doing that we can be better at it?”
Daio Lamers, principal solution engineer with Salesforce, said it shouldn’t be a surprise that casino properties have traditionally looked at gaming data first and hotel data second. But with more sophistication, depending on the brand, other revenue streams, such as nightclubs and food and beverage, are becoming more pertinent.
Casinos are modernizing to get more data, especially in real time, so they can begin acting on it, Lamers said.
“That’s what we see from most operators in the U.S. market, but also in our UK and Australia markets,” Lamers said.
Candace Riddle, data and analytics specialist at Google, said that with the introduction of igaming, online casinos are discovering how information is siloed and doesn’t give a 360-degree view of customers as players.
“When we think about revenue streams that we want to optimize, it becomes harder to do when you’re targeting a certain segment,” Riddle said. “The way the world is changing right now, in thinking about other revenue streams you might want to optimize, the ability to collect data from various sources and get it unsiloed, so you have a 360-degree view of a customer and player, is the way to optimize revenue streams.”
Tinklenberg said they know about casino data, slot systems and table games, and hotel data. There is also data from food and beverage and spas, but he asked the panel where the industry isn’t tapping into information that it should.
“Some of the things we’re looking at are how often the player visits a certain location and how long they’re staying,” Riddle said. “What’s their buy-in and average-bet range? What’s their game, game time, and game volatility? One client I met with fell into this traditional trap of offering free play to customers. But without targeting the right segment and setting the right pricing point, what happens is that customers come in and decrease their bankroll due to the offer. The worst-case scenario is you offer a free room to someone who uses the free room, but doesn’t spend any money on gaming or goes across the street to gamble.”
Riddle said it’s important to look at the attributes of that customer to target him or her with the right offer.
Lamers said he was speaking with an MGM Resorts International executive a few months ago about free play. MGM targeted a convention with $100 in free play, but those customers spent only $100. “It isn’t to say free-play offers don’t work, but they have to be targeted at the right segment.”
Tinklenberg said San Diego is a competitive and locals-oriented market, so with giveaways such as free play, they see guests collecting their offer from the first casino, then moving on to collect their offer from the second casino, then collecting another offer from a third casino.
“They may spend a little money at each one, but they make their rounds and hit all the casinos,” Tinklenberg said. “If you’re out there generating loyalty like everyone else with free play or point multipliers, you’re just moving people around the casino roulette.”
Lamers said casinos are learning that offers don’t engender loyalty. It’s not that they lose revenue, but revenue is left on the table.
Lamers said casinos have been leading with transactional data for 40 years, but now there’s a trend of using engagement data. Transactional data is what customers spend and engagement data is their behavior and how they interact with a website and digital opportunities.
“A lot of our clients look at it in such a way to get an insight on what their patrons will spend in the future, based on past purchases and behaviors,” Lamers said. “For most of our customers, a trip doesn’t start and stop with the casino. It starts when they book their flight and car rental with the hotel. Yes, the casino is part of it, but they don’t look at the casino as the whole trip. We shouldn’t either. We should factor in the types of offers and marketing we put in front of them.”
Since COVID, Tinklenberg said they’re seeing changes in consumer behavior: They’re prioritizing experiences over goods. More people in the U.S. are booking travel than buying something at a store.
“We’re seeing that in the casino as well,” Tinklenberg said. “The question is how we take advantage of that view of the guest to provide those experiences and make sure the guest is getting the experiences they want that bring them back in.”
