How successful casino operators master customer retention management
The online gambling industry is extremely competitive, especially in countries like Canada. Canadians have a keen interest in gambling, and that makes the industry for operators who are looking to attract these players very competitive.
In any industry, when there is this much competition, it’s extremely important for businesses to master customer retention management (CRM) to gain a competitive edge. In the world of online gambling, Canadian Casinos need to do everything in their power to gain this competitive advantage so they can survive in the long term.
Here are some ways that casino operators can master customer retention management.
Ongoing promotions and bonuses
A great way to get new players to try out your casino is to offer promotions and bonuses. Some of the most popular ones are free spins at online slot games and first deposit welcome bonuses, where the operator matches a certain amount of a player’s first bonus. Both of these bonuses can be seen as free money.
These types of bonuses are great at getting players to try out your casino, but they don’t often keep them around. For that, you need to offer promotions and bonuses on a constant, ongoing basis to keep players coming back for more.
An easy bonus to offer is a reload bonus. This is very similar to the welcome bonus, except it matches a player’s deposit up to a certain amount for their second deposit — and maybe even third or fourth.
Other promotions you can offer include loyalty rewards or a VIP reward program. This is very similar to how land-based casinos operate. Players are given a certain number of points for every dollar they wager at your casino. They rack up these points over time, and can cash them in for entries into tournaments, free spins, swag and even real money.
Gaining a certain number of loyalty rewards points can also result in players stepping up in “level,” if you will. The higher levels, such as VIP, can get access to exclusive events, have higher deposit and withdrawal limits and get other perks that normal players don’t.
Finally, offer free spins and free chips to players every once in a while to try a game they’ve never played before. This is a great way to possibly “upsell” a player from a game they typically play to one they typically don’t.
Provide a great customer experience
With so many online casinos to choose from, it’s easy for Canadian gamblers to simply switch from one casino to the next. If they like a game that one operator offers, they can just go sign up for an account there. If another operator has new and better offers, they can leave and go there.
So many of the games that online casinos offer today are similar as well. There isn’t a ton that differentiates one version of blackjack from the next — and the same goes for other games as well.
But, simply getting players to your casino isn’t enough. This is where providing a great customer experience comes in. Customers who are satisfied with the customer experience a brand gives to them are overwhelmingly more likely to do business with that brand.
For online casinos, the customer experience comes into play from the moment someone signs up for an account, all the way through when they try to cash out their winnings.
Every step of the signup, deposit, gameplay and withdrawal process must be extremely easy to navigate. There must be multiple cashier options and multiple options for games to play.
And if a player has a question or needs extra assistance, the casino operator must have a top-notch team of customer service reps who will respond quickly, in a friendly way and solve their problem to the best of their ability.
Use the data you collect
Online casinos have the ability to collect a wealth of data on players. From the moment they visit the site, download the app or sign up for an account, they can already start collecting information about a customer’s demographics and behaviours.
The key for successful casino operators is to bring all this data together in one system so it can be analyzed for usage. It’s very easy for data to become disjointed when it’s being collected from so many different places. It would be nearly impossible to make any real conclusions from data if it can’t be combined into one central source.
Once this is done, casino operators can use CRM to conduct behavioural analysis. This will allow the operator to understand what players like and what they don’t like — and categorize them based on that. Then, they can target offers, marketing or changes to the casino itself based upon what the data is telling them.
