Disclosing the Peculiarities of Retention and Churn with Online Casino Market

Online casinoMarketingManagement
Updated 20 october 2020

Once your casino is fully functioning, and players are actively joining your platform, it seems like the profit is just a matter of time. However, it may happen that you still undertake a lot of losses. The reason for this is simple. Even though you have a steady flow of new players, they do not stay at your platform for long. The result of such a failed retention process is an operator’s main fiend — churn.

A wise casino owner pays as much attention to the players’ engagement as to the acquisition. Healthy interaction with clients, mutual understanding, and everyday communication makes it possible to develop trust that is an indispensable resource in building a successful online gambling platform.

The experts from Online Casino Market wait no minute to introduce to you another constructive guide on improving your gaming website. 

Player Retention

Player retention: CRM system

It is much more difficult and costly to attract a new player than to keep the existing ones. Operators are even able to invest no extra cost if they start setting up a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Therefore, fewer expenses on marketing mean more money left for casino owners.

Player retention can be a result of several elements with a single outcome — a possibility to increase frequency, time spent, expenditures, and overall interaction of clients with your product:

  • gaming content;
  • branding;
  • design;
  • service;
  • transaction processing;
  • interaction with clients;
  • accessibility;
  • advertising bonuses.

These key aspects can be decisive in a player’s choice to come back to particularly your website. An operator’s task here is to utilize the available data to understand what makes the players come back and play. You must offer them relevant content that will make them behave in a way you want.

Client retention is closely connected to bonuses and promotions. Even though players’ remuneration brings an immediate benefit, it also creates additional liability. Therefore, it is much more profitable to urge for earning players’ loyalty rather than pay for it with costly incentives.

The best approach in earning players’ loyalty is about providing a proper understanding of their wishes and needs with a consequent satisfaction with various tactics.

Player Segmentation and Profiling

By grouping players by specific segments, it becomes much easier to engage and direct them with the help of the desired effective messages. This result is much better response and beneficial campaign. The segments will vary on the type of available data, its quality, and the size of the database. After that, you can utilize this information and create the profiles of different players that tend to visit your platform. For example:

Segments

Profiles

Content-type

High-roller

Time spent on a device

Random

Deposit amount and frequency

Low-roller

Type of wager

Bonus chaser

Device

Activity status

Balance

Retention Influence

Basic retention must lead to players being more active:

  • accessing your website more often;
  • play longer;
  • spend more.

The number of different tactics helps you influence such players’ behaviour. Usually, they are divided into two categories:

  1. Public initiatives are brought to a broad audience and offered to all players as a general obligation of an operator.
  2. Personal initiatives are delivered only to a chosen group of clients (or even a single one). Usually, they are confidential and are created for a close range of people.

Tactic

Type

Explanation

Bonuses

Both

Bonuses can be offered to individual players or the entire segments for a particular deposit, referral tasks, etc.

Promotions

Public

Usually, promotions are available to everyone and are open for all players who would like to participate

Loyalty programs

Public

Loyalty programs are an operators’ public obligation in front of the clients

VIP-management

Personal

Exclusive offers from VIP managers have to make on an individual basis

Promotions

Promotions: giveaways and huge jackpots

Since we have already talked a lot about bonuses, it will be beneficial to talk a bit about promotions. Usually, they are divided into several different types of player engagement:

Tournaments

Tournaments are conducted with a registration. Players receive a certain number of spins or a limited amount of time. This great acquisition tool also works great with retention, especially if you combine a paid entrance with a free one. On top of that, offering a rebuy option is another great trick to attract more players. It basically means that in case of a bad start, a player can pay a certain amount (lower than the entrance) and start from the beginning.

Leaderboards

It is another excellent retention tool that is, unlike tournaments, focused on long-term players. The promotion’s goal is to make your way to the top of the list until the season’s end. The tempting approach of leaderboards is once your clients register on your platform, they automatically enrol in this promotion and can get additional prizes even without doing anything in particular besides playing. At the same time, high-rollers and regulars should have separate leaderboards due to the difference in wagers.

Races

These desirable types of promotions include two similar, yet original possibilities for players. The first one implies reaching a specific achievement by a limited amount of people. These winners get remuneration for the mentioned task. Another variation asks any number of players to complete a certain task for the reward. Depending on the difficulty of the assignment, the remuneration varies as well.

Random Giveaways

Instead of just completing a particular goal and receiving a guaranteed prize, here, players have to do a specific task in order to enrol in a draw. Of course, these are much easier to complete. Moreover, there are usually several levels of prizes that are awarded to registered participants.

