Best Practices for Online Casinos to Leverage Marketing and Transactional Emails
The glitz, glamor, and fast growth of the online gaming, casinos, and sports betting industries is undeniable; these online gambling endeavors have been all the rage worldwide. And for operators, acquiring new customers is key to continued growth.?
They, like many other businesses, face the challenge of not just attracting new players but also getting in touch, making bonus offers, completing transactions and maintaining constant communication with current players to maximize engagement and revenue.?
While SMS and other direct mobile communications play a critical role in getting in touch, email remains the most ubiquitous and effective channel for online gaming operators.?
Let’s look at some of the best practices casino operators can leverage in their marketing and transactional emails to meet their unique needs and requirements.
The Importance of Email in Online Gaming
As a form of consistent media outreach, emails provide a medium to build long-term relationships with players, offering numerous opportunities to engage. Whether it’s welcoming new sign-ups, informing them of new games, or sending bonus offers and reminders of upcoming events, emails help keep the conversation going with your audiences.?
For these gaming operators, there are two key use cases for emails in driving both new player acquisition and retention as well as driving more regular engagement. Marketing campaigns need to hit the inboxes of potential and current players, with promotional marketing excitement and all players need immediate responses to all transactional emails.?
Enhancing Customer Communication and Conversion
By providing personalized, timely, and relevant information that keeps players engaged, emails significantly improve regular customer communication. A good example is to offer exciting ‘getting started’ offers to contacts who create an account but have not yet put down their first bet or started engaging with the casino.
In such a case, a personalized welcome series can set the stage for a long-term relationship. The initial welcome email can include an introduction to the casino, highlighting key features and current promotions. By guiding new players through their experience, operators can keep them engaged.?
Moreover, targeted bonus offers and promotions can entice casual players to engage more frequently, such as emails that offer initial deposit bonuses or free spins for infrequent players.?
These emails can even be tailored to individual player preferences and behaviors by using custom tags and segments, where operators can then micro target their audiences with campaigns and drips. This then creates a sense of personalized attention, making players feel valued and more likely to continue interacting with the platform.
Increasing Player Usage and Lifetime Value
Once players are onboarded, it’s all about making sure they increase? playing time, increasing their overall lifetime value, rather than just signing up once and abandoning. This is where well-timed emails can be instrumental!?
Regular, strategically timed emails keep the casino top-of-mind and encourage frequent visits. For instance, sending timely reminders about upcoming games or events, along with personalized game recommendations based on their normal playing time/days as well as other past behavior, can motivate players to log in and place more bets.?
This continuous engagement not only increases player activity but ultimately extends their relationship with the casino after the initial sign-up, ultimately boosting CLTV. Well-timed emails and notifications can help turn casual players into more dedicated patrons, maximizing long-term profitability for operators.?
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Promotional Marketing Use Cases
Key Transactional Use Cases
On the other hand, transactional emails need to be sent immediately and always hit the inbox.
The Realities of Email Service Providers (ESPs)
While casino and online gaming operators may see the benefits of engaging in email marketing, the fact is that many email service providers have recently opted out of supporting the online gaming and casino markets, leaving operators in a big bind.?
In fact, some ESPs drop or ban operators in the middle of campaigns, creating significant disruption. Uniquely, SendWorks is fully embracing this market , and we are hearing from dozens of casino operators every week, in a panic to find an ESP willing to partner with them.
Navigating ESP Transitions
Migrating from an existing ESP should be fast, easy, and straightforward, especially with the assistance of an experienced team of account managers and deliverability specialists. At the end of the day, the goal is minimal downtime and continued effective communication with players!?
The best way to build successful email marketing programs is to start with truly opted-in email contacts, these are people who will recognize and be open to getting emails from a known sender domain.?
By having this list of contacts, you can start warming up your domains and IPs quickly enabling high velocity email campaigns. Having a clean list, one that’s free of bad email addresses and SPAM traps, is the best way to ensure you get your warm-up process completed quickly. This also establishes the reputation of your domains, so that once these emails go out, they will hit the inbox of the intended players and not end up in SPAM folders.?
Operators will need these contacts to be clean to ensure anyone signing up is using a valid email and that these emails stay valid over time. This is where a service like SendVerify can efficiently and affordably ensure you have and keep a pristine contact list.
Why SendWorks
Working with an ESP that understands the needs of online casino operators and has experience with hundreds of these types of businesses will help ensure your email efforts are both effective and a highly valuable channel in your overall communication strategy.
Here at SendWorks, we are very welcoming to gambling, betting, and iGaming businesses, having worked with many such businesses.?
Want to learn more about enhancing your email marketing efforts and fostering long-lasting relationships with players through these best practices?
Give us a shout and we can share further key learnings and experiences to help you get a better ROI from email marketing! There are lots more great ideas in our blog.?