Are you an operator in LATAM? Then you're going to love our 5 key takeaways on how to run localized Gaming promotions during the holiday season in Brazil, based on the insights and experience we've gathered from Hybrid Interaction's local CRM experts!

This interview is about a topic that many affiliates should pay close attention to, the importance of player values, player lifetimes and retention. Shahar discusses how all of these things can impact your earnings, and ultimately your success, as an iGaming affiliate.

What is it that we Player Development people do? The quick answer would be: we analyze stuff. As we all know, Retention Marketing is based on the assumption that as a service provider, we can increase the engagement levels of our customers by tweaking our offering in such a way that it can, at least, be perceived as more attractive to them. We learn from the past and the environment, and try to apply our findings through promotional campaigns. Now, how NOT boring and sexy does that sound?? I...

This post focuses on online casino promotional ROI analysis. Everybody else: behave yourself! One of the most significant tools used by Loyalty Managers to increase their turnover (handle, bet, you name it) is bonus offering. Yes, I am brilliant, how is it that you have never thought about it yourself, etc. Anyway, by providing a promotional bonus to your players, you offer them the option to lengthen their game play entertainment “on the house”.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 3.14159: The London conferences were absolutely amazing. The participants reminded me of young kids during a sugar rush attack, just running around, trying to make the right contacts and gain competitive advantage, with all means are justified (and yes Thomas, you were there alright, but you somehow wore that body paint in a slightly less tactful manner … oh, the humanity!).

We all like to be liked. So when you see your loyalty program is drawing more players to your games, you may break out in a big smile. But if you’d look a little more closely at the numbers, that smile might turn to a frown. And the frown might turn into a yell: “Stop the loyalty program! Stop it now!” Sometimes operators get a little too sure of themselves, convinced that they’ve got the edge over the players. See, for example, Tropicana vs. Don Johnson.

Judging from the recent posts, you’d probably conclude that this blog’s focus is limited to Alcohol, Hot Girls, Dublin and how easy it is to get a senior iGaming position if you have an experience as a taxi driver and your name is Thomas. Sadly, we have to expand our discussion so that when your boss asks “Well, what the hell do you intend to do in order to improve our profits during this miserable Q3?” you top-level executives actually have an answer.

As I opened the annual CRM & Retention Seminar I moderated during the last iCE conference in London, I quoted a fantastic online article that linked CRM to the thoughtfulness demonstrated by the grocer on Sesame Street, Mr. Hooper: “Mr Hooper paid attention to customer behavior even beyond their purchases to know how to adjust his stock,” the article said. “Would he have had birdseed milkshakes on the menu had he not listened to Big Bird? Certainly not.”

While there are many similarities between running a bricks-and-mortar casino and running an online casino, there are some important distinctions. I will detail those in this article, along with some of the major KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you’ll need to track if you’re charged with managing the promotional/player development activities of an online customer base. And I’ll conclude with a case study of how a major European casino migrated its “whales” from its bricks-and-mortar...

Which would you prefer? An extra €200 in monthly revenue from one player or an extra €10 in monthly revenue from 20 players? (Note to Thomas: stop scratching your head… they are the same thing!) Loyalty expert Paul Hebert recently published a very interesting article that tries to answer this question, and we’ll translate his text into online casino lingo for you. It’s not that we don’t trust you to comprehend such long texts on your own. It’s that we simply don’t trust you at all.

The purpose of this blog is to assist iGaming CRMers, wherever you may be. To do so, we provide you with naughty photos from industry conferences, laugh at Thomas for his poor fighting abilities (or lack of any kind of abilities in this case), review your boring promos and mock acquisition people on your behalf (no need for a link here – pretty much any post would do).

Feel like you are “sinking” with data that doesn’t really makes sense? Last week we have talked about Customer Analytics in Online Gaming, and this time we bring you a guest post by Ilana Jucha of stat-market.com, who is an expert in making the most out of customers’ databases (unlike Thomas, who simply uses a moisturizer cream IN FRONT of customers… and not in a decent manner):

After reading this post and its related article, please watch this clip (below). It is very much geared towards beginners, but it smartly says: if you wish to win at Roulette – you should pile some luck, as there is no system for it, and being smart doesn’t really help :)

Summer is here. And for iGaming businesses it means that the declining seasonality effect has already starting to kick in. It also means that you can definitely expect to see less and less people attending the office every day, due to all sorts of excuses.

Have you ever tried playing a slot machine in one of the online casinos when your computer sound is on mute? Have a go – it’s a surreal feeling, as suddenly the same game you know is less appealing. Unlike one of those common days in which Thomas is on vacation, you sense that something important is missing.

You grew up with your betting system, and like an old pair of jeans, it’s gotten to a point where it’s become so comfortable – you just can’t imagine how another one can fit as perfectly. The beige interface, same reports with the good-old missing fields, list of KPIs nobody has ever used – it’s part of you, and the stuff your corporate culture is made of… pure nostalgia. And hey, you got yourself a pretty decent business going on without those crisp graphs anyway, right?

Written by Lena Benel, this podcast tells about managing an effective call center and the process of definition of KPIs. Often, call centers in their early stages adopt a narrow perspective, which serves as a spotlight on the success of the operations according to a basic measurement and nothing further. However, a proper combination of metrics can clearly present the processes that are taking place, operational wellness and quality achievements. The selection of the metrics must come from...

Suppliers have consistently advanced the online gaming industry, but one of the latest developments has been to the detriment of the market. Now, they are looking to destroy retention marketing by offering players the horrible choice of exactly what they want. Quick recap: Online gaming operators rely on CRM, not on affiliates. Why?

We all love VIPs. We enjoy that James Bond feeling, thinking if we can treat our top players like in films, we might get a free meal during our next trip to Las Vegas - because, you know, karma and such. At this point, you probably know by yourself that in reality, the karma phase ends differently. Once you're concentrating on your top segment, why even bother with them annoying, block-capital using, bonus-nagging players, who can’t seem to spell even the word “a” correctly?

07:00 I've just returned home from the gym. Sounds cool, eh? Well, actually it was just a pilates class. But you see, that’s what us CRM people do - take a grain of truth, such as the connection between the terrible Swedish platform we use and proper 21st century technology, and glorify it to the maximum. We also do it in front of the players, re-selling the same online casino games again and again (“An exciting NEW slot!”), often under impossible bonus budget constraints. Are you not...

The best of Play Hard and why affiliates and suppliers should look or collaboration.

Hi, my name is Shahar and I don’t think business intelligence (BI) people should exist. What’s the reason behind my statement? I mean, everybody loves the BI staff. What would you do in this info-hungry industry of ours without data? If you are following my articles here, you would know at this point how much I value reports, real-time and accurate analysis, so how can I say such a thing?

Legend says that when Alexander the Great arrived in Gordium, he was presented with a complicated knot. The local oracle claimed it could be untangled only by the “future ruler of all Asia”; our Sasha – Russian diminutive for Alexander – observed the problem, stepped back and cut the Gordian knot with a single stroke of his sword.

You might get the impression that I am lazy, judging by the title. Far from it. If there’s a chore I promise to complete, you can consider it done. There’s hardly a need to remind me about it every half a year. But I do like acronyms. Working as a consultant requires me to scribble swift comments during sessions with clients – and acronyms just make my life easier.