Huge Jackpots

One of the extra safety barriers in the life of an average online gambling platform operator is jackpot insurance. Admittedly, the probability of winning an enormous amount is insanely small. However, you may have your budget shrink significantly once a random player hits the jackpot. Therefore, you can ensure this occasion, and if the victory happens, you will have to pay precisely zero to a winner.

Loyalty System

You definitely want your clients to feel their gambling activity on your platform is appreciated. Meanwhile, they also want to get something in return. By providing them with extra loyalty offers, you encourage them to visit your platform more and more. Here is a decent example of different loyalty levels:

VIP Types

Sapphire

Ruby

Amethyst

Daily Reward

130% match, 45 free spins

140% match and 55 free spins

145% match and 55 free spins

Perks

1 point per $7 bet

1 point per $6.5 bet

1 point per $4.5 bet

Monthly Return

7% NET return

12% NET return

17% NET return

Payouts and max wagers

Immediate withdrawals without maximum bet

Immediate withdrawals without maximum bet

Weekly Bonus

$40 reward

$45 reward

$55 reward

The critical aspect to the success of a loyalty program is a thorough analysis of your offers. Too generous propositions will generate extra expenses and will make you lose money even though players will be satisfied. On the other hand, greedy operators have also had hardly any benefit from their loyalty programs since no players are excited about them.

Finally, you must ensure that you offer unique rewards and loyalty bonuses without copying your competitors on the market.

Performing CRM

Performing CRM

Effective customer relationship management must be based on transferring the correct meaning to the desired audience. Previously, it had to be conducted on a manual basis that included in-depth analysis, creation of a campaign, and its execution.

Sticking to this process meant that even the swiftest and most productive operators could react to the events only a day-two after it happened. Till that time, a player could already join a competitor.

Nowadays, a lot of gaming platforms are equipped with basic CRM tools that allow preprogramming and automatizing the process, focusing on specific triggers and sequences of events. Apart from that, marketing automation instruments integrate with platforms and databases and can perform pre-set up campaigns targeting on those sequences. Moreover, they can operate in real-time, providing an optimal interaction with players.

Most popular CRM communication tools are:

  • email;
  • in-app notifications;
  • instant chats;
  • phone calls;
  • promotion;
  • push notifications;
  • social network communication;
  • text messages.

Churn Comprehension

The churn rate is a percentage of users that became inactive during a particular period. The first step to calculating churn is defining the activities that we want to analyze. In the online gambling sphere, most often, it is all about wagering. This action makes a player active. There are two main methods of calculating churn towards retention:

1. Player-based analytics. The formula for this will be:

Total Active during Period X / Total Active during Period Y

Month

December

January

March

April

Active

3,000

2,850

2,600

2,550

Lost

150

400

450

Churn Rate

5%

13.5%

15%

This table shows that churn rate towards December based on the number of visitors that converted inactive.

2. Anonymous-based analytics. The formula for this will be:

(Total Active during a Period - Total New during a Period) / Total Active during a Previous Period

Month

December

January

March

April

New Clients

300

350

250

Active Clients

3,000

3,150

2,950

2,800

Old Active Clients

2,850

2,600

2,550

Churned Clients

150

400

450

Churn Rate

5%

13.5%

15%

It is of utmost importance to perceive the churn problem timely in order to prevent the leakage of resources. Once understood, the problem can be easily solved by applying the proper marketing tools for increasing retention.

Saving Costs with Professional Retention Assistance

Saving costs with professional retention assistance

The evaluation of retention is a complicated process that requires a lot of theoretical knowledge and the ability to apply it to the casino-building process. If the first aspect is easily obtainable through numerous guides and endless encyclopedias, the second part can become an issue for an inexperienced operator. Some subtle intricacies can never be passed on paper and require a detailed evaluation from the ones who are already acquainted.

With this in mind, the professional guide company Online Casino Market offers its excellent turnkey casino solutions for everybody willing to build an internet-based casino.

Our experts will gladly provide you with enough information on every aspect of the organizational process, namely:

  • the player retention, its segmentation capabilities, and influence;
  • the variety of promotions that you can apply to increase players’ interest;
  • how loyalty systems can become a great source of retention;
  • how to achieve effective customer relationship management;
  • the introduction of churn and the main ways to understand it.

The next time, we will bring you another fundamental topic of casino profitability. If any of these or any other gambling issue keeps you befuddled, it will be efficient for you to resort to the experts from our company. Just reach them by any comfortable means and receive an instant response.

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  • e-mail: manager@oc-market.com
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Karen Fill

Author

Karen Fill

Gambling business expert at Online Casino Market

Updated 20 october 2020